Friday, December 21, 2007

I've Changed My Title

But the web address is the same as before. Now there's a way to get around the fact that someone used that name already! (Nevermind that they don't ever use it...)

Friday, December 14, 2007

Christmas HOOPLA

1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas
2. Please refer to it as a 'hoopla' and not the dreaded 'm'-word
3. You have to specifically tag people when you're done. None of this "if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged" stuff is allowed...then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you -- but the more, the merrier to get this 'hoopla' circulating through the blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I'd like to get as many people involved as possible.

1. I used to be a Christmas fanatic. Now I just really love Christmas.
2. I used to wear a different pair of Christmas socks for every day in December, and I still had some left over that I didn't get to wear.
3. The only time I wear ear rings is at Christmas time, because they are Christmas-y ones!
4. I LOVE LOVE LOVE to buy/make other people presents.
5. I have never had a White Christmas.
6. Every December we make snowflakes all the time leading up to Christmas and make sure the house has them hanging all over the place.
7. This year we are spending Christmas at
Martie's house.
8. I love Christmas carols. Playing them, singing them, listening to them. I'm not into the Jingle Bells ones so much.
9. I made our stockings 2 years ago out of fleece (hard to sew!), and this year will be Chub's first year with a stocking!
10. This will be my second Christmas ever not spent with my family (MY parents and siblings) and it's with the same people I was with last time it happened!
11. For Christmas, I like to eat
Eloise's pan dulce.
12. I made a real gingerbread house this year, out of real home baked gingerbread. (It's harder than it looks.)

I tag: trogonpete. Ha ha! (or Ho Ho Ho!)

Monday, December 03, 2007

Online Radio

A friend of mine told me about this online radio website. It's got lots of variety. I'm listening to choral Christmas music right now, to get me in the right mood for the gingerbread I'm about to make. Check it out!

http://www.pandora.com/

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Hip Hip Hooray!

Or, Hooray for smaller Hips. I have reached pre(this)pregnancy weight! Now, on to losing even more. I started making sure the cardio I was doing lasted for over 20 minutes at a time and it has really made a difference. Same for eating less. And not having much sugar (though the last three days have been awful). One of these days I should throw my scale away...

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

What stinks about ebay...

is when you buy something from a seller who has what looks like a good feedback score and it turns out when you look three weeks after purchasing an item and not hearing from the seller or receiving the item that what's really going on is that they sell so much stinkin' stuff that the hundreds of negative and neutral feedback comments they have barely make a dent in their score.

All for an $8.50 camera cable.

Poo.

New Family Blog

We've got a new family blog:

palewis.blogspot.com

This blog is now my personal blog, so if you're looking for pictures, etc, check the other one!

Monday, November 05, 2007

Exercise

I've decided that I actually want to have a waist again. And I really don't want to wait the 9-10 months that it took after Chub was born, and that only gave me a partial one anyway, so, I've come up with a plan. I've already been going to the gym Monday-Thursday morning and doing yoga on Friday mornings, plus I added in a run on Saturday morning this past weekend as well, which I'd like to keep doing. Unfortunately, due to time constraints related to having children and a husband who actually does need to leave the house sometimes, on the days I go to the gym I'm only able to do 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise on a combination of stationary bikes, ellipticals, stairmasters, and treadmills, with some abs and weights for a few minutes afterwards. I also walk there and back, which is about a half mile each way. So, until we can afford to buy a double jogger (I REALLY want this one, but this one will do), I've decided on a "crunch plan":

*For every piece of candy I eat (which isn't very frequent, but it's post-Halloween right now...), 50 crunches.
*For every dessert I eat, 100 crunches
*For every meal with potato or white rice, 100 crunches
*For every time I eat white bread, 100 crunches

This helps me eat better, and helps offset at least a little when I make poor eating choices.

Think it'll work?

Thursday, November 01, 2007

A Happy Hello

I've been working out at the gym with a friend for the last three weeks, which has been really awesome! Usually when I get home everyone is either still asleep, or Daddy and Chub (and maybe Shrimpy) are downstairs eating breakfast or reading. But today, as soon as I opened the door, Chub turned around from the recliner and said "Mommy!", giving me a huge grin. I walked into the living room to see Chub sitting in the recliner by herself, with her Pooh bear, her dolly Atigun and her stuffed eagle, Kenai. Daddy was nowhere in the vicinity. So I went upstairs to find Daddy still asleep in bed, along with Shrimpy. So how, you ask, did Chubby end up waiting for me downstairs? Well, when she woke up, Daddy got out of bed and opened her door and promptly fell back asleep, so Chubby grabbed her toys and took them downstairs and sat and rocked on the recliner with her toys for company until I got home. Now, this may not seem like a big thing to you, but Chub is ALWAYS on the same level of the house as us, and does not usually just sit still in a chair for fun. It was such a cute sight to come home to!

Our Earthquake

We had an earthquake on Tuesday. It was pretty scary, but only because of the idea of earthquakes, not because this one was particularly bad, because it wasn't. It was a 5.6, and twenty miles away or so. We could hear it coming before we felt it, which was really strange. All in all, it was very different from the way I expected it to feel. And I've gotta say, feeling the earth move under you like that sure makes you feel powerless and insignificant! After it happened, I didn't want to let Chub out of my sight. So, it probably seems like I'm totally blowing the whole thing out of proportion, but, we almost didn't even apply to Stanford because I was afraid of living in the Bay area with its earthquakes... And here we are, earthquakes and all. Hopefully this will be the worst of it!

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

For the Ladies

Check out these awesome articles written by my smart and insightful sister in law:

http://women.ldsblogs.com/

Really, truly, you won't be disappointed. Read them!

Monday, October 22, 2007

Wow!

Check out this cool blog (more particularly the cool things to make):

http://heatherbailey.typepad.com/

I really want to make some of those cute little booties!

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Monday, October 15, 2007

The Answers

Well, I was trying to give people some time to answer, BUT, enough is enough. It's been a whole week people!

1) maintain a house that is always clean and comfortable

YES! It is so satisfying (and comfortable) to look around and see a lack of mess--order, cleanliness, a shining kitchen floor, etc. I'm doing pretty well, but when most things are great, there is almost always at least one messy spot in the house.

2) travel to New Guinea

No. That's Peter's dream, but I'm going with him. I'm always too concerned about safety (or should I say unreasonably paranoid?) for wild places to be my dreams. I feel safer dreaming of places like New Zealand, all of Europe, etc.

3) do the Ironman triathlon

No, but I do think it would be fun to do a shorter one sometime. My first goal in this area is to do a relay triathlon and do the swimming portion. Who knows when that will even happen though.

4) learn to play the piano well enough to play in church

YES! Not that I necessarily aspire to play in church, but I want to at least be good enough that I could (without freaking out about it).

5) go back to school and get a graduate degree in linguistics

No. I love linguistics, and I will if the chance comes up, probably, but it's not a goal anymore. I don't like the pressure of assignments, papers, and all of those scary things that graduate students have to do.

6) own a small hobby farm

YES! I want horses, goats, chickens, etc so much! And land for them to roam on. And lots of garden space with lots of fruits and veggies.

7) learn how to cook a perfect souffle

No. I LOVE to cook, but there is no particular dream or goal associated with it. We had a souffle enrichment activity, and it didn't look too hard though. I think I'll try it soon.

8) be the Relief Society President

Um...NO! This was your free NOT. Who does, anyway?

9) be in a community orchestra

YES! I've only ever played in bands, and I really want not only to play again someday, but to experience playing in an orchestra and play some great music, like Beethoven, Dvorak, etc. Bands don't have that, unless someone rewrote it for them.

10) swim on a Masters swim team

YES! I've always wanted to do this. Swimming is my sport. I love it. I love water. I love being in shape, and competing in swimming is tons of fun!

So, there you are. Of my 2 participants, Little Mama beat Real by 1.

I know I have more than two readers!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Clearplay

We used to be subscribers to CleanFlicks, and when they closed because they lost their lawsuit, we were pretty durn bummed. But recently, a friend of mine told us about Clearplay, which is pretty much exactly the same thing, except instead of renting an already edited DVD, you rent or buy a normal one, and download the edits from their website with a little USB thingy and plug it into a special DVD player you buy from them, and voila! You have a nice edited movie. You also have to pay a low monthly membership fee for access to the movies. We're trying to decide right now if we want to spend that much money just to be able to watch lots and lots of really good movies that will no longer be inappropriate.

Apparently, Clearplay faced a lawsuit similar to the one CleanFlicks had to deal with, since certain filmmakers consider the editing of their movies to be akin to removing measures from a symphony, or covering up the naughty parts of the Venus de Milo. Fortunately, Congress decided that we have a right to filter the content of movies in our own homes, so as long as we're not purchasing something that has already been altered, it's okay. That's why CleanFlicks went down the tubes...

Monday, October 08, 2007

A Quiz for YOU!

Per my husband's request, here is a little quiz for you. I don't necessarily expect you to get the answers right, since I'm not sure myself what I'm going to put yet, but here goes.

Out of this list of ten things, which FIVE are some of my personal (somewhat passionate) life goals? (I even gave you a free "NOT")

1) maintain a house that is always clean and comfortable
2) travel to New Guinea
3) do the Ironman triathlon
4) learn to play the piano well enough to play in church
5) go back to school and get a graduate degree in linguistics
6) own a small hobby farm
7) learn how to cook a perfect souffle
8) be the Relief Society President
9) be in a community orchestra
10) swim on a Masters swim team

Now that I've finished, I think if anyone guesses all five, they were just lucky. And if anyone guesses the "NOT", then we need to spend some one on one time together...

Feel free to do one of your own, or have a go on Peter's blog.
Good luck!

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Fall Fever!

I have a very bad case of Fall Fever. And watch out--it's contagious! All I can think about is making goodies (pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread and muffins, ginger snaps, decorating sugar cookies), Halloween costumes, parties, crafts, getting together with family and friends, and other generally fun and exciting things. And of course, that leads me to Christmas and winter, and I'm pretty much ready to listen to Christmas carols now.

I'm ready to break out the apple cider and hot chocolate, my sweaters and slippers, and oh boy do I wish I had a fireplace right now!

Mmmmmmmmmm! I love this time of year!

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

It's All About Me!

Well, I never got around to posting my last pregnancy photo. I had Peter take this picture the day before The Shrimp was born, when I thought there was a good chance it was the last day I would be pregnant. So, this is 38w3d:


These next two photos show my really awesome new mommy toy, The Ultimate Baby Wrap. This is the best baby carrier ever! Basically, it combines things like the Snugli and Baby Bjorn and other slings into one, and it is super comfortable and easy to use! I LOVE it. Unfortunately, I'm wearing a shirt the same color as the carrier, so it's hard to see all of the details, but you can see the basic idea. (Especially if you click on that link...)




More Pics of The Shrimp

These pics were taken at 3 weeks 2 days old:




Super Chub!


Little Chub is such an awesome toddler! She seems to be pretty well adjusted to having The Shrimp around now, and she especially loves playing with all of Shrimpy's things, as you can see in the picture above. You can also see another of her favorite things to do, which is to spread everything all around the floor...


Little Chub also now lets me put her hair up, which is VERY exciting to both Peter and me, because now no one can tell she has an extreme mullet! In the pictures above and below, she actually has what I call a "triceratops" hairdo (there's a ponytail in the back too...), which was just a joke, but I kept the top two in all day, even though they look silly sticking straight up. We usually keep her hair in cute back of the head pigtails, which you can kind of see in the top picture.


Some of Chub's other accomplishments are speaking in little sentences (our favorite is 'That's a whale!'), learning to count, and popping out with vocabulary we had no idea she knew, such as 'woodpecker'. The first time we realized that she knew how to count to ten, we counted up to five slowly, and then she said six, we said seven, she said eight, we said nine, and she said ten. We were amazed! We're also starting to work on her letters, and she loves to get out crayons and paper and have us write letters and words. She also sits with her Daddy to read and makes him drag her finger along the words as he's reading. So far I have no idea what she knows because she usually keeps it hidden until she can completely surprise us with something.

One other very cute thing Little Chub does happens at bedtime. Her Daddy almost always puts her to bed, and she always goes to bed with dolly, pillow, and her special quilt her Aunt Margaret made for her. Daddy puts her blanket on her, then goes and turns off the light. As he's walking to turn it off, Chub is holding the blanket at her chin with a little twinkle in her eye. He turns off the light, and then goes over to kiss her goodnight, and EVERY time, she pulls the blanket over her head and makes Daddy find her. She's done this with me a few times at naptime, but she stopped doing it because it's just not the same with Mommy! Little Chub and her Daddy have built a very special relationship since The Shrimp was born and it is very cute!

Old Pics of The Shrimp

These are from the first two weeks...
9.8.07
9.8.07

9.9.07

9.14.07

9.19.07

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Ta-Dah!

The Shrimp, 3 days old

The Shrimp has been breastfeeding shield-free for a few days now. Yippee! We'll find out on Thursday how much weight she's gained, but we know she was only 1 oz below birth weight at 1 week old. Her cheeks are starting to fill out, which is super cute, and Peter HAS been taking lots of pictures, so we'll put them up soon.

Friday, September 14, 2007

How We're Doing

Lest you all sit at home biting your fingernails with worry that things are not going well over here, I thought I'd let you know that things are going GREAT! They could be better, a little, but all in all it's great. My midwife gave me a nipple shield to use with The Shrimp, since she has such a tiny mouth, and now, even though we still use that for almost every feeding, and for the whole time, most of the time, she is at the breast for every feeding which makes me very happy. Now if I could consistently get her to stay awake while she's eating, we could transition off of this thing! (It's a miracle, by the way. I think it really would have helped with Little Chub.)

Aside from that, Shrimp's bilirubin level went down, so we don't have to take her back to the pediatrician anymore, and thank goodness for that because we think she already caught a cold there. She only had 5 heel pricks and 1 shot total in her first week of life. Welcome to the world Shrimpy! It actually got harder and harder to watch them prick her and squeeze blood drops from her heel. I would have thought it would have gotten easier, but by the last time, I was pretty much crawling in my skin. Shrimp has almost no jaundice left, and she's really cute.

Little Chub is doing great. She sometimes gets a little jealous of The Shrimp and tries to throw her off of my lap, so I try to make special time to read stories with her on my lap, because that's her favorite thing in the whole world. She is trying to learn how to be soft ("sof") and gentle ("jettow"). She is having a blast playing with her Aunt Chicki who is here visiting with us. She also has really big feet all of a sudden. They grew through 2 sizes in a matter of weeks, and now I have to go to the store and buy her more, when I just bought her two new pairs about 4 weeks ago. And one of them was actually not on clearance. Go figure. At least now The Shrimp will inherit a really nice barely worn pair of shoes in a year and a half or so.

Little Chub also is a little bit jealous of the fact that The Shrimp gets to nurse. I let her try every time she wants to (we even tried tandem nursing once), but she has no idea how to do it anymore. I wish she did. I feel sad that she was weaned so early. The big change in Little Chub's life is the hardest part for me in the transition to having two kids. Sometimes she's sad now and there's nothing I can do about it, and it makes me feel like I've abandoned her. But we're trying to get into a rhythm, and eventually, Little Chub will get used to having her little sister ("sissi").

As for me, I wouldn't mind if every postpartum period was just like this one, because I'm not sure if it's possible for it to be any better! I had to force myself to sit around for the first few days, on the command of my midwife. I feel great! The only physical complaint was those durned afterpains. And those are a distant memory for me now.

Hooray for having babies! I even had them both, all by myself while they both needed me...for about 30 minutes...

The real fun begins next Wednesday.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

My Birth Story...

Is two posts down.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Breastfeeding The Shrimp

Sorry Real, and everyone else, for the lack of a birth story so far. Hopefully this issue will be resolved and we can move on to more exciting things.

A few minutes after Shrimp was born, we got to nurse for the first time. It was great! She latched right on and has a powerful suck! I was so excited after the nightmarish first several weeks of my breastfeeding relationship with Little Chub. My midwife reminded us that in the first 24 hours or so, newborns are often more interested in sleeping than anything else, so it was okay if she didn't nurse quite as often as would be the norm after that. Still, she woke up every few hours (not quite as often as 2-3), and she latched on pretty well still. I noticed that there were a few minor things we would need to work on to alleviate some soreness for me, but aside from that, things were great. Day number 2 came around--Thursday. Shrimp's latch was the same as the day before, but I had to aggressively wake her up a lot of the time. Still, once she latched on, it was mostly perfect. Day 3--Friday. The Shrimp is nearly impossible to wake up. But, I still manage to do it, and she eats. My excitement about her nursing abilities compared to Little Chub's and the fact that she was tormented at the pediatrician's and very much needed to nurse after the visit kept me from really realizing that things were going downhill (already had, really). Incidentally, we went across the hall from the pediatrician to the lab where they stuck her heel and took a million drops of blood for the bilirubin test. Also incidentally, my milk was starting to come in that morning, and continued to do so all day, until Friday night, I was engorged. I hadn't realized with Little Chub when it was coming in, probably because of so many stinking sore areas I had, until I was engorged, so as the milk was fully coming in this time, I was optimistically (still! and I didn't really think I was an optimist...) thinking The Shrimp was eating enough to keep us from a repeat performance of engorgement. Unfortunately, The Shrimp was unable to latch on-to my engorgedness, so I had to pump some off the top. By the time I had one side ready for her, she had given up. She refused to try to latch on, and I was getting frustrated. We decided that with all that we learned last time, we might as well feed her what we had pumped, so we bottle fed her the pumped breastmilk. It was breastmilk, but I was not happy about it. She became much more alert after drinking 2 ounces of breastmilk, and even woke up twice in the night to eat (each time after about 3 hours). I had to pump some off the top each time, but after that, with some hard work, we managed to get a successful latch. Now we were thinking that if we could manage to un-engorge me that everything would be a-okay. Sadly, one breast will not un-engorge, with any amount of pumping. The other one is HUGE, but the engorged one in comparison is like Alaska compared to Rhode Island or something (yes, that's an exaggeration...). The Shrimp has been sleeping ALL day, so we've stuffed a bottle into her sleeping mouth to feed her (after trying in vain to breastfeed repeatedly). Then we got a call telling us that her bilirubin is high. They wanted us to go to the ER tomorrow to repeat the bilirubin test, and make sure she's okay. We get to go to a lab instead. We're trying to stuff her full of milk before then, and we're putting her by windows all the time.

So, here I sit, with edema that makes me look worse than when I was pregnant, and causes me to weigh only 3 pounds less than when The Shrimp was born, with a boob the size of Alaska (but as hard as the Grand Canyon), and with a baby who won't wake up (unless it's nighttime and I'm trying to have her NOT sleep on the bed), and therefore, cannot eat without a bottle. It's kind of depressing.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

The Shrimp's Birth Story

Tuesday, September 4th:

I was taking a nap while Little Chub took hers, and I noticed that I was having crampy feelings come and go, but not necessarily in a pattern. I took Little Chub outside to play after she woke up, and this continued. When Peter got home from work and joined us in the courtyard, I told him, "I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be early labor. But then, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't either..." He was surprised that I thought it could turn into the real thing though. The crampy feeling continued to come and go through dinner. After dinner, Peter left to go tutor, so I went for a walk around the apartments with Little Chub. After the walk, I sat down to read, and felt some undeniable contractions, but they were mild, like the ones I had felt every once in a while at night during the previous week and a half. Even though they were mild, I was pretty certain by the time Peter came home (around 8:15pm) that this would develop into true active labor eventually.

We started timing the contractions after we put Little Chub to bed, around 9pm. At this point they were anywhere from 6 to 11 minutes apart--not really predictable. I was reading (Slaughterhouse-Five) during the contractions, as they still weren't all that strong. Peter called our friends that would be watching Little Chub to let them know there was a possibility we'd be calling them in the middle of the night, and I went around the house collecting the bags I'd packed already and getting together everything else we wanted with us. We had dessert, and shortly after eating I felt my mysterious abdominal pain come on, around 10:30pm. At this point, I was freaking out (internally) because my worst fear of this labor was that this pain would happen at the same time, and I wasn't sure I could handle that. I decided to go up to bed to put myself into my weird position that alleviates a small fraction of the abdominal pain, to wait things out there, and see if I could eventually fall asleep. While the abdominal pain was happening, the contractions almost disappeared. I could still feel one every half hour or so, but barely.

Wednesday, September 5:

After a little over two hours, the abdominal pain was gone and I fell asleep for a few minutes to be woken up by a contraction slightly stronger than the strongest I had felt before the abdominal pain came. It was now about 1am. I was excited! Peter had come to bed earlier and we had both decided that as much as it stunk to have the abdominal pain, it would still be nice if labor were really happening, and we were hoping it would resume after the pain went away. I waited a few more minutes, through two more contractions that felt like they were getting a little bit stronger, then woke Peter up to tell him that it definitely seemed like labor was here for real, and asked him what time it was. We timed three more, and they were about 6-7 minutes apart, so we decided to get out of bed and time the contractions (charting them in Excel) and get ready to leave for the birth center, so we could make sure not to leave anything important behind. I was really tired, so I laid down on the floor with a couple of pillows, which was really comfortable, but it felt like I was keeping labor from progressing, so I got up and moved around, collecting even more last minute things to take to the birth center. The contractions started to become strong enough now that my preferred method of dealing with them was to lean against the couch or anything nearby until it was over, but I could still handle them in any position, and I was completely normal inbetween them.

Around 2:30am, we called our midwife and Peter explained to her where I was at in labor. She let us decide if we wanted to come in yet or not, and since the birth center was in San Francisco, about 45 minutes away, we decided to go sooner rather than later, to avoid driving during very strong contractions. So, we called our friends (Brittney and Chris), and dropped Little Chub off. She went back down to sleep like a champ! And we were on our way to have a baby!

The contractions in the car were quite painful, but breathing slowly and trying to relax as completely as possible really helped. Peter drove with one hand and held my hand with the other, and made sure I completely relaxed for each contraction. I also had our dumb cell phone jingle in my head, and my brain slowed down a small part of the melody and repeated it really slowly for each contraction. It was weird, but it really seemed to help. I also found myself chanting in my head, "Open up for the baby," over and over again, which also helped a lot.

When we got to the birth center, shortly after 4am, I'm not sure the midwife was convinced I was really in labor because I think she thought I was acting too normal, but she took a pee sample and checked the baby's heartbeat through three contractions. As soon as we arrived, the contractions spaced out a little bit. They had been about 4 1/2 minutes apart for the whole drive over. So, the midwife checked me to make sure things were really happening enough to call it labor, and we found out I was 5 centimeters and completely effaced. She said that we didn't know where I started from, but usually this point was what took the longest, and things were usually much quicker after 5 centimeters and full effacement. I was happy because with the contractions I was already having, I was hoping to be at least 5 centimeters along.

We walked over to our birth room, and at about the same time the contractions really started to get serious. The midwife told me to make sure to relax my shoulders while I was standing and leaning against things, and I didn't think I could relax any more than I was already in that position, so I laid down (on my right side) on a comfy little pad they had laid out on the floor for me in case I didn't feel like climbing onto the tall bed, with my head on Peter's lap. All along he had been rubbing my back or stroking my hair or doing anything he could to help me through contractions. It turned out that what I wanted the most was for him to not actively do anything, but just to make sure he had some physical contact with me during a contraction, like to rest his hand on the small of my back. The contractions on the floor were a turning point in the labor--I was no longer able to come fully back to reality and my normal self between contractions, and didn't move between them. I kept my eyes closed. Peter reminded me often to breathe and to relax. With each contraction, I relaxed, breathed, and closed my eyes, trying to feel with each contraction when the peak was and when it was tapering down, and really concentrating on the "shape" of the contractions. After each contraction, and sometimes during, I was shocked by how incredibly painful and intense they were. My mind knew that labor was strong and knew it would be painful, but somehow, as is true for most people, I was able to forget over a year and a half just how strong and intense contractions really are. In all honesty with myself, though, I think these contractions were stronger than the ones I had with Little Chub.

Shortly after lying down on the pad, I was already feeling pressure in my butt with each contraction, which was really surprising to me. After a few of those, I decided to get up and go to the bathroom. They were starting to fill the tub now too, and I was eager to get in there, which was a good sign that I needed it. I hadn't really felt like it when she had mentioned before that she didn't want to get it ready just yet to make sure not to slow the labor down. I had three or four close together contractions while I was sitting on the toilet, and another one leaning against the edge of the tub right after coming out of the bathroom. The midwife rubbed my back during this contraction, while Peter was changing into his swimsuit in the bathroom. Then they helped me into the tub, which, just like last time, felt like a bit of heaven to enter into. Ahhhhhhhh. How nice. But then another contraction came and I felt the same as before, except that I really really love water, and being in a warm tub, and a very slight edge was taken off of the contractions. For each contraction in the tub I was leaning against the edge of the tub with my back and butt in the air. At one point I commented that the shower water that was still filling the tub was going up my butt.

I changed angles a few times, and after a few contractions in the tub, I felt my body make a little push and I grunted involuntarily. At the same time, Peter could feel the baby move down, through my lower back where his hand was rested. That urge was a surprise, and I told the midwife so after Peter called her back into the room. She reminded me of the desire I had expressed to her not to push the baby out too fast and told me to breathe through the contractions instead of pushing. I asked her if she thought my body might be cueing me to push a little before it was ready, and she told me what that would feel like, with pain still pretty intense, like the way contractions were before pushing started. I felt like that was the case, and so made sure not to push yet. Once the pushing urge started, I started to groan as low as I could for each contraction, and often decided to just keep groaning inbetween them a little bit too because it felt kind of nice to groan! Before this, I had been silent for every contraction, not for any particular reason, but because that's what felt natural to me. I had a few more pushing but not pushing contractions, and before I knew it, I felt like the baby was near the end of the birth canal, and the midwife was instructing me on how I could help guide the baby out myself with my hands, which I feel was very intuitive of her because it really helped me a lot knowing where I was in that process and actually feeling the baby's head coming out. Finally, once I had this feeling of the baby being near the end of the birth canal, I started pushing with each contraction, but not too fast. I could feel her head coming most of the way out in the next contraction but then recede again, so in the next one, I pushed it most of the way out, and in the next one, out came her head and then the rest of the body, and I felt the whole thing! It was so amazingly cool to feel her coming out, both with my hands and in the birth canal. Peter was sitting on the edge of the tub while I leaned against him and talking to me excitedly about how we were so close to having a baby, and the midwife and I caught the baby and pulled her up to my stomach. Her cord was very short, so we couldn't pull her up any higher, not even to my chest, so we decided to clamp and cut the cord a little sooner than we otherwise would have so we could pull her up to my chest and blanket her. She was born at 6:03am, and the placenta was delivered five minutes later. The Shrimp entered the world after 5 hours of active labor, covered in a thick coat of vernix, 6 lbs 3 oz, 18 inches, and ready to eat!


The Shrimp

You've seen these already, but they need to be here, so here they are again!

Weight: 6lbs 3 oz

Length: 18in





Wednesday, September 05, 2007

This is how much I love you guys...

We're going to the birth center right now. Thought you might like to know!

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Bloody Show!

Yep, that's right. Not really surprising though... Now I can just go ahead and wait some more I guess.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

False Labor!

Argh! If I'm going to be waking up at night with contractions, couldn't it at least be the real thing?

Last night I woke up feeling like I had horrible cramps, but it just so happened to fade away after a minute or so. Then it happened again a few minutes later, and faded away. And happened again. And then I got a whole bunch of Braxton-Hicksy contractions one right after the other for a really long time. Then I went to sleep.

Those were the most frequent contractions I've ever had, including Little Chub's labor, but as I was lying in bed trying to sleep instead of pay attention to contractions that were obviously not at least active labor, I kept repeating in my head "longer, stronger, and closer together" and it just didn't fit. *sigh* Oh well. One good thing that came of it is that I realized that I should at least pack a bag for Little Chub with clothes and diapers to drop off with her at our friends if labor happens before my sister gets here. So that's done now, as well as the bag to bring to the birth center with us. And the video camera is charging. Now the only things left to do are to find a place for the 5,000 hangers sitting in our hallway that I took out of the girls' closet, and install Little Chub's convertible car seat in the rear facing position (she got a new Stage 2! oooooh!).

Wow. That's crazy. When did I get so on top of things?

Today is 38 weeks, by the way.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Things Are Happening...

But in a pretty gradual way. I seem to get at least one "real" contraction every night, but they obviously aren't labor contractions, which is why I put "real" in quotes. It's very different from the way things were with Little Chub! The contraction I had last night was stronger and more painful than the first one I felt in my labor with Little Chub (and I could feel residual pain from it for over 5 minutes!), but was only followed up by normal feeling Braxton-Hicks. I'm guessing some of the early work is being done now, in these days (or weeks...) leading up to the real thing. Did all of you notice differences like this in your first vs. second labors?

Friday, August 24, 2007

Looking for good books

I need some suggestions for some good books to read (fiction). Any age group, any length. Please!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

And closer still...

I am such a delinquent blogger! Every day I sit here at the computer and consider writing something, but then I decide that the effort it takes to open up blogger and actually organize my thoughts is just too much, and instead I spend all my time reading posts by pregnant women on ivillage, wondering if it's normal to feel x,y, or z. I never really find anything interesting there, yet I keep lurking, multiple times a day! What is it about pregnancy that makes you just want to read and read about pregnancy related things, no matter how much of it you already know and no matter how much it entirely fails to do anything for you, except to help you continue to obsess about pregnancy and the baby that will soon be a part of your eternity? As you can probably tell, my thoughts are very much NOT organized right now!

Sooooooo, today is 36 weeks 4 days. In three days, I will be considered "term". I keep thinking/hoping baby will come early, and that labor will happen soon once Saturday comes, but then I realize what a HUGE change will occur in our lives as soon as this baby is born, and I think that 4 or 5 weeks would probably be just fine with me. Labor excites me. I read so many birth stories and I get so excited to imagine what I will do this time around to manage the contractions, and I wonder, what position will the baby be born in? Will the baby latch on perfectly this time? Will postpartum recovery be smoother? I want to push the baby out slower this time, with no hurry.

Anyway, we had an appointment yesterday. Everything is still going great. Baby had a growth spurt, and it was interesting to have the midwife tell me that because it confirmed what I had been telling Peter for the last week. Within the last week or so, baby has felt like a big, large, viable baby all of sudden. And she sometimes feels like she's trying to push her way out already. She burrows down there pretty deep. I wonder, will I ever be so used to pregnancy that a butt that pops out several inches all of a sudden does not cause me to stare in amazement and point it out to Peter every time? Who knows, but I'm definitely not there yet!

Oh, and the strangest thing--before this pregnancy, I was blood type A+. Now I'm A-. And blood types don't change. Unless you have an autoimmune disease. Which I don't. So, now we have to try to find the confirmation that Peter is O-, so that I don't have to have Rhogam. It's all very weird.

By the way, if you haven't given baby predictions yet, now's the time!

Birth Date:
Birth Time:
Weight:
Length:
General Description:
Other:

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Getting closer!



Well, today is 35w 3d. That means:

*If I go into labor, they won't try to stop it
*In 4 days, if the baby was born, she wouldn't have to go to the NICU automatically
*In 1 week 4 days, she will be considered term
*In 4 weeks 4 days is her due date

*In 6 weeks 4 days, she can no longer be born at the birth center

I'm not sure what the policy is if it went beyond that (whether they will let me go beyond 42 weeks), but I'm hoping not to have to find out.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to buy a glider rocker, which has been a dream of mine since LittleMama had Mademoiselle. And
a buzzy chair.