at 14 weeks little Carmen is kicking like crazy & with FORCE! She loves blowing bubbles and her spit has got quite a distance to it :) She puts her whole hand in her mouth and laughs hysterically and she is lifting up her head and moving it from side to side when she lays on her tummy. She is rolling and grabbing at everything in sight.
Oh she is so advanced :)
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
Daydreaming
These days I am pretty sure my daughter gets to daydream much more than I do. However, on this semi-dreary Monday, that's all I can seem to do...
First, I am thinking of her nursery FINALLY getting finished and how I will be able to make it special for her and cozy and warm. I imagine the paint going on the walls, her crib and gorgeous bedding, a rocker, the little floor poof I want from Etsy and all the decorations!
& Second, I am imagining a life much different than the one we lead, where I don't work full time and we have enough $$ in the bank to tow a camper across the country for weeks and take our time visiting good friends with our little angel. What a cool experience for our babe and what fun for Mom & Dad! We'd stop first in Cleveland and visit Stephanie & Isabella, then head to Colorado to see Pascal, then to Los Angeles for Mary, Ray, Alan and Sebastian, and then to Portland to see Kathleen & Seth and then end in Seattle to enjoy time with Sheila, Sean, Ireland and Anderson. & we'd stop in every fun city along the way and eat strange food and take wacky pictures.
I miss Carmen already & it's only been an hour!
This marks the start of my second full week away from her. Yuck!
First, I am thinking of her nursery FINALLY getting finished and how I will be able to make it special for her and cozy and warm. I imagine the paint going on the walls, her crib and gorgeous bedding, a rocker, the little floor poof I want from Etsy and all the decorations!
& Second, I am imagining a life much different than the one we lead, where I don't work full time and we have enough $$ in the bank to tow a camper across the country for weeks and take our time visiting good friends with our little angel. What a cool experience for our babe and what fun for Mom & Dad! We'd stop first in Cleveland and visit Stephanie & Isabella, then head to Colorado to see Pascal, then to Los Angeles for Mary, Ray, Alan and Sebastian, and then to Portland to see Kathleen & Seth and then end in Seattle to enjoy time with Sheila, Sean, Ireland and Anderson. & we'd stop in every fun city along the way and eat strange food and take wacky pictures.
I miss Carmen already & it's only been an hour!
This marks the start of my second full week away from her. Yuck!
Friday, September 23, 2011
First official FULL week back to work
Today marks Friday of my first OFFICIAL FULL week back to work. SUX- I hate being away from Carmie all day long :( But thankfully, she is having a BLAST with grandma and grandpa and who better for her to be with if she can't be with her own Mom & Pop...right? RIGHT!
She is growing so much, in just this week alone, it's incredible how much she's changed. I miss her!
Thankfully I was able to get home at a reasonable hour and it actually felt like we had an evening together, but getting home at 6:30-7:00 is much too long of a day so I am going to try not to let that always be the case here-
Unfort. I have to tend bar tomorrow night- but Carmie is going to have Daddy all to herself- so they will have a blast.
Her big thing this week is blowing bubbles and blowing air really fast out of her mouth so that her lips flutter together and she makes this funny high pitched airy sound. She is smiling even wider and it's constantly. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, around 3:00am and she is cracking herself up! Her grasp has also gotten so strong. Mom sends me pictures of her falling asleep in her bassinet holding onto one of the rings hanging from her "Rockstar" play mat. Her face is really filling out. So is her belly :)
Here's her crazy picture of the day. What a ham!
She is growing so much, in just this week alone, it's incredible how much she's changed. I miss her!
Thankfully I was able to get home at a reasonable hour and it actually felt like we had an evening together, but getting home at 6:30-7:00 is much too long of a day so I am going to try not to let that always be the case here-
Unfort. I have to tend bar tomorrow night- but Carmie is going to have Daddy all to herself- so they will have a blast.
Her big thing this week is blowing bubbles and blowing air really fast out of her mouth so that her lips flutter together and she makes this funny high pitched airy sound. She is smiling even wider and it's constantly. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, around 3:00am and she is cracking herself up! Her grasp has also gotten so strong. Mom sends me pictures of her falling asleep in her bassinet holding onto one of the rings hanging from her "Rockstar" play mat. Her face is really filling out. So is her belly :)
Here's her crazy picture of the day. What a ham!
Monday, September 12, 2011
Lunar Eclipse Birth Story
It was the week of my due date and I started to get anxious, stressed- because there was nothing about my body that felt like labor could be on the horizon. I was stressing because I knew if I did not go into labor naturally by the 24th, my induction was planned for that day.
It was Tuesday, June 14th and since I was approaching 40 weeks and still did not have pictures of Mike and I together that one day we would be able to look back upon, I asked a close friend to come over, use my camera and just snap a few shots so we would have SOMETHING. Of course, the night we planned for, decided to be humid and rainy, perfect for my naturally curly hair :) but we were going for it, rain or shine. I was in a mood and Mike was in a mood that wasn't matching mine! But we managed to find a few smiles and laughs.
Later that night I received a text from Christina -who took our pictures- saying "its a full moon, are you in labor yet?" ---Apparently there was a lunar eclipse, the first of its kind in 10 years---
Mike made super spicy mexican, we relaxed on the couch as usual and then went to bed fairly early. Just around midnight I felt some cramping, mild at first, but it lasted for a few seconds, 10 minutes later, again, the same, lasting longer, and so on. After about an hour I knew something was happening. I couldn't sleep and either could Mike as he timed each contraction.
At 9am -Wednesday, June 15th, we called the practice and told them I had been experiencing contractions 10 minutes apart for the past 9 hours- They brought me in for a check up at 1:30 that afternoon to find that I was 1.5 centimeters! Wohoo! At my last check up the Friday before I still had a closed cervix. This was progress, something was happening! The Dr. sent us out for lunch and to take a walk down by the river and had us come back around 4ish to see if anything had changed, this would give us an idea as to how quickly....or slowly I might be progressing. I was still 1.5 so we headed home. As the evening approached they got closer together, 7 minutes apart now, by 9pm, 5 minutes apart lasting for close to a minute. Could it really be happening???
We learned in class when the contractions are 5 minutes apart, lasting for 45 seconds, for a consistent hour, you should call- we waited until 11pm and called Dr. F- she said we could labor at home for longer as I was handling the pain and not leaking any fluids at that time.
We were getting tired now as we still had not slept since Tuesday and the closer they got together, the further away became the possibility TO sleep. I was in and out of the tub. It seemed to help my back- Around 3:30am- now it's Thursday, June 16th, contractions were flip flopping between 5 minutes apart and 3 minutes apart so we grabbed our bags together and headed to the hospital- In the 'wait and see' room I was hooked up to the monitor and re-examined to discover....still 1.5 centimeters! The Dr. had us go take a bath, walk for awhile and sit on the birthing ball and in just 2 hours I dilated to 3 centimeters! We were admitted by 6:30am and all set up in this great room where we would soon welcome our baby, or so we thought.
At 7am with the shift change, a wonderful nurse came in to get us all set up and we were ready to do some more walking, bathing, showering, using the ball, anything to keep us mobile and breathing through these things. The new doctor, whom I will refrain from naming, came in to see us- Let's just say, her bedside manner was going to clash with Mike and I- Her first comment was "The first thing you are going to have to do is wipe that smile from your face, you are obviously NOT in enough pain!" I said, "I'm sorry, I am just trying to maintain a positive attitude so I can get through this without any of your drugs!" We briefly discussed our birth-plan, a natural vaginal delivery with no epidural and no pain medication. She first wanted us to be aware that since we had not slept we were on our way to exhaustion and that would be the first thing to throw our plans out the window along with not eating which I would not be allowed to do from that point on. She offered me morphine to sleep....did she miss the part about a drug-free labor... She told us we could go back home and continue to labor there for longer. She explained that 'most people' when they go to the hospital in labor want to move the process along, by taking petocin to speed up their contractions and since I was not going to do that, I was 'welcome' to go home and come back when my water broke or I could not longer talk/walk through my contractions. I was shocked and wanted to cry, what did she mean go home? We HAD been laboring at home, we thought we were getting closer to having this baby! Mike said we were going to give it a few hours and then decide- Thank god for him! And with that, she left the room. I looked at the nurse, who was somewhat shocked by the whole conversation and said she had no idea why the Dr. had just said what she did. I looked at Mike and he knew how I felt, that Dr. had just pissed me off and I wanted the hell out of that hospital and with that, we headed home. We grabbed a bite to eat and turned on the A/C in our room and tried hard to get just a couple hours of sleep- It was difficult, but we tried to get as much as we could. I layed in the bath for awhile as the pain grew more intense. I tried hard to focus and breathe and in my head over and over I repeated the phrase we learned at our first class "relaxation is the key to labor."
Through the night I started to have difficulty going to the bathroom and went a stretch of a couple hours without going, which was very strange for me because it felt like I was literally using the bathroom every 1/2 hour in the last stages of my pregnancy- Mike called the Dr. ...the same sweet one from earlier today ;) and explained the situation- She said we could come in for a catheter of we could hold out- that was around 4:30am-
I was determined to make it at home a few more hours until her shift was up & we made it! At 9am, June 17th, the morning of my due date, we headed to my previously scheduled 40 week check up with our favorite Dr. at the practice. She examined me to determine I was now 4 centimeters! She was excited that we had done this all at home and she sent us right over to the hospital. They checked us back into the same great room and Dr. F was back on call! Wohoo! She wrote on the board "Wants no epidural"- They discussed pain relief options with me once, which I passed on and the words were never mentioned again. They explained that getting to 5 centimeters was the hardest but that after that it should take about an hour a centimeter...Ha! However, with the new nurse watching me closely through my contractions she saw right away I was experiencing back labor. She believed the baby to be posterior and we would then switch up our plan to include every movement possible to move that baby. It had already been a long few days and now things were getting intense. I bathed, I showered, I sat on the birthing ball, I did side-lying on each side, the polar bear pose for hours, you name it. Things were not moving as quickly as they would have thought. I felt like I had to constantly go to the bathroom, yet nothing would come out. They had to empty my bladder, talk about uncomfortable. That was the worst! I literally screamed when they did the catheter---and through the next course of the evening they would have to do that two more times--- The baby was pushing on my bladder making my contractions so intense, off the charts- After emptying my bladder for the third time they had to administer some petocin to try to get my contractions back to where they were so I would start to dilate further. They gave me the tiniest amount the Dr considered it a "whiff".
Anyhow it took FOREVER to get to 6cm & then to 8 & by the time I was 9.5cm it was already Saturday morning at 1am!! The nurses let me try to push thinking that might get me to 10 but to no avail- It was back to the Polar bear pose & finally at 3:00am I was 10cm!!! Time to push- They placed a mirror in front of me....I didn't really want to see but they thought seeing the baby's head gives great motivation for that second wind- I pushed from 3:00am until 5:13am...all with a smile on my face... when my husband cut the cord and announced that we had our Carmen-Sophia Rose!! & She came out screaming!!
It was the greatest surprise and happiest moment of my life- and the hardest work getting there, but we did it! It's true, there's a reason it's called Labor!!
& Here is our little girl- Born 6/18 at 5:13am 7lbs 4.6oz 19.5 inches
It was Tuesday, June 14th and since I was approaching 40 weeks and still did not have pictures of Mike and I together that one day we would be able to look back upon, I asked a close friend to come over, use my camera and just snap a few shots so we would have SOMETHING. Of course, the night we planned for, decided to be humid and rainy, perfect for my naturally curly hair :) but we were going for it, rain or shine. I was in a mood and Mike was in a mood that wasn't matching mine! But we managed to find a few smiles and laughs.
Later that night I received a text from Christina -who took our pictures- saying "its a full moon, are you in labor yet?" ---Apparently there was a lunar eclipse, the first of its kind in 10 years---
Mike made super spicy mexican, we relaxed on the couch as usual and then went to bed fairly early. Just around midnight I felt some cramping, mild at first, but it lasted for a few seconds, 10 minutes later, again, the same, lasting longer, and so on. After about an hour I knew something was happening. I couldn't sleep and either could Mike as he timed each contraction.
At 9am -Wednesday, June 15th, we called the practice and told them I had been experiencing contractions 10 minutes apart for the past 9 hours- They brought me in for a check up at 1:30 that afternoon to find that I was 1.5 centimeters! Wohoo! At my last check up the Friday before I still had a closed cervix. This was progress, something was happening! The Dr. sent us out for lunch and to take a walk down by the river and had us come back around 4ish to see if anything had changed, this would give us an idea as to how quickly....or slowly I might be progressing. I was still 1.5 so we headed home. As the evening approached they got closer together, 7 minutes apart now, by 9pm, 5 minutes apart lasting for close to a minute. Could it really be happening???
We learned in class when the contractions are 5 minutes apart, lasting for 45 seconds, for a consistent hour, you should call- we waited until 11pm and called Dr. F- she said we could labor at home for longer as I was handling the pain and not leaking any fluids at that time.
We were getting tired now as we still had not slept since Tuesday and the closer they got together, the further away became the possibility TO sleep. I was in and out of the tub. It seemed to help my back- Around 3:30am- now it's Thursday, June 16th, contractions were flip flopping between 5 minutes apart and 3 minutes apart so we grabbed our bags together and headed to the hospital- In the 'wait and see' room I was hooked up to the monitor and re-examined to discover....still 1.5 centimeters! The Dr. had us go take a bath, walk for awhile and sit on the birthing ball and in just 2 hours I dilated to 3 centimeters! We were admitted by 6:30am and all set up in this great room where we would soon welcome our baby, or so we thought.
At 7am with the shift change, a wonderful nurse came in to get us all set up and we were ready to do some more walking, bathing, showering, using the ball, anything to keep us mobile and breathing through these things. The new doctor, whom I will refrain from naming, came in to see us- Let's just say, her bedside manner was going to clash with Mike and I- Her first comment was "The first thing you are going to have to do is wipe that smile from your face, you are obviously NOT in enough pain!" I said, "I'm sorry, I am just trying to maintain a positive attitude so I can get through this without any of your drugs!" We briefly discussed our birth-plan, a natural vaginal delivery with no epidural and no pain medication. She first wanted us to be aware that since we had not slept we were on our way to exhaustion and that would be the first thing to throw our plans out the window along with not eating which I would not be allowed to do from that point on. She offered me morphine to sleep....did she miss the part about a drug-free labor... She told us we could go back home and continue to labor there for longer. She explained that 'most people' when they go to the hospital in labor want to move the process along, by taking petocin to speed up their contractions and since I was not going to do that, I was 'welcome' to go home and come back when my water broke or I could not longer talk/walk through my contractions. I was shocked and wanted to cry, what did she mean go home? We HAD been laboring at home, we thought we were getting closer to having this baby! Mike said we were going to give it a few hours and then decide- Thank god for him! And with that, she left the room. I looked at the nurse, who was somewhat shocked by the whole conversation and said she had no idea why the Dr. had just said what she did. I looked at Mike and he knew how I felt, that Dr. had just pissed me off and I wanted the hell out of that hospital and with that, we headed home. We grabbed a bite to eat and turned on the A/C in our room and tried hard to get just a couple hours of sleep- It was difficult, but we tried to get as much as we could. I layed in the bath for awhile as the pain grew more intense. I tried hard to focus and breathe and in my head over and over I repeated the phrase we learned at our first class "relaxation is the key to labor."
Through the night I started to have difficulty going to the bathroom and went a stretch of a couple hours without going, which was very strange for me because it felt like I was literally using the bathroom every 1/2 hour in the last stages of my pregnancy- Mike called the Dr. ...the same sweet one from earlier today ;) and explained the situation- She said we could come in for a catheter of we could hold out- that was around 4:30am-
I was determined to make it at home a few more hours until her shift was up & we made it! At 9am, June 17th, the morning of my due date, we headed to my previously scheduled 40 week check up with our favorite Dr. at the practice. She examined me to determine I was now 4 centimeters! She was excited that we had done this all at home and she sent us right over to the hospital. They checked us back into the same great room and Dr. F was back on call! Wohoo! She wrote on the board "Wants no epidural"- They discussed pain relief options with me once, which I passed on and the words were never mentioned again. They explained that getting to 5 centimeters was the hardest but that after that it should take about an hour a centimeter...Ha! However, with the new nurse watching me closely through my contractions she saw right away I was experiencing back labor. She believed the baby to be posterior and we would then switch up our plan to include every movement possible to move that baby. It had already been a long few days and now things were getting intense. I bathed, I showered, I sat on the birthing ball, I did side-lying on each side, the polar bear pose for hours, you name it. Things were not moving as quickly as they would have thought. I felt like I had to constantly go to the bathroom, yet nothing would come out. They had to empty my bladder, talk about uncomfortable. That was the worst! I literally screamed when they did the catheter---and through the next course of the evening they would have to do that two more times--- The baby was pushing on my bladder making my contractions so intense, off the charts- After emptying my bladder for the third time they had to administer some petocin to try to get my contractions back to where they were so I would start to dilate further. They gave me the tiniest amount the Dr considered it a "whiff".
Anyhow it took FOREVER to get to 6cm & then to 8 & by the time I was 9.5cm it was already Saturday morning at 1am!! The nurses let me try to push thinking that might get me to 10 but to no avail- It was back to the Polar bear pose & finally at 3:00am I was 10cm!!! Time to push- They placed a mirror in front of me....I didn't really want to see but they thought seeing the baby's head gives great motivation for that second wind- I pushed from 3:00am until 5:13am...all with a smile on my face... when my husband cut the cord and announced that we had our Carmen-Sophia Rose!! & She came out screaming!!
It was the greatest surprise and happiest moment of my life- and the hardest work getting there, but we did it! It's true, there's a reason it's called Labor!!
& Here is our little girl- Born 6/18 at 5:13am 7lbs 4.6oz 19.5 inches
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