Pictures of Lina

More pictures are here.

Welcoming Selina Claire!!!

Selina Claire (nn Lina) was born yesterday morning around 10:30 (I have the exact time written down somewhere).

The midwife (Jen) came by around 7:30 and I was 7cm, so she stayed, and called the nurse to come over. I'm not sure what time it was that she checked my progress again and I was 9cm, so she went ahead and broke my water. There were chunks of mecconium in the fluid, which is a risk for aspiration, so we had to transfer to the hospital. I put clothes on, we left the nurse to pack up Jen's supplies & close the house and Jen jumped in the car with us. Thankfully we're only about 5 min from the hospital, but I've never noticed how bumpy that road is LOL. Jen had called ahead & found out what room we were going to so she got me in the wheel chair & literally ran me to the room. No idea what time we got there, but it wasn't very long before I was ready to push, and I didn't push very long before Selina was born. I held her for a few minutes and then the NICU people checked to make sure she hadn't aspirated any meconium, then I got her back. And a little later they weighed her and such. She weighed 8lb 12.3oz and I think was 20" long (I'm horrible at remembering numbers, it's written down somewhere)

Jen called the ped. they normally use for hospital deliveries (since my ped is too far away) and arranged for her to come check Lina that evening and then discharge both of us. So we hung out at the hospital for the afternoon. The nurses were really sweet, actually seemed to enjoy the girls' endless chatter & questions. And when they did Lina's footprints they had the girls come do hand prints and made me a sheet with all 3 of my girls' handprints on it and also did an extra page with a Lina footprint for each of the big girls. Mom and Dad got there about 1/2 hr after Lina was born. I figured the girls would be bored and ready to go back to the house w/ mom & dad, but they wanted to hang out at the hospital and hold Lina, so Mom & Dad took them to Taco Bell for lunch, and then came back until 6pm or so.

Naturally Lina slept all afternoon at the hospital and was awake most of the night. Which wouldn't have been SO bad except I think her tummy was bothering her abit she'd nurse for a while and then not want to nurse and she really wanted to be walked & I just didn't have the stamina for that, did lots of sitting on the edge of the bed rocking her and finally got her to sleep for longer stretches by letting her sleep on my chest (which is how the big girls slept best as newborns too).

So everything is going well. Lina's been nursing alot more today, the girls are less than thrilled that she's not as content to sleep on their laps for hours on end LOL.

Tomorrow is the big girls' birthday, so Grandmom and Aunt Lynette & Uncle Dave are coming up for that. Of course I procrastinated as usual and was planning to clean yesterday & today, so my mom's been doing that for me today.

This Might Be It

I woke up about 5am with a more painful contraction than the off & on mild cramping I've been having the last few weeks. When it went away & another followed a few minutes later, I decided to at least sort of time them . . . seemed to be about 5 min apart. Puttered around, went to the bathroom, took a shower . . . decided to go ahead & get the waterproof layer & extra sheets on our bed. Finally by a little after 6:00 I decided I should at least call the midwife. Was in the family room (where dh had fallen asleep on the sofa last night) when I called, all my banging around upstairs hadn't bothered dh, but as soon as I said "hi, I think I might be in labor" into the phone, dh was wide awake LOL.

Jen (midwife) called me back and said she'll come by around 7:30 and check my progress and then we'll decide if she needs to stay, and call the nurse to come, or if she'll go back to the birth center and come back later.

So that's where things are at. I still have a couple things I need to make sure are ready, guess I should do that . . .

38 Week Appointment

Today was our 38 week appointment. The midwifery student did our appointment today instead of one of the midwives. Which was fine, but she was concerned about my blood pressure, despite the fact that it was right in line with, and in fact on the low side of, what it's been THE ENTIRE PREGNANCY! Seriously, if it's lower at 38 weeks than it was at 16 weeks, and is essentially the SAME at 38 weeks as it was at our first appointment, I'm thinking we're doing ok. She also was very concerned about the swelling in my feet which is so much less than it was my last pregnancy (much EARLIER in my last pregnancy) that it doesn't concern me. So anyway . . . she called in the midwife I haven't seen since relatively early in the pregnancy (it's been months) to double check the swelling, I guess, and she decided I need to do a 24 hour urine test. Which means I have to collect all my pee for a 24 hr period & take it in to my next appointment & they'll send it, and blood that they draw at that appointment to the lab. I'm thinking she pretty much is doing this as a "cover our butt" thing &/or to be conservative in her teaching of the student, because it strikes me that if she was REALLY concerned, at 38 weeks, she'd want to get the results back ASAP. As it is, I'm to do the test next Monday & take it w/ me to Tuesday's appointment. Which means I'll essentially be 40 weeks before they even get the results back. But whatever . . .

Does make me hope baby comes before Monday, just to save me the hassle of collecting urine for an entire day (must be kept cold too, so, since it's not practical to keep it in the fridge, I'll have to keep it in a bowl of ice in the bathroom, lovely . . . at least my kids are old enough I don't have to worry about them playing in it or something LOL.

So, other then that, all is well, still measuring abit ahead, she measured me at 40cm, which is in line w/ the 39 cm I was last week. I did notice that it seemed like she started the measurement significantly lower than it has been, so not sure if she just measured different because she's a different person, or if that means the baby has dropped significantly lower/I'm effaced.

Thinking if the weather's nice tomorrow I may take the girls "exploring" through our woods. Was trying to figure out today, how to go for a walk (to encourage labor, to avoid the pee thing LOL) when everything around us is hills & that's abit more strenuous than I'm up for right now, and it occurred to me that the path through the woods that the girls like to "explore" with my mom is relatively flat. So we shall see . . .

37 Week Appointment

Had our 37 week appointment this morning. All is well . . . the GBS came back negative, whew! No need to argue with anyone about not wanting abx for that! (don't know if the mw would've given me fits about it or not, I know the hospital would've if we ended up there for any reason).

I'm measuring 39 weeks, so not as far ahead as I was . . . baby's heartbeat continues to be strong, and fast, especially since the girls think its great fun to poke at baby to get it excited LOL.

Blood pressure has actually been better the last 2 weeks than it was most of the earlier pregnancy (has been in the 138-140 range most of the pregnancy, occasionally dropping down to 130, and has been 130 these last 2 weeks (those are the top numbers I don't remember the bottom numbers but it's been top numbers that have tended to run toward the high side, so they're what I've been watching).

We need to go to a "class" at the birth center tomorrow night to go over things to watch for and be aware of the first few days after baby's born (since we're doing a homebirth). She said children don't usually come but if the girls are more comfortable coming (since both dh & I need to be there) that will be fine, and they can either listen, play quietly in the room, or go up to the toy area in the waiting room and play there, guessing that's what they'll choose, since they love the waldorf toys there :o)

36 Week Appointment Update

Yesterday was our 36 week appointment. I forgot to give the midwife the little "pocket chart" that she usually fills out w/ the pertinent stats from each appointment (bp, measurements, etc) so not sure if I'm still measuring 3 weeks ahead or not. Thought about it as I was leaving & decided it wasn't worth going back to ask, since I'm on weekly appointments now anyway, and it really doesn't matter. . .

She did an internal check, primarily to confirm that baby's head is down (the girls' eyes got very big when she said she'd FELT the baby's head LOL). But while she was "there" she checked my progress as well. Said I'm dilated to a "loose 1" which I assume means somewhere between 1 & 2. And said that's pretty typical for 36 weeks. Obviously this means NOTHING, some women don't dilate at all until active labor, others walk around for WEEKS several cm dilated, but there you have it.

Also took the GBS culture at yesterday's appointment, so now we just wait (& pray) it's negative. Having done some research in the last couple weeks, I'm confident that I do NOT want the abx, even if it's positive, but I don't know how well that will go over w/ the midwives, and I KNOW it won't go over well at the hospital, should I have to transfer there. However, since the hospital would treat me as assumed positive if I were to decline the test, I decided it was better to do the culture & hope for a negative that would make it all a non-issue. Sometime between now & next Tuesday, I want to go through & consolidate all the information floating through my head into concise points that I can make w/ the mw, if needed, at the next appointment. May also go ahead & print out a revised birth plan that clearly states, no abx for GBS, so that I have it, and can hand it to her right away, should it be positive. . . I'm a big believer in planning for the worst & hoping for the best LOL.

So that's about all there was to yesterday's appointment. A asked the mw, why she needed a stethescope AND a blood pressure cuff to take blood pressure, and our wonderful mw gave her a brief, easy to understand, explaination about how it all works (which I didn't know either). A was able to explain it to Daddy last night, so she seems to have "gotten" the concept. The mw also gave them each a glove (since she was using one for the exam) and showed them how to blow it up to look like a chicken (sort of), so they're having fun w/ those, though Lexie's managed to get a hole before we ever got home.

Just Because it Amuses Me

One of the girls' Sabbath School teachers gave me a baby gift today at church. When I opened it when I got home, it's all girl clothes . . . wonder if she knows something I don't LOL. To counteract that, both of the women hosting my shower, have told me they think I'm having a boy (not just "I'm guessing a boy" but to the point of having to remind themselves/each other, while planning, etc, that we don't know the gender, because they start thinking in terms of boy themes LOL), and another friend recently mentioned that she keeps thinking I'm having a boy.

What makes the girl clothes all the more amusing to me is, there was a woman at one of my showers when I was pregnant with the girls (which again, nobody knew if we were having boys or girls) who gave me a bag of girl clothes as well.

And while I'm updating. . . everything seems to be going well, Thurs night, for the 3rd time (in the last month & a half) I woke up in the night & threw up. The first 2 were a week apart & I chalked it up to some kind of flu bug, but nobody else in my family ever got sick so now, combined w/ it happening AGAIN, I'm thinking it's some wierd pregnancy thing . . . morning sickness only not? Thankfully since it was Thurs night, while dh had planned to go in to the office on Fri, the office isn't open (he just is still trying to get year end stuff done, so working Fridays & Sundays) so when he got up & I told him I'd thrown up & wasn't feeling good he stayed home until my parents got here mid-morning. So I was able to at least stay in bed for awhile ("sleep in" would be an exageration w/ 2 rowdy girls running around, but at least I could doze off & on). And by the time my parents got here (10:30ish?) I was feeling pretty much back to normal. Had eaten yogurt for breakfast, but we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch & I ate fine & have been find ever since. And was even able to get quite abit accomplished Fri afternoon while Mom was here to help. We got the spare room rearranged/stuff put away to the point that there's room for the birthing pool in there (had confirmed during mom & dad's last trip up here, that the pool is just a tad too big around to fit in the bathroom & still be able to get past it to get to the toilet, so it will have to go across the hall in the spare room), recycling taken in (which was #1 on my to do list while they were here, since dh has been working every Fri & not only is it hard for me to dump stuff into the bins at the recycling place on my own at this point (I've been having some pelvic pain, that makes it painful to lift anything or bend or stretch . . . all of which is involved in the normally easy job of getting rid of the recycling LOL), but also it's easier to load into his minivan that has the bench seat folded down (rather than trying to stack it behind the 3rd row bench in my minivan), recycling was taking over one corner of my kitchen LOL. Dad's bigger vehicle plus mom & dad to help carry stuff, made it all much easier), and I even made some good headway in my room, putting things away & rearranging to make room for the co-sleeper Dad will build once the baby's born (original plan was to have him build it sometime around now, but that same pelvic pain issue makes it painful to get in & out of bed as it is, I can't imagine having to crawl up from the foot of the bed, which is what I'll need to do once the cosleeper is in place, so we'll just have him build it once the baby's here (and the pelvic pain should have resolved itself).

Still need to take some stuff up to storage (it was raining Fri afternoon, so we put it off hoping for better weather Sun). And Dad brought up plywood (or particle board?) to lay on the floor of the spare room under the birth pool (to distribute the weight better since we're not sure how sturdy these old floors are LOL) but it was too wide (or long?) to get up the stairs, so he needs to cut it down abit & then we need to get it up there & in place, and Dad made me the extra shelves I'd requested for my bookcases, so we need to unload the affected shelves & put the new shelves in, then put the books back on their shelves.

Dad also put in a valve thingy in our shower so that when I go into labor I can just hook the hose right up to the shower & flip the valve & fill the birth pool that way.

So it's been a productive weekend. Now I just need to get the last odds & ends of birthing supplies consolidated in one place & organized & such, and then we'll be ready to go whenever this baby decides to make it's appearance :)