Birth Announcement!

Sophia Katherine was born Monday, February 19th at 9:41 am, weighing in at 8 lb, 12 oz and 19 inches long! I had several days of labor followed by almost 26 hours of labor at the hospital. We are working on getting breastfeeding established. I had some interventions I had not wanted originally but looking back, I made the right decisions, because of the long labor, I would not have been able to get through it all without them. We are both healthy and for that, we're thankful.

More to come later... no time now!

Home, baby still in

I'm not real happy about this, but I think I'm in what is called "prodromal labor". I should have expected it since it took 50 hours for my son to be born with "all guns fully loaded" so to speak. We went in, and I'd made very little progress, so my doctor ordered a sleeping pill so I could sleep, I took it, and we went home. I'm having some contractions today but they are mild and pretty far apart. Will stayed with grandma and grandpa last night and that went well, but my husband went and picked him up this morning since not much is happening right now.

There really isn't much I can do at this point, alternate activity with rest and when they pick up again, waiting til they are stronger, then giving doc a call and going in again.

Thankfully nobody has been calling us, freaking out! That would REALLY piss me off at this point, so I've dubbed our house, and all electronic devices flowing into, and out of it, a NO FREAK-OUT ZONE. I don't want to talk to anyone who is going to freak out about anything! No negative energy, please! If *I* can be patient enough to let this happen, I certainly expect everyone else to be patient as well! (After all, they are not the ones going through this!)

I'll update as I am able. The nurse last night was a sweetheart and I can only hope she is our nurse when we go in for real the next time!

I'm in labor, going in soon

I am in labor, no doubt about it. Right now I'm having contractions about every 4 minutes apart, for about the last couple of hours. They were mild all day, then suddenly they became like this! I called the doctor and she said to come in when we're ready, or when I really have a hard time getting through them. We might wait here for a bit, then go, these contractions seemed to come out of nowhere so we probably shouldn't wait too long! We'll be emailing out a birth announcement later on and when I get home and get a chance, I'll post about it here too.

I am amazed at how much easier these contractions are to cope with, than when I was induced. It's like night and day!

Could be early labor...

I could be in early labor, in fact I probably am, but I don't have ANY idea how long it will be... I had such a LONG (50 hour) labor with my son (even though it was induced) so we're just hanging out at home today and I kept my husband home from work. Depending on how things go, I may or may not get a chance to update this again if we need to leave for the hospital later - in any case I will post again if I'm still here or maybe my next post will be a birth announcement! :)

More to come!

Doctor update

I am certainly not going to complain, but my doctor has done a complete turnaround on the whole induction thing! I'm SO relieved! She made me so mad last week! I had a non-stress test yesterday at the hospital (they watch baby's heart rate to make sure it behaves normally with movement and contractions, if you have any) which was totally fine, and today when I went in, we were both totally fine. So even though she did offer to induce if I wanted, she seemed completely OK with me just going home and letting nature take its course. I am also 1 cm and 60% effaced so at least all these contractions I've been having are doing SOMETHING! Maybe now that she is off my back, I can relax and go into labor. Either way, the baby will come when the baby is ready, and that's fine with me. I will have another NST at the hospital on Monday and see her again on Tuesday.

I have my moments of feeling pretty good and optimistic, to feeling really bad and just MAD that I haven't gone into labor yet. I suppose that's all par for the course. If I'm feeling OK tonight, I think we are going to head to the mall to do some walking. I plan to do some shopping as well, because I'm not going to haul my big pregnant ass all over the mall and not buy myself something to make me feel better! Even if it's another book! I've been going through a lot of books lately, I've read Jimmy Carter's "Palestine - Peace not Apartheid", I've gotten halfway through "The Iraq Study Group Report" and "The Weathermakers" which is about global warming. With all that heavy and depressing reading, now I am reading Bill Bryson's book about his travels through Europe. He is really funny and I've enjoyed every single book I've read by him! (Thanks Dad!) I got really tired of reading books about birth and breastfeeding, so I had to get something different!

I still think my due date was yesterday and not the 7th, but I'm too lazy to change my ticker. I'll put up a new ticker when the baby is born. Just do your own math and subtract 5 days. It's not that hard! :)