mama thoughts: part one

once upon a time i started a blog about the beginnings of motherhood. those first few insane weeks. the ups and the downs. but the longer i've been on this adventure, the more i realize that it doesn't matter  how many things you read to prepare you for motherhood--the only time you will ever identify with new mom advice is when  you've already been there.

so here's a blog i read from time to time that i thought has some good things moms can identify with.

on another note, i haven't written anything in so long that somewhere inside of me there's a little writer screaming. sometimes i'll be in the middle of a workday and want to run home and blog/write, just to get the thoughts out and onto paper. somehow i am way more effective in communicating through writing than through speech. i need serious help when it comes to spoken words. if you want to really know how i'm feeling, ask me to write it down.

and here, for no reason at all, are some things i've been wanting to say that stand out in my mind right now, about motherhood.

worst-case scenario
this is something that occurred the very first night we brought our baby home. i had a series of at least three nightmares that involved my baby. one involved an invisible force-field around her bassinet that kept me from her. from then on out, there exists a space in my brain for these type of terrible thoughts. you know how we only use a fraction of our brains every day? well when you become a mom, you start using more. example: we were taking baby on a walk in her stroller at a downtown event where the roads were open to pedestrian traffic only. the hubs only buckled the part around her waist. i said "we need to buckle her in all the way!" he asked why and i said "because a drunk driver could come screaming down the street, turn off course and plow into the stroller, sending our baby head-first into the pavement," as i looked down at a particularly uneven part in the sidewalk where it had cracked and a large piece jutted out, and imagined her hitting one of those parts. i don't intend to sound morbid, here. if i did, i would tell you some of the other, much worse thoughts i've had that involved harm and death to my child. i find some comfort in knowing my husband has the same thoughts. we don't talk about them out loud and try our best to take such thoughts captive as fear sneaking in.

boobs can save the world
i have turned into an avid breastfeeding pusher. i want to join la leche league full time (aka the milk mafia, or booby brigade as some call them). the more i learn about breastfeeding the more i honestly think the downfall of our society could be solved with breastfeeding and the mother/child bond. i'm going to go ahead and tell you right now my kid is going to be able to toddle up to me and pat my boob for a snack. call me freak. i am not ashamed. that being said, i have had my fair share of breastfeeding battles. it was the hardest thing physically and emotionally for me to overcome after the birth of our baby. i felt trapped. my nipples cracked and bled. pieces of them came off in the shower. and the only reason i finally have an ounce of time to devote to this blog is because i'm home with mastitis. yeah. imagine having the flu and then go ahead and add in an incredibly sore boobie. but every once in a while when i'm nursing my sweet girl, she pulls off and i look down at her expecting that she's trying to push out a poot, or that she's fallen asleep, or is fussy--but no. she simply stops to look up at me and give me the widest gummy little heart-melting smile you've ever seen. as if to say "hey mama, thanks for giving me such delicious nutrition. i like this time with you." or at least that's what i hope she's saying. because i like my time with her. and by saying all this i don't mean to alienate the mother's who didn't or couldn't breastfeed. because i know some superwoman type moms who have raised perfectly healthy babies on formula. and they have just as beautiful of a bond with their kids. but i think those moms who might not be so inclined to bond with their babies, and even less so when their babies are children, and then teenagers--maybe if they breastfed they might develop some sort of bond that was unexpected and would last a lifetime. and then their would-be insecure child might not grow up and project his or her insecurity as some sort of crime, mental illness, or major life disfunction. maybe. i don't know. it would make a good study.

shout out to the couple with the crying baby
i swear my kid could be in the best mood all day, and as soon as i get in a foreign environment: screaming. for no reason other than she wants to be home. so every time i see a mom and/or dad with a crying child and everyone in the store/restaurant staring, i feel for them. and i know what it's like. put me next to the family with the young kids at the restaurant. i won't care. i won't ask to be moved. a short time ago, i would have definitely made a face and then looked at my dinner company and muttered "great." different case these days. now. i don't identify with the parents of fit throwing, disrespectful youths (yet). and i hope that my kid won't be one of those. and if she is, she better be prepared for a butt-whooping in the car. i will not tolerate disrespect in public. so i don't feel bad for those parents...yet...

give me more
despite the vibes my kid might give off in public or amongst a small gathering, she is actually a very good baby. based on that fact, i'll take a whole barn full of kids. the joy that parenthood has given me already is so great, that i can't imagine the outpouring of love and joy i would have with more of them. and add to that laundry, a house that is a disaster, a husband i get no alone time with, and even less sleep than i have now...i don't mean to sound naive. i also know i won't know the madness multiple kids will bring until it arrives. but i think it would be worth it. and i definitely want more. even three months into it. that's not to say i wouldn't have a total meltdown if i got pregnant tomorrow, but i would eventually accept and look forward to it. no, but seriously. i hope i don't get pregnant tomorrow.


love that grows
you can never truly know what you haven't experienced. that is what i'm learning most about motherhood. and one thing i've never experienced is this kind of love. i loved my baby when she was born. in a love at first sight, googly-eyed type of love. but every day i learn more about her, i love her more. and it excites me to know that i will learn so much more about her, and love her that much more. how is this possible? i don't know. i am just thankful that our beautiful creator loved us enough to share a love that big with us, and allows us to experience it.


and that's about all i've got for now. i hope to see more of this in the future. i take joy in imagining you have all been waiting on the edge of your seats for my next post. although that's probably not true, thanks for sharing in my ramblings. however relevant or irrelevant :)

enter june marie, stage right

well. this is how it happened:

{disclaimer: i don't intend to be graphic in this post, but i also will not hold much back, so proceed with caution, and be prepared to know things about me that you may not want to know}

my due date came and baby was still not here. my amazing friend, anna, had us over for some hang time and probably the best foot/neck/scalp massage ever. anna (among many things) is a trained and experienced massage therapist and she knows some secret spots in the foot that can help kick labor into gear.

the next morning (saturday) i woke up to some "heavy fluids" leaking out of me. i didn't think my water had broken, because these same heavy fluids had occurred earlier in the week and led me to falsely believe i was in labor. so to further hurry this labor along, the husband and i went for a walk, while i entertained contractions every 10 minutes or so. but they weren't regular. i timed them off and on through the morning but they still weren't regular. but they were getting stronger. and i had at least 3 more changes of clothing due to my continuing fluid leak. since i'd had several bouts of false labor, i called over our neighbor who is a nurse, but she could neither confirm or deny that i was in active labor, but she said there was a good chance i'd go into labor soon. so i continued my daily tasks--got some work done, did some laundry, pausing only briefly to concentrate on breathing during contractions.

then around 2, i got out of the shower and my contractions had been coming steadily every 8 minutes. at that point i knew i was in labor (ok well i knew before that, but just didn't want to believe it). so i grabbed my bouncy ball, watched nearly a season straight of scrubs, and we continued timing. jeremy kept a written log of when they started and how long they lasted while i bounced away and practiced my breathing. around 6pm i got up to grab my water from the kitchen and a much larger fluid gush occurred. still not the huge "flood gates opening" type gush you normally hear of, but enough to make me quite sure that was my water leaking and not just pesky fluids that i experienced earlier in the week. shortly after this my contractions were 4 minutes apart and around 90 seconds long, and i could barely talk through them. so off to the hospital we went.

now here's the part where i will finally divulge our (original) birth plan. had it not been for insurance difficulties, we would have liked a home birth with a midwife (yes, we are total hippies). but we didn't have $5k lying around so plan b was a midwife in a hospital. which was fine. my midwife is awesome. we love her. she made us feel completely secure in our decision to go with a natural childbirth, with as little medical intervention as possible. my decision for this was based on many factors, not because i wanted to see if i could do it. the pain was not my first concern. i wanted to be in control of my body, feel its signals, and i also wanted the least amount of health risks for me and my baby. it's a very personal decision and i don't think my way is "right," but it was right for us. and when we toured the labor and delivery wing, the nurses assured me this occurs all the time, and that i'd be free from machinery, not tied to a bed, and i could even walk the halls if i wanted. it all sounded perfect. exactly what we wanted.

so we get to the hospital around 7pm. a nurse takes us to triage and hooks me up to make sure i was actually in active labor. i think i asked "when does gina arrive?" and she gave me a look like "don't you know?" and said "oh gina isn't on call this weekend. dr. tucker will be delivering your baby."
who's dr. tucker?" i asked. "she's dr. tucker," the nurse replied. not funny. "but gina's day off is on tuesday. she should be here. she said she'd be here," i shot back, a little panicky. and then i was told that weekends don't count. the doctors have to have a life. which was totally nonsensical to me at the time. she kindly called gina anyway, but got no response. that was unplanned event number one.

then after several minutes the nurse came in and asked if there was anything that could have caused "irritation" to my lady parts, to which i answered no. her reasoning for asking was because my contractions were very strange. after each one, i was having what i earlier referred to jeremy as "contraction aftershocks." and apparently the contractions weren't doing what they needed to because i was only 2cm dilated. what a disappointing thing to hear. they were getting ready to send me back home when i mentioned (in my second confused state of the evening) how frequent my contractions were and that my water had broken. upon hearing this, the tested my "fluids" which came back positive as amniotic fluid. and if your water has broken, they have to keep you, due to risk of infection. the one good thing that came of this was that there was only one other laboring woman there that night, so we got the "vip room" (which is nothing besides the handicap access room, but it's bigger and has more windows).

then my labor nurse came in. she struck me as odd at first--strange humor, an off bedside manner, and she was a big personal space invader. while she was asking me questions, i was laboring on the yoga ball and she got so close to me that i couldn't roll the ball in one direction because of her knee. because she was so disorganized and took so long, i at least got to labor around the room and on the ball for another couple hours. then she came in, hooked me up to about 3 different machines and proceeded to explain that maybe pitocin was a good idea to speed up labor. the dreaded p-word. at that point either my husband or i explained that our birth plan was to go natural. she backed off momentarily, but i wasn't taken seriously. and because of the "variables" i had to stay on the monitors. what variables?! what does that even mean?! i had a perfect, by the books pregnancy. there was no reason i saw that i needed to be monitored, except for the occasional fetal heart rate monitor. that was unplanned event number two.

then i really started to stress out. it was becoming increasingly difficult to labor comfortably as my contractions grew stronger. our friend jessica, who sleepless with excitement was staying in touch, offered to come for moral support. as our back-up emergency #2 person, i told her to go ahead and make her way to the hospital. (i would suggest to everyone having a neutral bystander like this, especially where your guests during labor are limited in number and you have too many family members to chose between--she ended up being a lifesaver, especially as our birth plan continued to unravel.) my husband was there to take my hand squeezes while jessica distracted me while our nurse (who became increasingly irritating) came in and decided to do all of her nurse business in the middle of contractions. never have i had someone hang out with their hand in my cervix for so long. and let me tell you--lying flat on your back while trying to be as still as possible is about the worst position to be in during a contraction.

every two hours our nurse came in to check my progress. and about every two hours, i dilated a measly centimeter. when your contractions are two minutes apart and over a minute long, there is nothing more discouraging to hear. and into the wee hours of the morning, they were nearly unbearable. i could handle each one individually (while swaying back and forth, breathing, and groaning), but the thought of however many more of them it took to get me to 10 centimeters--not to mention the effort after that it would take to push out a baby--was very disheartening. i was actually sleeping for 30 second spurts between contractions from the exhaustion. and the nature of my contractions was odd. unlike the typical parabola like graphs you see with a steep incline, peak, and decline, mine shot up at almost 90 degrees, plateaued at the top for nearly the entire contraction, and then dropped off. by 5am on sunday (23 hours of labor later) when the nurse came and checked me at 5cm, it was clear that my body wasn't responding to the contractions the way it should have. i don't know why. it could have very well been the stress of the situation. but either way, that was unplanned event number three. no 6 hour labor for me. shortly after 5 am, and an emotional talk with my two labor coaches, jessica called for me to have an epidural.

by 6am, the epidural was administered and i was finally able to nap in between the noisy visits from our nurse. around 8 or 9 in the morning, the shifts changed and i finally got a kind and gentle and competent nurse. that made a big difference. but because of the epidural, my contractions had spaced out to 7 minutes apart and i wasn't dilating past 7cm. around 10am, dr. tucker came in and told me they'd waited long enough since my water had broken and i was either going to have to take pitocin or have a c-section. say hello to unplanned event number four. once again we had a big decision to make, and despite swearing to take anything except pitocin, a c-section is still major surgery, and i still wanted to deliver my child vaginally and have him or her immediately on my chest. so pitocin it was.

2 hours later i was dilated fully and ready to push. however. as soon as i had the epidural, the nurses kept commenting on how great my epidural was because i had full-function of my legs, and could even left myself up and reposition myself in bed. it wasn't soon after that i disagreed with their "great epidural" comments. because the "great" epidural wore off. i started to feel the contractions. by the time the big-time pushing started, i could feel everything. ev-er-y-thinnnggg.

the surprising thing about pushing, was that it actually was more painful to rest during pushes. pushing offered a small relief. after the baby's head was close to crowning, all i could feel between breaks was a giant baby head in my lady parts. and it is not exactly easy to "take a break" when you can feel that. i had a great team of encouragement, but at some point during my encouragement, the nurse said "you're doing great! you've been pushing about 45 minutes...most new moms push for about 2 hours." and that's about the point i said "aw, HELLLLLLLZ naw" and decided to take it up a notch. in stead of the 3 pushes per contraction, i started pumping out 4. 45 minutes was about 44 minutes more than i cared for.

i cried at 2 points during delivery: when my husband told me there was lots of curly black hair, and when our baby finally arrived. after an hour and five minutes of pushing i could feel a head start to emerge from my body. i didn't want to look, but that was ok because there was enough i could tell from what i was feeling. i gave 5 pushes on the last contraction and out SHE came!

you know those moments in lovey-dovey movies where nothing exists but the two main characters? that's exactly what it felt like. they laid her on my chest, crying, and i met my daughter. i don't even remember who told me it was a girl first. i vaguely remember my husband exclaiming she was a girl. in stead of the shock i thought i would experience (since i was SO sure she was a boy), the emotion i felt was an outpouring of joy. i didn't care that i was wrong the whole time, i just was glad she was there. i remember saying "you're a girl!! i'm sorry you have so many boy clothes!" for the next several minutes i just looked her over again and again, marveling at what a beautiful creation she is. (at one point i looked down and saw a bloody suture being strung up as my small tear was stitched up, and i felt the brief sting of the needle and then i decided it was time to focus on baby again, so i did, and quickly forgot what was going on down below.) i couldn't believe that the creation that i carried for 40 weeks and 2 days had finally arrived. despite that nothing went as planned, in the end i felt confident that i made all of the right decisions. and most importantly, she was here, safe and sound.

our world was instantly changed. 7 pounds, 12 1/2 ounces, 19 inches. so small, but so big for our lives. i confess i've never been able to wrap my head around the love our God has for his children. but when your child arrives in to the world, it is a God-like love. i love her because she is mine, and i will always love her for that reason. there is nothing she had to do to win my heart. she just exists. and we are so excited to begin this new chapter of life with her.

june marie. she was nameless for about a day. since we had expected a boy and all. i'll admit, june has no profound meaning, nothing spoken into my heart (like i had thought was for our "boy"). it was just something we liked since before i was even pregnant. i like it for many reasons, but if you would guess that it's because of how much i love june carter cash, you may or may not be correct. either way, it fits her. and june she is! sunny and bright like a florida summer. and she does love the sunshine. every day after i change her morning diaper (the first morning diaper, because there are many), we go and open the blinds in the nursery and we say hello to the sunshine and thank God for the sun. and every day i thank God for her.

~~~

i will follow shortly with my writings on the emotions of new motherhood. it is something you never comprehend until it happens. all the advice in the world is nothing compared to what just a week as a mom can teach you. but then again, i've only been doing it for three, so i can't imagine what's to come!

hey baby, let's meet up

the day is almost here. i officially have 2 days until my due date. and i have to say i'm a little surprised. i really didn't think i'd make it this long. just about everyone (including me) thought this little guy/girl was coming early. and i guess technically i still have time to be "early" but now i'm starting to wonder if i'll be late. ?!

i've had several bouts of "false labor" where for about 2 or so hours i'll have semi-regular and somewhat painful contractions. tummy as hard as a rock, back ache, lower belly cramps--all of what people say the onset of labor feels like. and then it passes. when the time actually comes, i may not even know i'm in true labor. it will be like "the boy that cried wolf," only more like "the baby who cried 'i want out!' " 

i don't know if it's that i'm physically ready for this baby to be here, because i still feel really good. minus the whole peeing five times a night deal, i'm actually sleeping better at night (well most nights anyway). i think more of the mental approach of my due date, coupled with the transformation my house has made into a baby haven, have both made it extremely hard to accept that it could still be two weeks before this rascal is here. two weeks...ugh.

my nesting has reached out of control proportions. i've done almost everything imagineable. the only thing stopping me from vacuuming (again) and waxing my wood floors is knowing that i have to be on full alert at work still. because when the weekends come around, i have no fears of exhausting myself. and i have. last sunday i vacuumed and wiped down all my baseboards, mopped all the floors, cleaned all the blinds and window sills, dusted everything, magic-erasered the walls and door frames, and did 4 loads of laundry (one including my final load of baby items). by 3pm i was quite regretful of all this. i wanted to saw my legs off at the waist, they hurt so bad. i've also roamed the halls at 3am thinking of ways to reconfigure my kitchen eat-in area, and i've stood in the nursery at 12am wondering what else i could fold or hang or wash...

annnd, slowly but surely the "nursery" is almost finally complete! here are some poor-quality phone photos for your enjoyment: 

that orange 1880s french chair is named "charlotte" and she's one of my prized possessions. she is not a nursery chair per se, but she looks good there...and i don't have another chair that fits in there. there is, after all, still a queen bed, night stand, and dresser crammed into the room. oh, and a cute book shelf (not pictured) with baby books and stuffed animals that we've been gifted.

thanks to my sweet friend, anna, who's baby shower decorations all have been hung, or will be hung, in my nursery. it was so great not having to spend time deciding what to put on the walls! and she is so crafty!

that bunny is the bunny from the book "goodnight moon" and he just so happens to match my crib bedding perfectly!

i'm quite happy with how it all turned out :)

on another note, i'm also ready to have this baby so i can meet the person i've been carrying around for nine months! that's right, i said person. a living individual, created by God, being formed into a baby from the time of conception. besides what i'm told, i know this to be true because of how connected i am to what's inside me. from the very beginning of my pregnancy, i've been sensitized to certain things in life--not because of pregnancy, but because of the person i'm carrying and who this baby will be. i'm certain of it. i can't explain it. it just is.

that being said, i feel like the person that our baby will be (whether boy or girl) carries a lot of my husband's traits, and most of all, the heart he has for people. he finds compassion within him that makes me look cold-hearted. sometimes i comically say "his heart is bigger than his brain" because, well, sometimes it is. i would much sooner tell a drug addict to get the you-know-what off my porch before i let them borrow my phone. i can be kind or generous when i don't feel like it, but it is a learned behavior. i have to remind myself that i am called to be these things. for him it comes naturally.

bringing a child into this world will not be an easy task. sometimes i look down at my belly and say "i'm sorry, baby, for what this world has for you" because it is ever-changing and there are so many dark things that will fight for my child. it's hard to prepare for that. but somehow, i know my child has that nearly-stupid love for people in him. it may take a while for him to find it, but it's there. and the reason i say "him" is because i've been 90% sure since i found out that i was pregnant that my baby is a boy. and because of how much my baby will be like his dad. so even if it is a girl, she will be like her dad in that aspect...we just don't have a name for her! 

so, no, we still don't have a girl name. we have a handful of names that we like, so i suppose if they surprise me and say "it's a girl!" and then they said "no really, she's a girl" after i tell them to check again, we'll have a tough decision to make! if she is a girl, hopefully i'll know when i see her!

so come on out, baby! we're ready for you. in every way possible. 

pregnancy senioritis

i've hit a wall. i'm done. not with pregnancy, though. i love carrying a baby. yes, i am one of those rare women who loves being pregnant. sure it has it's disadvantages, but in general i've been very blessed in pregnancy.

i'm done with everything else. everything that's keeping me from focusing on these last few weeks as a pregnant woman. i'm done with work. i'm done with favors. i'm done with being polite. i'm done with to-do lists. what i'd really like to tell everyone is "no. i'm not putting anything else on my schedule to get done until this baby comes, because, in case you forgot, i could have a baby any minute." (this, of course, excludes time with friends because i like that, and i won't get much of it soon.)

i'm also working up until my due date. that's always been the plan. am i a crazy person? i think so. because i didn't realize that during your last month of pregnancy you only have half a brain. i don't know the science behind it, i don't know if it's been proven or not, but i'm telling you, it's true. i do things that seem perfectly logical only to later completely question my own rationale. it came in small bouts earlier in pregnancy, but now it's constant. i can look at someone with my full attention, listen to the words that come out of their mouth, digest it, and forget it the next day.

i feel exactly like i did my senior years of high school and college--senioritis as they call it. i'm just done.

on another note, if all of this stress doesn't send me into early labor, i am perfectly on track for a baby in two weeks. all the things in my body that change and progress to prepare me for pushing a human out of my you-know-what are progressing exactly as they should. i have a "textbook" pregnancy, apparently. at work we like to play a "where is baby?" game, because sometimes he or she looks to have dropped and then 2 days later will move up high again. so every morning i come in and the girls gather around my belly to take a look.

speaking of my co-workers, they are so awesome. monday we were supposed to get together for a "girls night" and it ended up being a surprise baby shower for me! it was so sweet! and good to spend time with them outside of work's stressful environment. i also had a small shower last weekend with close family and friends, which was also wonderful. you should see the decorations i got to bring home and hang in my nursery! and all the great stuff i got! we are so blessed. my husband thinks we've gotten more for the baby than we did at our wedding. i think he's right! (sorry i have no pictures up yet--things are still making their way into place.)

one of my favorite baby things is the swing. it looks so comfortable and plays soothing nature sounds. it makes me want to be a baby. sometimes i stand next to it and turn on the sound-maker so baby can hear it...ok, and maybe because i like it, too. maybe when he or she is here it will be a familiar sound and it can be a place of peace (and quiet)!

we have also had a small financial blessing come our way. i knew it would happen. i knew that something had to happen because God always takes care of us--always--i just didn't know when or how. i had gotten to the point where i didn't even want to look at our financial situation for the upcoming months. now we can breathe a little while i'm on maternity leave!

i've made a full recovery from my hospital stay with food poisoning. i did have horrible cankles and some mean acid reflux from all the fluid they pumped into me while there. but they have both resided, thank goodness. back to normal! my strep b test came back negative which means i've got the "ok" to labor at home as long as i feel comfortable. i've been practicing my breathing and my yoga ball exercises, and i've started a list of music i may find comforting during labor (if any).

so here's hoping the next two weeks go by much smoother than the last. baby will be here sooner than i know it!

also i'll gladly take bets on the sex of the baby :)

my birthday trip to the ER

a few days before my birthday my husband asked me if i wanted a party on my birthday. i said "no, because i wouldn't know what to do with a party. my birthday has never been a big deal!" (this is the plight of the "christmas birthdays"--everyone is coming off the tail end of christmas and by the time your birthday rolls around, few people are in town, and if they are they don't have much of an inclination to go to another celebration. my poor sister's is actually january 1st. so we're both used to it.) 

my 27th birthday quickly turned into a huge deal, but not the way i would have preferred.

earlier in the day, my husband was hard at work scrubbing down our new baby-mobile. it was given to us for practically nothing (and we are so grateful!), but the little car has been road hard and hung up wet. it needs quite a bit of elbow grease. so while he was doing that, i gave into the urge i had from the second i woke up that morning to get things cleaned up around the house. the nesting hormone had moved in for the day and i spent the better half of it organizing and cleaning (yet somehow parts of our house still look like a disaster--at least baby's portion is clean and organized). needless to say i definitely overdid it. my legs were aching so badly by the end of the day. 

eventually dinner time rolled around and i had to make the decision of where to eat. i toyed with the idea of franco's (i wanted some dang italian), and really we should have gone there. it's family owned and we know it's good, but for some reason i decided i wanted to have something new and different. both of us have only been to carrabbas once so we decided that was the place. i boxed up more than half of my chicken and pasta and we headed home so i could prop up my previously mentioned aching legs. within 30 minutes of arriving home, i knew something was wrong. 

what ensued over the next 4 hours was the most violently ill experience i've ever had. the noises that came out of my body....ugh. after being unable to keep down gatorade or even water, my husband threw on a coat and packed me up to head to the ER. i was reluctant for several reasons. 1: i hate being sick outside of my own home. it's uncomfortable and embarrassing. 2: the last ER trip we had last year with my husband was horrible--i generally associate ERs with being one of the most miserable places on earth. and 3: i didn't know if i could last the car ride. but i did. and if i hadn't been 36 weeks pregnant and afraid whatever was hurting me was hurting my baby, i never would have agreed (although he probably would have picked me up and forced me anyway). 

we arrived at west florida hospital and a very nice man greeted me at the door and asked what was wrong. my husband explained and i was immediately admitted (you say the word "pregnant lady" and people rush around you like royalty). they took me up to labor and delivery so baby could be monitored. i (of course) had to pee in a cup and they determined that i was extremely dehydrated and ran an iv with fluids. 2 bags later and still no change. baby looked fine, but i was having braxton hicks contractions every 5 minutes. while this is normally not of concern, left untreated could actually cause early labor, due to my extreme dehydration. they gave me some anti-nausea medicine which helped tremendously. after that one wore off, they gave me finagrin and then i was finally able to sleep a little and take my mind off of how much my aching muscles (from the day's activities, violent vomiting, and fever) ached even more in a hospital bed. 

bag after bag was dripped into me and slowly my urine was showing less keytones (i had to show none before leaving). during this time my amazing husband (who had nothing to sit on but a rickety lab stool, while running on no sleep) helped me disconnect from my machinery and pee however many times i had to do that, made sure i was comfortable (or as comfortable as possible), and grabbed a nurse whenever needed. he was such a trooper. i am a blessed woman. as sick as i was, i was surprised i wasn't crying for my mama, but he did such a great job that i didn't want for much (except my own bed).

and i spoke of the amazing labor and delivery staff in my last post, but i will say it again: they are wonderful. my experience at west florida hospital has been nothing but good. the ER staff was amazing, the labor and delivery staff was amazing--even though it's the furthest hospital from our house, it will be my choice from now on. a completely different story from our sacred heart ER experience last year. 

so seven bags of fluid and 12 hours later, my urine finally tested for no keytones. yay! and the contractions were much less frequent and much weaker. baby is staying put until he or she is ready to come into this world. for which i am so relieved! because even though baby would have survived just fine at 36 weeks, i told my husband i did not have enough energy to deliver a baby after all that!

i am in my own bed now, sleeping a lot and trying to get plenty of fluids. my muscles are still achey but my fever broke sometime last night, so i'm on the up and up! for those of you that knew, thank you for the thoughts and prayers. for those that didn't--i'm sorry! we had little time to worry about much else. i am just thankful to be journeying into these last few weeks of pregnancy safely, with a baby who is probably also very glad to be done with all the commotion!

and i will also not be eating carrabbas anytime soon. 

happy new year and a belated "thanks" for the birthday wishes :)

the home stretch

less than one month left. four weeks and some change. considering how quickly the last month passed, i'm expecting/ hoping the last will do the same. although, considering a little miracle some of you may know as jude (who was due 4 days after my baby) has made his way into the world 5 weeks early, i'm aware that anything is fair game at this point!

 i wouldn't say i'm miserable, in any sense of the word. i'm still enjoying pregnancy. but i am achey, tired, and uncomfortable. seats that i've planted my hiney on for hours at a time on multiple occasions are now uncomfortable after about 20 minutes. in fact, i'd say 20 minutes is my limit in any position. 

i've also been fighting a sinus infection for close to 3 weeks now. i thought it was just a cold, but i should have known better. i never just get a cold. it's always a sinus infection. i already finished a round of antibiotics (5 days ago actually) but it seems to be creeping back. luckily i go to the doctor once a week from now on so it's easy to get that checked out. 

i'm glad to have had a small christmas break and few days off work to rest and enjoy time with family that next year will be replaced by the challenge of traveling with an 11 month old. the days of packing our bags in an hour and hitting the road are officially over. 

speaking of christmas, i received this little jewel from my list and i've been enjoying it ever since i opened it: 

it is laugh out loud hilarious. i've heard good things about it from friends and i'm glad i remembered to put reading it on my before-baby to-do list, because it is so good. and a little comical relief from the not-so-comical parts of pregnancy that can otherwise be frustrating. if you buy it and read it before or early during pregnancy, make sure to read it again at the end, because you can also reminisce about the parts you may have forgotten (or are just so glad to be done with that you've placed them out of your mind).

and speaking of to-do lists, the nursery is put together at least. the crib still needs its mattress and bedding, and the walls are still blank, but it's for the most part baby-ready. thankfully my mom is coming in a week and has offered to sew the crib bedding for me after i get it cut and pinned into shape. 

and in case you missed the facebook post, here is our christmas card from this year. they never got sent out because i never got around to ordering paper and printing them, and because stamps are not in our budget right now! but enjoy the photos (as taken about a month ago) as a semi-recent update of the baby belly. a co-worker took them for me (for free)! she takes most of our ad photos and does a great job, so i asked and she graciously obliged. 

as far as other pregnancy experiences and observations, not too much has changed. i have, however, developed an increasing aggravation with people who have little personal spatial awareness...or maybe that's just because my spatial awareness has increased...or maybe just my spatial requirements. if you're a little confused, imagine the following scenario i was caught in yesterday: i ventured with my husband's family to crestview walmart (actually a better experience than i imagined), and as i brought up the caboose of our line, a group of people to my left and a group of people to my right decided to pass on the same side of the aisle. instead of just letting my pregnant butt pass through this awkward intersection, all of them just proceeded on walking and i was caught in the middle of a creepy stranger cluster, instinctively hugging my belly and making angry faces while i shouldered my way out of the pile-up like a running back in hot pursuit. after safely escaping, i wanted to turn around and point angrily at my belly and yell "watch it! don't you people have any respect for a pregnant woman?!" 

i think maybe that people just don't have any respect for each other in general anymore. similar to however many times i rode the tiger transit (the auburn university transportation system) standing up while carrying two armfuls of drafting tools, while 27 frat guys sat comfortably with nothing but a cell phone in their pockets. this is the world we live in now. and situations like yesterday's probably have nothing to do with respect for pregnant women, and a lot to do with my mama bear instincts rising up. i can't imagine what i'll be like once baby is actually here. i might actually snarl at someone.

in other news we toured the birthing ward at the hospital today. it was so peaceful and the staff was amazingly nice. on top of that, as we were talking to our guide (jackie, the surgical prep nurse and nicest lady ever) we found out they encourage a lot of the things i would have requested anyways of our hospital experience. so we were glad to hear that we won't have a struggle in that area! i think they'll take great care of me :)

also i gained five pounds in the last two weeks. there was a number on the scale that was .2 lbs away from a number that i thought for sure i'd freak when i saw. i actually walked away, turned around, and got back on the scale just to see if it was right. BUT all-in-all, i'm still only up 26 lbs total. that's totally fine, and by the looks of my belly it's mostly baby...ok and maybe christmas food. 

and this has gotten long enough for one entry, so i'll leave the rest for the next. and i'll try and update more frequently since these last weeks will fly by!

burn, baby, burn

*disclaimer: i cannot figure out why there is phishing within my blog body texts. i've tried switching host sites and had the exact same problem. i give up. so for now i'll just keep blogging. just please don't click on any links! i did not put them there!*

so back to the blog...

less than 8 weeks until i no longer have a pregnant belly and instead have a baby. EIGHT. gulp!

as christmas approaches, part of me wishes little monks was already here so we could spend the holidays with our little bundle. but the other part of me knows that i will probably enjoy having the stress of the holidays over so that it's just us and baby. the closer my due date gets, the more and more anxious i am to the time when baby gets here. i want to know the sex, i want to know if he or she will look like me or jeremy. i want to know if he or she will have lots of hair and big feet and be fat (like the both of us were). i want to know i will pass down my surprising newborn alertness or if our kid will get my husband's 4-day-old jabbering (that apparently never stopped from that day forward). i want to know who this baby is!

but i also have really enjoyed pregnancy, for the most part. apart from minor aches and pains, pregnancy is a breeze compared to my normal life. i don't know how to say this politely, so i just have to say it: my "time of the month" was hell. i dread it's return more than labor and delivery. mood swings, depression, breaking out like a 16 year old, cravings, and feeling like my body wants to kill me. in fact, one of the tip-offs that i was pregnant was how normal i felt when i knew i should have been hunting down cheesy carbs or crying over the thought of smelling a real french bakery (why so specific, you ask? because that has actually happened...i have actually teared up while daydreaming about the smell of a french bakery). so maybe, juuuust maybe i'll be one of those lucky cases who's hormones level out a little after pregnancy. if not, i have no choice. i'll just have to get pregnant again and repeat the cycle until i decide i'm done. and i'm only half kidding about that.

in other news, we got swindled into going into babies r us. talk about overwhelming. who knew you need so many things for a baby?? well, i guess you only need very few items, but with all these cool new things they've developed to make parenting a newborn easier, why not? so we now have 2 registries. i have yet to look at babies r us online to check the list because (much like our wedding registry) my husband was in control of the scanner. and he gets a little out of control. he's the reason we have 2 sets of nerf guns.

anyway, here are some new things pregnancy has brought on in the last couple of weeks:

• heartburn. ay! i guess i'm at that stage. whatever i eat leaves me burping and my throat sore, so that my voice gets froggy from time to time. 
• i also can hardly breathe after i eat. not big meals. normal sized ones. it's getting crowded in there! just getting situated in bed leaves me out of breath. i feel like an incredibly out-of-shape person.
• i cannot shave my legs by myself (partially because there is no ledge of any sort in our shower for me to rest my foot, but mostly because i cannot bend over that far anymore). my husband had to do it for me before a wedding
• i also need my husband to help me take off my boots
• shirts that i never thought i'd grow into...well...let's just say they fit
• our baby moves all the time, sometimes to the point where i hope my skin holds up and a baby foot doesn't bust through my mid section like an alien
• hiccups! it took me a little while to realize what they were until one day at work i kept wondering what baby was doing in there to create such rhythmic bumps. and then a light bulb came on! 
• i've developed a peace about my "health care provider." she is amazing. the more we spend with her the more i feel like she really respects me and that i'm not just another job to do. she knows the answers to everything, and i love her honesty. i truly feel like i'm in good hands. if you're having a baby in pensacola, please ask me about her! i would highly recommend her.
• i'm very much looking forward to my maternity leave (despite that it's unpaid and i haven't quite figured out how we're going to swing that). i haven't had a vacation from work in about a year, minus the holiday here and there. although it won't be a vacation per se, at least it will be some time to focus on something other than the 8-5. 

so the real countdown begins! so glad i have Christmas to distract me from my impatience. i am so ready for that little peanut to be here!