Happy Birthday Baby!

Okay, more pictures and baby's story!

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On Tuesday when we went in for my appointment my doctor walked in and said, "What are you doing here??" He said he was shocked that we hadn't delivered yet and that the first thing he'd done on Monday morning after his vacation was check the delivery list to see when our baby had been born. We joked that we'd been waiting for him. :) Since I have the fibroid tumor he did really want to be present for our delivery in case of any complications and since he wasn't on call the rest of the week and has Thursday's off he asked if we would come in the next morning to be induced.

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We weren't too set on the idea, but he said everything was perfectly ready and the baby was already good sized and only going to get bigger so we went ahead and made the appointment. They told us to call in the morning to see if a bunch of people had come in the night and we would have to reschedule so we figured that if it wasn't meant to be we would know in the morning.

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So we got everything ready, Noni and Papa came to spend the night with K, and we got up at 6:00 a.m. and headed to town to have our baby!

They broke my water around 8:30 a.m. but nothing was really happening. The contractions were very sporadic and not very intense so a few hours later they started me on the pitocin. Even after that they didn't really pick up so the nurse doubled the dose. I was getting very frustrated that nothing was happening and thinking that we were going to miss having our doctor deliver after all, at the rate I was going.

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I think it was around 1:00 p.m. that the contractions all the sudden lined up and got really regular at about two minutes apart and a minute long. They went from a very mild pain to intense pain very quickly.

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I had been thinking I wanted to try and see if I could do it without an epidural, but the pain came on so fast and so hard that I caved. Note to self: next time don't try to be brave, get the epidural right away! So at about 1:00 I was at a four. I asked for an epidural and got one at 1:30. At that point I had jumped up to a seven. I was in a lot of pain by then and just wanted relief.

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It took a few minutes to take and my doctor came in. He was going to head back to his office while I finished dilating but I felt like I had to push so he decided to check me before he left. That was just a few minutes before two. I was at a ten and ready to go. I pushed through only two contractions (so much nicer than K's 2 hour pushing marathon!) and our beautiful baby girl made her entrance at 2:04 p.m.

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It was amazingly fast. Even though we were at the hospital since 8:00 that morning, pretty much everything happened in one hour. That morning I told myself I was never going to be induced again, but if things are going to happen that quickly I'm going to want to be in the hospital when I do go into labor...I'm just getting the epidural right away next time. Haha. I at least want time to enjoy it. :) I applaud all of you who have had natural births! It's definitely not for the faint of heart!

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So that is Baby S's birth story...now on to the pictures! :)

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Here is our waiting crew.

Sean, K, Grandma, Grandpa, Papa, and Noni (taking the picture)

Papa keeping K occupied.

Daddy and Baby

I realized when I was getting this post together that this is the only picture of just S and I at the hospital. You can't even see her. Haha :)

K meeting her sister for the first time. She kept saying to everyone, "Want to see my baby?" She has been SO wonderful to the baby. No jealousy at all! Thank you Lord! She loves her to pieces and just wants to kiss kiss kiss her!

Papa and S

Noni - I love the look on S's face. Her face is a lot more round than K's was. Probably because she was 2 and a 1/4 inches shorter but 2 oz. bigger.

Grandma

Grandpa

Uncle Sean

Mama (Great-Grandma)

And we finally remembered to get one of S on her own. Look at that dark hair!

Our happy little family of four!

Time to head home. We don't look too impressed. :)

Mommy, K and S all slept on the hour drive home. When we pulled in and I woke up I looked into the backseat at our two precious girls sleeping so peacefully and said to T, "I'm guessing it won't always be this easy." Haha:)

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I look as tired as I feel in this picture but K looks so sweet!

S did NOT sleep hardly at all in the hospital. She had one good three hour stretch and after that EVERY time I would finally get her to sleep some other doctor or nurse would come in with something that needed to be done to her. She definitely has her days and nights mixed up. We are working on it, but I think it's going to be a rough couple of days.

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She is a very good baby though, and my mom is here playing with K, doing laundry, and Papa is currently fixing us all dinner. We are very blessed.

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So for now I will give you one last look at our little angel.

It will probably be a few days before I get around to posting again. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate it more than we can say!

Baby Girl Is Here!

Baby Girl arrived at 2:04 P.M.
Weight: 8 lbs. 3 oz.
Length: 18 1/2 inches

Mother and baby are both happy and healthy! We should go home tomorrow and will post pictures then! Thanks for your prayers!

One Little Monkey Jumping On the Bed

Still no news. Apparently baby is quite content to stay where she is. I have an appointment today and I'm hoping the doctor will give me some hope, but at the moment it feels like she's going to stay in there forever! I kept waking up last night with contractions, but they obviously didn't get me anywhere. We have plans to go out to dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant tonight and I told T I would be brave and order some spice. You get to pick how many stars, representing spice, your meal has and I normally say zero. We're hoping to smoke her out. :)

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In the meantime I wanted to try out the video feature on my new camera so I just filmed K doing one of her favorite activities...bouncing on "Grandma Grandpa's bed" (they are the only ones that ever sleep in our guest room so that's what she calls it). :)

Hayden is the high school senior that we sold our blue car to, and he is also the brother of one of K's little friends. She likes to talk about him and how "We don't have a blue car anymore, it's Mr. Hayden's now!"

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One of her new things is to do something funny and then she says, "Wanna say 'do it again do it again'?" And she will do it about twenty times in a row if you keep saying it. It's funny how kids can do the same thing over and over and over again without getting bored.

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Well, hopefully we'll have some news soon! Until then...

Shark Attatck

I have been attacking my house for the past month, but it just got easier! This past week I have been getting to know my handy dandy "Shark" portable steamer! I won it off my friend Rachel's blog! She did a giveaway and I actually won! She is the link to the right that says, "Grasping for Objectivity in my Subjective Life".

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Her blog is my favorite thing to read everyday. If you are looking for a smile or all out laughter I suggest you head over and check her blog out. It's hilarious!!! She has a daughter that is just a few months older than K and it is so funny to read her hilarious spin on life with a toddler. Here is the link so you can easily go see. http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com/

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Anyway, she's awesome and I highly recommend it...PLUS she has fun giveaways where you win stuff! This is actually the second thing I've won! The first thing was a set of two cds that I got around Christmas time. I love them! The steamer, however, takes the cake. This thing is pretty cool! I am so ready for baby, and getting so bored that I have literally been cleaning the walls...and the baseboards...and the cupboards. I also steamed several sets of curtains that I have been too lazy to take down and iron. It's pretty fun.

I'm glad I've had something to distract me this week b/c I am so tired. Tired of heartburn, tired of being uncomfortable, tired of not being able to sleep, tired of going to the bathroom every half an hour. I am just tired. Tired of being pregnant and SO ready to meet this little one! I love being pregnant and the miracle of experiencing a life growing inside you, but I've put in the time and I'm ready to meet her.

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I'm only six days away from my due date. I honestly didn't think you could be dilated for 6 weeks before having your baby, but I have proved myself otherwise. So if you think of me this week, please send up a prayer that I will have patience, a good attitude, and a joyful heart as we anticipate the arrival of this little girl. I will just keep working to trust and have the faith that she will be here at just the right time. :) Hope you all had a great weekend!

Baby Blanket

Well, I have every single thing checked off my list...even finishing the baby blanket I made for this little one! We have so many blankets, but I wanted her to have something that I made especially for her since most of the things we have were given to or made for K.

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This project took a LOT longer than I anticipated. I have been working on it on and off since October! Okay, I really didn't work on it at all in November, but there were still a lot of hours put in!

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The blanket is crocheted, but I only know one stitch and I didn't want to take the time to learn how to put it together so I just made all the squares and the filler stripes and then whip stitched them together with a needle. I'm sure that is totally wrong, but it worked for me.

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I was also too lazy to learn how to make a border and thought that just tying a fringe all around would be an easy way out...oh boy was it not! It took forever to tie all those little strings around the edge! I had some help though. It is kind of funny but Grandma, Noni, Mama, and Auntie Nae all (at different times) helped me tie some of the strings on. I think I like that even better. So now S's blanket is a gift that all of us worked on.

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It turned out pretty cute...bigger than I thought it would, but I like it. :)

K had been watching me work on this while Grandma was knitting so whenever I wasn't using my crochet hook she would pick it up and wrap a piece of yarn around it and say, "I knitting now." She would do it for several minutes at a time.

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She also saw Grandma knitting a hat for baby and wanted one too. Grandma said she would make one so K went off to play. She came back about five minutes later and said, "Where my hat, Grandma?" I guess she thought it would be a quick project. :)

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P.S. I feel back to normal although I am starting to lose some of the energy I have had for the past month. I have taken a long nap with K two days in a row. My doctor is on vacation until Monday so I am going to try to take it easy this weekend. I love my doctor. He is the reason we drive an hour into town ever week so I'm really hoping that baby girl waits until he gets back! But I won't be too upset if she decides to come soon. :)

True or False?

False. False labor that is. VERY frustrating!

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We had a doctor's appointment yesterday afternoon and on the way in I started having contractions. They started at six minutes apart, then went to five, then four, and by the time I saw my doctor (the office was really busy and we had to wait about an hour) they were coming steadily at 3 minutes apart (but hardly painful at all).

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So he checked me and said I had made progress, but he didn't know if it had been in the last hour or just over the last week. Since we live an hour away and he was on call anyway he asked us to do some shopping, hang around town for a bit, and then come in and get checked again to see if things were indeed beginning and if they weren't we could head home.

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So what do you do if you think you are in labor? Go buy furniture of course! :) T had found an insanely good deal on some couches over black Friday weekend but they were all damaged so he was given a rain check. They JUST came in yesterday, but I think they were worth the wait! Right now you can buy this couch for $699 and the matching chair for $499 and we got both pieces for $456 (including tax)!!! Talk about a good deal!

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They definitely aren't the fanciest or best quality we've ever seen, but for that price you can use them and throw them away later! I actually really like them though...very comfortable, just the look I was going for, and it's the first furniture (other than K's crib/nursery set) that we've ever bought! Everything else we own T either made (our bed, table, coffee table, night stands) or was handed down to us (our current couch belonged to my parents, and will find a new home in our breezeway/family room).

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So here is our beautiful new couch.

And it's lovely overstuffed companion. I think this is going to be my new favorite reading place!

So back to my story...we bought the couches and I was still contracting regularly, but they were still very mild...more of a backache with a little lower stomach pain. We went to dinner and T and K got some hamburgers. I had been feeling weird all day and hadn't eaten more than a few bites since breakfast.
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My mom came and met up with us so she could take K if necessary and we headed back to the hospital to check things out. I was thinking that we would be shown to a office type room, get checked, and then either get admitted or go home, but we had to go through the whole process...signing in, getting a room, wearing the gown, the whole bit! They hooked me up to the monitors and checked me. I hadn't made any progress but they wanted to monitor it for a while.
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There was one GREAT thing about all this. We learned that the visitor restrictions were lifted on Friday so K gets to come up to the hospital room after all!!! I am so excited! I had been praying about this for months...and I just thought the answer was no, so I was so happy when God gave us a resounding YES! Thank you, Lord!
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It was getting late at this point so we just decided to let my mom take K home. I read her a book before we left and my mom took a picture. K's expression made me laugh out loud when I looked at it this morning. Maybe she's not as prepared for baby as I thought! :)

My doctor was busy with an emergency, so by the time he got up to see me we had been there for nearly an hour and half. He said there really wasn't enough progress, and if I was 39 weeks (four more days!) he would have broken my water and given me some pitocin, but since I am still at the 38 week mark he just wasn't comfortable doing that.
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I understood, but it was REALLY hard to go through all that and be IN the room all ready to go and then be told that we could just go home. Especially when I was regularly contracting every 2 to 3 minutes. How am I supposed to know when it's the real thing?? I am hoping that my water will just break like it did with K. That was easy. No timing, no guessing. Water broke, twenty minutes later the contractions started strong at two minutes apart. She was born exactly 7 hours later. I didn't fully realize at the time what an easy birth experience I had with her.
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So all in all it was a pretty frustrating evening, but I am trusting that God knows exactly when this baby is supposed to be born and He will let us know in His good time. T said something profound on the way home, "God holds everything in His perfect time, we just wish sometimes that we had His watch!" How true!
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I was hoping to leave the hospital with one of these.
(K at just a few hours old)

And instead I left looking like this.

But I am trusting that He will get things going in His own good time.
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For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

Ka-Boom

Last night at 2:15a.m. there was a tremendous, floor shaking KA-BOOM, followed by shrieking, crying, and other general mayhem.

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Yes, she fell out of bed...again! The time before was a small thump and she was asleep on the floor before T even got up there. Not this time. She cried and cried, and I had to rock her for about ten minutes to get her to settle down enough to go back to sleep.

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This morning the first thing I noticed when she woke up was a big scrape on her face. It's not a scratch, more of a line of broken blood vessels. The flash of my camera took out most of the color...it looks a lot worse in person. Poor thing.

I have no idea what we are supposed to do about this problem. She already has bed rails on the bed so I don't even know how she is falling out. Has anybody else had this problem? Any suggestions? I guess we could tie her to the bed, but she probably wouldn't fall asleep. :)

Another doctor's appointment this afternoon...I'm hoping for some progress, but that's been my story for the past month. She's gotta come out sometime! Right? :)