This blog is really old.

Someone liked my most recent post on this blog…from eight years ago.

Erik will be ten this June which I can hardly believe. He also has four younger brothers (yep, just one sister still).

He’s not the most photogenic kid so I had to go back a few months to find a clear solo picture of him.

Here’s everyone together:

Erik at twenty months

Here’s a recent photo – this kid is growing up fast!!  He was twenty months yesterday – four more months and he’ll be two!  Feels a little surreal.

And an ultrasound photo of Erik’s little brother or sister – due around the 10th of May.  This one is growing fast, too!  This pregnancy is flying by – I suppose because I have three kiddos keeping me busy around the house.

Fourteen months

I realized that it had been some time since I last wrote here, so I thought I would give a little update for anyone still checking in, or anyone stumbling across the blog now.

Erik is fourteen months and four days old now.  Don’t worry, I usually don’t keep track of the actual number of days he is into his current month. 🙂  He is mostly just crawling, but took his first steps quite some time ago now.  His health is good most of the time, although he was in the hospital with pneumonia for two nights last month.  His asthma is a problem for us and will continue to be, which is very unfortunate, but it can be treated.  He is starting to try out words, although most of our interpretations are just guessing – he may not mean anything by what he is babbling, but we like to think he does some of the time. 

He is still very small – only about eighteen pounds, but I suspect that his frequent night nursings were a big contributor to that.  I stopped feeding him at night a few weeks ago and now I am attempting to wean him and just have him on whole milk.  My milk just isn’t fatty enough for him and there is some concern that he is just too small for his age.  I am feeling a bit down about weaning – I never really like doing it, even though in the past I have been pregnant at the time of weaning.  This time I am not expecting again yet, which makes it harder for me – there is no promise of another baby to breastfeed in a few months.  I cannot see a reason that we wouldn’t have another baby, unless that is just God’s plan for us, so I am trying not to get too bothered by it.  I will just try to enjoy the time – however brief it may be – that I am not nursing or pregnant. 

 I just gave Erik his first haircut today – his hair was finally long enough to need cutting – it was always flying in his ears.  Still nothing like the hair Elias had at this age – all the way down into his eyes – but long enough.  It makes him look a lot more grown up, but he is definitely still my baby.

Here’s a recent picture, though not post-haircut (don’t have any yet):

Although not keeping up regularly here (for obvious reasons – it wouldn’t really be a pregnancy journal anymore), I’m still blogging at Messy Housewife: http://everydaylifeofahousewife.wordpress.com – come and read!!

Six Months!!

No, not six months pregnant, but six months has passed since I was pregnant.  It’s hard to believe it, but my little boy is old enough to grab his feet and put them in his mouth, make raspberries with his lips and even to shake his head “no” back at me when I do it to him.  He is such a joy and is still considerably easier than Elias was, and possibly even easier than Jenny was as a baby.  He is certainly happier than Jenny – or at least he smiles a lot more than she did. 

Today we started solids (I’m anal…yeah, I know, but I don’t start solids – any solids – until my kids are exactly six months to the day), and Erik did what most babies do and made a cute little disgusted face, gagged a few times, spit a good deal of it back out, but ate a whole tablespoon on his first tasting.  This is always a very exciting time for me, and simultaneously sad.  My babies aren’t just mine anymore – someone else can feed them now, even if it is only rice cereal a half a cup at a time.  I have devoted myself to exclusive breastfeeding for very selfish reasons, really – I just love that it has to be me that feeds them.  I mean, yes, someone else could do it in an emergency (not that I can guarantee my kids would have known what to do with a bottle), but otherwise, it’s all my responsibility.  Other people can change diapers, give baths, play peek-a-boo, but I’m the one with the food. 

The other downside to supplementing breastfeeding is that any birth control I was getting from exclusive breastfeeding starts to decline with each feeding of solids.  Yes, this does work – you have to be very good about not supplementing anything in the first six months, though.  And, like most other forms of birth control, it’s not 100% fool proof.  Even giving a soother (pacifier) can interfere with it.  But so far, it has worked for us.

Well, it is now the end of a long day – Jenny and Elias didn’t eat supper yesterday (not because I didn’t offer it, but because they refused to eat) and so they were up way too early this morning asking for food, and then I took Erik to his six month checkup in the afternoon and had to deal with grumpy kids who really needed a nap – and fast.  Tomorrow I am taking Jenny to her very first dentist appointment.  I can hardly believe she’s old enough for it, but she does have teeth and she can speak in full sentences…so I guess it’s time.

If you’ve been keeping up with the other blog, about how I can’t keep my house clean, and other bits of chaos, you’ll be up to date on a lot of this, but I thought I would take the time to update the journal since Erik is six months old now.  Adieu!

Ten days later…

This may very well be my last post on this blog for quite some time.  It is a pregnancy journal, after all, and I do have another blog that is better suited to my everyday life (har har…The Everyday Life of a Messy Housewife). 

However, because this is baby/postpartum related, I figured it fit better here. 

Erik is doing great – he is eating and sleeping really well and gives us a few hours every day of interaction, which seems to be pretty rare at this age.  I know what they say about baby smiles – that any smile before a month of age isn’t a real smile – and I’ve believed it in the past, because my kids definitely had gassy smiles and sleep smiles before they were a month old, but at a month, they looked me in the eye and grinned back at me.  Erik has decided to break the rules; I’m not kidding you – he has smiled at me about four times now.  I have said that you can tell a real smile because of the look in their eyes.  They look right at you and their eyes smile along with their mouths.  Well, that’s just what he has been doing.  I can’t explain it, and you can argue all you want, but if you were his mother, you’d agree with me (I just wish someone else could see it so they’d know what I’m talking about). 

On the kid front, Jenny continues to ask where her “buddo Ewik” is and actually refers to him most of the time as “Ewik buddo”.  Elias just calls him baby, although I think he’s been trying to say Erik and it comes out sounding like “owie”, which is hilarious.  So far, neither of them has made him cry or tried to carry him around the house, although I’ve been very careful to keep him with me or keep my eye on him all the time when he’s not in his bed away from them.  A friend of mine told me a story about her kids that made me decide never to leave the room while Erik is laying on the couch or the floor – her older son was in the room after she changed her newborn’s diaper and she left to get something quickly in the other room.  When she went back, the older boy had picked up his brother and was carrying him upside down, trying to help her.  If I remember right, he said, “Here, Mommy, I bring him to you.”  Yikes!  So I’m going to watch them very carefully, because I can just see it happening with one of them, thinking they were helping me. 

As far as my health/energy goes, I seem to do fine getting up in the morning and having energy until just before lunch, and then I feel like crashing.  Yesterday, I actually dozed on the couch with the kids climbing on me – Elias tearing up an envelope and throwing it around didn’t even faze me, I was so tired.  Today, I feel tired, but when I laid down to have a nap, I could only think of cleaning and writing.  So I got up, swept the living room floor, cleaned up toys, did the dishes and now I’m writing.  I have maybe twenty minutes that I can count on the kids staying asleep, so If I get tired now, it’s probably too late to do anything about it.  As for my actual recovery, I feel pretty good, although I’m still bleeding a good deal, which is getting old.  Yeah, I know it’s only been ten days, but it seems that it’s different this time than it was with the other two.  Also, I got my hopes up because I went all day yesterday without anything at all and then had it come back in the middle of the night.  Okay – enough already!  Fortunately, the cramping quit a week ago, so at least it’s not a bother in that way.  It is true, afterpains seem to get worse each time you have a baby.  I don’t really remember anything with Jenny, but I had them pretty bad with Elias and this time, they were really bad.  But four days of them is not so bad, really.

The other big thing around the house is that as soon as the kids got over their cold/cough, they got another one!  And now Erik has it!  Goopy eyes, coughs and runny/stuffy noses that I’m wiping all the time and Jenny yelling from her room, “I need to blow my nose!!” in the middle of the night (and ten seconds ago – hooray!).  I’ve had a sore throat, but my cough is getting better and I don’t have symptoms of a cold like they do…I just hope it stays that way.  The kids spent all day yesterday lying around watching movies while I wiped noses and read a book.  I’m so glad Erik has decided to be a good baby and sleep for long stretches between feedings.  I don’t know what I would do if he was fussy like Elias was.

So much for twenty minutes, I think I got about ten out of them.  Oh, well.  C’est la vie.  I meant to go into more, like the fact that I weaned myself off of ice, but apparently, I’m out of time.  Oh, yeah, I weaned myself off of ice.  I’ll tell you about it sometime. 

So, no promises, but more than likely, I’ll be sticking to the other blog from now on (at least  until I’m pregnant again, although then the address will be misleading, since it won’t be baby number three anymore).  Well, off I go to be a mommy again (unless my kids have gone back to sleep…oh, wouldn’t that be nice?!).

Third Time’s The Charm

After a long and not so comfortable pregnancy – okay, it was normal in length, but felt really long – and both of my previous deliveries not going my way, I was anxious to do this one on my own. While lots of women are pushing for induction at a week overdue just to get the kid out of them, I insisted on putting it off until twelve days past my due date, which was as long as my doctor would let me have. For a month before my due date, I was having increasingly uncomfortable Braxton Hicks contractions. The week before my due date, I was sure I was in labour at least once, only to have everything stop and go back to normal.

On Tuesday, June 10^th, when I was two days overdue, I went for my doctor’s appointment and expected to have my membranes stripped. Turns out, my cervix was not ripe at all and so it wasn’t possible. I went home figuring I would be back in another six days to try it again. The next morning, I lost my mucous plug and had a number of contractions, some very close together, throughout the evening. After a long night, I had Mike take me to the hospital Thursday morning. As soon as I got there, my contractions almost completely stopped. They weren’t showing up on the monitor and when the nurse checked me for dilation, she said nothing, which indicated to me that nothing was happening. The concern that day was that the baby was transverse and so I went back a few hours later for my doctor to check. As far as I can tell, the baby had moved in the two hours that I was not in the hospital, because when I went in on Thursday at noon, he was head down for sure. My doctor did an internal exam as well, and again, said nothing to me about dilation. The only thing I heard was her saying was that something was long, which I assumed was referring to my cervix, and that it wasn’t effaced yet. I went home feeling depressed and had a little cry over what I assumed meant another eight days of pregnancy. Friday went by pretty normal – it was a busy day, but after a hockey team barbeque and being at my in-laws until eleven, I felt pretty good. I was feeling a little bit strange physically, but not having many contractions. I had actually found that day that when I went to the bathroom, I would have a contraction almost every time. I worried that I might have a bladder infection, as I had heard that they could cause contractions and pain when using the bathroom.

We went to bed late on Friday and I had about two hours of sleep when I woke up with a contraction. I had them five minutes apart for three hours and then was able to sleep between them for the next four hours. They were painful enough that I was breathing through them and using effleurage to deal with the pain. In the morning, I checked my cervix to see what I could feel and something was definitely different. Instead of feeling the neck, I just felt the edge of it, which I figured meant that those seven hours had at least gotten me effaced. I didn’t check any more than that, but I may have been somewhat dilated as well.

My contractions more or less stopped when I got up and so I told Mike that we had to stay busy that day or I was going to go nuts. I figured that I would probably have the baby soon, but had no way to really tell and I had errands to run and cleaning to do in the house. I decided that if we could get a few things done at home and then have the kids nap at Mike’s parents while we went shopping, it would be a good way to stay busy. We finished up at home and went to his parents around three-thirty. We put the kids down for their nap, Mike had some steak and we left to get our shopping done. I was pretty tired and not feeling great when we got back to pick up the kids, so we didn’t stay for a long time. We had some dessert and left around seven-thirty. I had at least two or three bad contractions when I was at my in-laws, but nothing was regular. On the way home, we stopped at Safeway to get ice and against my better judgement, I went in to get it myself. Getting back out to the van, I was in a terrible amount of pain. We got home and Mike sat down to watch a movie with the kids. I heated up some food for myself and gave them some string cheese to snack on while I checked my email and did a few other things on the computer. I got up to go to the bathroom a little after eight and had a bad contraction when I was in there, so I decided to take a bath and see if it would make me feel a bit better. It felt good, but mostly just made me have more contractions. When I got out around eight thirty, I checked myself again and realized pretty quickly that I could feel a good sized circle of the baby’s head through the amniotic sac. At this point, my contractions were bad enough to make me cry, and I figured that this was a good sign that real labour was finally happening.

Mike called his parents, who were already in bed, and we packed the kids up and took them over. They had not had supper and I felt bad about it, but there was no way I was taking the time to do it. It turns out that when they got to their grandparents, they went right to bed and slept through the night without ever eating anything. We got to the hospital around twenty to ten. Right away I was having contractions that the nurse said sounded like the real thing. After being on the monitor for awhile, she checked me and said I was four or five centimetres dilated, which meant, she said, that they were keeping me. Mike and I high-fived after she left – I was actually in labour!

I stayed in the same room for a short time and then went to the delivery room and got set up in there. It must have been ten-fifteen or so at that point and things were still slow but getting more intense. I was having intense back pain and the nurse suggested that the baby was posterior, so I got on my hands and knees to try to get the baby to flip. I’m not sure that he ever did, but things did feel better after awhile, so he must have at some point. It seemed that the whole time I was in the delivery room, I would just get into a position that was comfortable and then I would have to pee. So I would move to get up, have a contraction, go the bathroom, have another contraction and then repeat it all going back to where I was. I spent some time in the shower, but found that while it felt great on my belly during a contraction, the rest of my body was getting too cold. Every time I changed positions at all, I would have a contraction, even if I was just at the end of one. Finally, I got back in bed and didn’t feel like getting up again. The nurse checked me and said that I was six or seven centimetres and while she was checking, she broke my water. She said that while I was having a contraction, there was a bulge in the amniotic sac and she just had to loop her finger into it to break it. Things went fast after that was done – I must have gone right to an eight in the next few minutes and soon, I was feeling a lot of pressure; not quite the urge to push, but I knew it was close. When I mentioned it, the nurse checked me again, found that I was nine centimetres and a minute later, nine and a half, with just a lip of the cervix still there. They called the doctor, told me that she would be three minutes and that I should pant if I felt the urge to push. I think I had two or three contractions before my doctor got there and I was panting through the second half of every one. Finally, my doctor walked in and I was told that I could push. For some reason, unlike when I was in labour with Jenny and Elias, I didn’t feel the animalistic urge to push. I felt pressure, but I was reluctant to do it. They all kept telling me to give it everything I had and I tried to do that during the second contraction, but still didn’t feel like much was happening.

I had no drugs during labour at all, so at this point, I was very aware of what was going on. They were checking the baby’s heart rate off and on, and during contractions, it was going down to 80 or 90 beats per minute. I knew that this was a bad thing, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I looked down at my doctor and heard her ask for Lidocaine. The nurse told her that I wanted to go without an episiotomy or tears, but my doctor said that the baby needed to be born and she was just going to have to get it out. I knew right away that I had to do it if I wanted to escape without stitches. They had already seen the baby’s head at this point, so I knew it wasn’t long and with the next contraction, I finally gave it all my strength. When he crowned, they coached me through little pushes and panting to keep me from tearing. It was really hard not to just get it over with, but having experienced stitches after an episiotomy and then, when Elias was born, making it out with just a tiny tear, I knew it was worth it for my recovery. Very soon after he crowned, I pushed his head out and then, even though I could have waited, I pushed his shoulders out as well. The cord was wrapped around his neck a bit, which explained his heart rate dropping. It was 12:46 am when he was born – I had been in the hospital about three hours and had only pushed for ten minutes.

Because of his cord being wrapped, no one said anything to me about whether the baby was a boy or a girl. I had felt like it was a girl, but when I sat up to see for myself, I said to Mike, “Oh, it is a boy!” So many other people had said it was a boy, but I hadn’t really believed them. Mike had said during my labour that he was hoping for a boy, and I was glad to see that he had gotten his wish. It was amazing being so aware of what was going on that I could sit up to see him at the foot of the bed. I had asked to let the cord pulsate after the baby was born, so they put a towel on my chest and then laid him on top of me. It was amazing, as it always is, that I loved him so fully the moment I saw him. I held him for a few minutes until the cord was definitely done pulsating and then cut the cord myself. Mike had not interest in doing it, but my doctor asked if I wanted to, and I thought it might be a good experience. I wouldn’t jump at the chance to do it next time, but it was neat being so clear headed that I was able to do it. After I cut the cord, they took him and cleaned him up quickly and looked him over to make sure things were good. I think I actually heard his Apgar score mentioned (which I never have with the other kids). My doctor said eight and something about his colour, but I didn’t really care. As soon as he was back with me, I nursed him and he stayed with me for at least forty-five minutes, nursing while I had a snack. He was very awake and making eye contact with both of us for most of the time. It was amazing, because Jenny and Elias were taken away much sooner and were not nearly as alert as Erik was.

After he seemed to have enough to eat, Mike took him to have him bathed and weighed and the nurse cleaned me up and moved me to my room. At this point, it was close to two in the morning and I felt bad for my roommate in the bed across from me. Mike came back ten minutes or so later with the nurse and our new little boy. I quickly asked Mike how much he had weighed – I had been expecting a nine pound baby because when Jenny was eight days late, she weighed 9 lb 6 oz. Erik was a week late and after holding him, I knew he wasn’t as big as Jenny had been, but I still thought he had to be bigger than Elias was at birth – 7 lb 4 oz and two and a half weeks early. I had the second shock of the night (the first being that he was a boy) when I heard he was only 7 lb 1 oz! I guess because our nephew was born 5 lb 8 oz so recently (about five and a half weeks before), Erik just didn’t seem small. He was twenty inches long, half an inch shorter than both Jenny and Elias. Right away, we noticed that he had a completely different look than both of our kids. They had looked so different from each other that I thought our third would look more like one or the other. Erik has lighter skin like Jenny, but only a few similar features to Elias. He has lighter hair than both of them and much less than they both did when they were born.

Mike went home around three in the morning and I slept off and on through the night, waking up to feed Erik once or twice before breakfast. Mike went to breakfast at his parents house before they went to church and then he came back to be with me. He snoozed on my bed holding Erik while I made phone calls to my family. When I was in labour, we were watching the clock to see if the baby would be born on Saturday or Sunday. When the hands moved past midnight, I knew that I’d be giving Mike and our dads a great Father’s Day present. My dad had mentioned weeks ago that I should have the baby on Father’s Day, but I brushed the idea away because I didn’t want to be pregnant still. It was also nice being in the hospital Sunday afternoon, because the whole family came all at once to see us after they went to church.

My doctor came Sunday morning and actually indicated that I could go home if I wanted to, but I knew that the rest in the hospital would be good for me. I did tell her that I definitely wanted to go home the next morning. With no tears or stitches, I felt really good right away. Monday morning, after a pretty good night’s sleep (my roommate left Sunday before noon and I had the room to myself the rest of the time), Erik had his PKU blood test done and my doctor checked us out and gave us the go ahead to go home. We went home around ten in the morning – I wasn’t even in the hospital thirty-six hours this time!

So far, Erik has been a very happy baby. He eats really well and sleeps for long stretches. He’s also awake for long periods of time, which has been lots of fun for anyone who sees him. He has an intelligent look about him, like he’s really studying things and wondering about the world already. Right from the beginning, it has looked like he wanted to smile at us. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he does it before he’s a month old.

My recovery so far has been great, too. The pain I had after labour went away quickly and other than cramping while nursing, I have felt good since we came home. My milk came in during the night on Tuesday, which was just in time because Erik seemed to be needing more than he was getting. Other than the discomfort coming from some engorgement, my body does not feel like it just went through labour four days ago. This makes me look forward to any future deliveries – hopefully they’ll all be like this one (or even shorter). The great thing is that even though it was a fast labour, it wasn’t really intense. My labour with Jenny was just barely longer than this one, but it was awful right from the beginning. I was very quiet during my labour this time and only yelled a bit when I was pushing. It felt good to have control like that over my reactions to the pain.

So, that’s the story of Erik Michael, born June 15, 2008. His big brother and sister love him and the whole family thinks he’s pretty cute. I can’t wait to see what he’s going to be like as he grows up.

To clarify: What went wrong with my labours before: Jenny was induced at eight days late and I was given demerol twice while in labour with her, once was way too late in my labour because the nurse thought I had hours to go when in fact it was much shorter than she expected.  Because of this, Jenny was born with low oxygen levels and had to be woken up to feed; she couldn’t be snuggled or held close for some time.  I also felt incredibly drugged.  I’ve never been stoned, but I figure that’s what it feels like – it was an awful feeling being out of control.  With Elias, I did make it to six centimetres on my own, without feeling anything, but then because his head was high, there was concern that if my water broke, the cord would be flushed out.  After an ultrasound determined all of this, I spent six hours in bed labouring, only getting up to use the bathroom, the whole time attached to a monitor and an IV.  I had the drug fentanyl during that labour and while it was not nearly as bad as the demerol, it only helped me to sleep a bit between contractions and didn’t seem to take any pain away anyway.  So, based on those experiences, it was that much more important to me to do the whole thing on my own and I’m so glad I did!

 

 

Okay, fine.

I said I wouldn’t post again until I had the baby, but that is because I thought I would have the baby on Wednesday or Thursday.  It’s Friday now.  No baby.  Well, I’m still carrying it around with me, but on the inside.  Wednesday night I had pretty bad contractions, enough to convince me that I must be in labour.  I was able to sleep through the night, although I woke up nearly every hour.  In the morning, I kept having contractions and a bit more pink mucous.  I finally decided that it was bad enough to go to the hospital.  I couldn’t imagine going through the day like that and trying to take care of the kids.  So we packed them up, drove them to Mike’s parents’ house and went to the hospital.  I was put on the monitor for a good half hour and my contractions chose that half hour to stop being intense.  A nurse felt around to find the baby’s position and then had another nurse come in to confirm what she thought she felt – that the baby was not head down.  That’s just the news I was wanting to hear.  So she called my doctor and had some sort of argument with her on the phone (my doctor was sure the baby was head down on Tuesday), but convinced her to come in at noon to check me herself.  So I packed up, sent Mike to work and went to pick the kids up.  We went to Bible study for almost two hours and then I left and went back to the hospital by myself.  My doctor came in and checked things out and said that the head was down.  The nurse that had checked me earlier said that it now felt like it was and was significantly different than what she felt in the morning.  She did an internal exam as well, said the head was high and didn’t say a word about whether I was dilated or anything.  The only thing she said was “it’s nice and long” which I assume means my cervix is long.  In other words, not dilated or effaced.  So off I went again, picked the kids up and went home to try to have a decent afternoon.  Another disappointing thing heard while in the hospital is that I probably lost my mucous plug and was bleeding a bit because of the exam on Tuesday. 

So now I go back to waiting again.  With the addition of really nasty Braxton Hicks contractions.  Hooray.  My only hope is to stay distracted until next week.  And to hope that my cervix is ripe enough for my doctor to strip my membranes on Monday.  If not, I have to hold onto hope that I’ll go into labour before Friday morning, when I’ll go in to be induced.  I hate waiting.  I’m very impatient.

Here’s hoping

I had a dream last night that I lost my mucous plug and I was bleeding.  I woke up, went to the bathroom and there was nothing.  Drat.  I went back to bed, slept for another hour or so and went to the bathroom again.  Nothing.  Then I ate breakfast, went through my routine with the kids and checking email, etc. and went to the bathroom again (gotta love a pregnant bladder) and what do you know?  Something!  A nice bit of mucous that had to be my mucous plug and blood – red blood.  I’m being descriptive again.  Just you wait, after this kid is born, you’ll all be cringing at my descriptions of labour.  The thing is, if it’s false labour and there is bleeding, it is usually brown.  This is definitely not brown.  And yes, it can mean that labour is still a day or more away, but still – this means that I should have the baby by the end of the week, rather than having to go through having my membranes stripped or being induced.  I literally just prayed for this specific thing moments before I went to the bathroom and made my discovery – God is listening!  So here’s hoping that today will be the day.  Apparently, my child decided that coming during the first ten days of the month wasn’t going to happen, but if it’s born today, all three of my kids will have been born on Wednesdays, which I think is pretty cool.  You know me, I get joy out of silly things like that.

Now the hard part is knowing when to go to the hospital.  I’m not having regular contractions, but rather lots of cramps.  I guess I just wait it out at this point.  I called Mike and let him know something was happening, and called my mother-in-law to put her on alert for the day.  So now I just hope it wasn’t in vain and I don’t have to wait until tomorrow.  Oooooh, there’s a nice crampy contraction.  Yikes.  Let’s just hope I don’t wait too long and end up delivering on the floor in my living room (or..my bed or couch, etc.).

Other than updating this post, I think I won’t be writing again until the labour story that will come in all its gruesome glory sometime after the birth of my baby.  Hooray!

Update: 4:00 pm

A whole bunch of nothing.  Well, so far anyway.  I feel sort of silly now for calling Mike and his mom since I haven’t had any indication that anything is going to happen today.  I did some work around the house, kept the kids entertained, called my sister, made lunch and went for a walk and still not much of anything.  Including more bleeding.  The thing is, it seems that if I lost my mucous plug weeks before having the baby, it wouldn’t be so red, it would be brown-ish.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I sincerely hope that I’m not.  It’s okay if this kid doesn’t come until tomorrow or Friday…or sometime before Monday, but if it waits that long, I’m pretty sure my doctor won’t have any trouble stripping my membranes, and that was something I wasn’t looking forward to.  Maybe I’ll have the baby tonight and look back on this and laugh later.  I totally did this when I was pregnant with Elias, actually.  On the 5th of September, I had some bleeding and then contractions in the evening.  When I went in to the hospital, I wasn’t effaced or dilated at all.  The next morning, I was giving up and deciding that I’d just stay pregnant until I was overdue (since that was still two and a half weeks before my due date).  Elias was born before seven that night.  One of the reasons I’m waiting to go into the hospital is that when I went in with him, I was six centimetres dilated and they put me on pitocin to get things moving.  I was then stuck in a bed for six hours.  I really really don’t want that to happen again.  Sorry if I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel pretty strongly about it.  So I’m waiting for something drastic to happen – my water to break or my contractions to get really bad.  Half of the things I read about losing your mucous plug say that if it’s tinged with red blood, or if you have show that is red or pink (rather than brown), labour will start within twenty-four hours.  Other sources have said that it could mean labour is still weeks away.  At least I know that’s not right.  If this kid isn’t out on its own by the 20th, it will be forced out of residence by the power of prostaglandin gel (gulp).  But really, I was thinking how awesome is this that I’m just going to have the baby on my own and not have to have any of that happen again.  Oh, please.  I really hope that I didn’t jump the gun getting so excited about it.

Short and sweet

Well, it might be.  I’m not making any promises either way.  Today I am two days late and having my membranes stripped.  I’m not looking forward to this procedure, but I am seriously hoping that it works to get my labour started.  There are lots of different ways to look at it, and it’s not my ideal start to labour, but if it works and helps me to avoid being induced when I’m ten or twelve days late, I’ll be happy.  If it doesn’t work today, we’ll try again in a week.  My hope is that if it doesn’t work, I’ll have the baby before we have to try it again. 

The best way to describe it, making conclusions from what I’ve read, is that it feels like a very very thorough cervical exam.  For those of you who have been nine months pregnant and had a cervical exam (during labour or not), it’s not very comfortable anyway.  Rather than just reaching in there to see if you’re dilated, though, the doctor reaches in there and spends a few minutes pushing things around.  Ouch.  I’m thinking of taking some tylenol pre-appointment, although I’m not sure if it would do any good.  I actually have this hope that my labour will start before my appointment and that when she goes to do it, she’ll find that I’m four centimetres dilated or something.  I’m pretty certain that this isn’t going to happen, but a girl can hope.

The other thing I wanted to share is a picture.  I recently put up pictures of myself on Facebook and MySpace that made me look gigantic.  My sister-in-law said that they weren’t very true to life, but exaggerated by the shirt I was wearing.  So I had Mike take more last night, hopefully for the last time in this pregnancy.  There’s one I’m particularly proud of that I took of just my belly.  You can actually see the curve of my back and the wall behind me, so I don’t actually look so huge for once.  Anyway, I think that’s what I’ll end on.  Hopefully my next entry will include a picture of a baby outside of the womb.

Update, post doctor’s appointment:

My cervix is not ripe.  This basically means that my membranes could not be stripped, because my doctor couldn’t get a finger into my cervix (I know, descriptive, but I happen to know that the majority of my readers are women who have had children, so I don’t care).  She’ll try again next week, on Monday afternoon, and if that doesn’t work, my induction is scheduled for Friday, June 20th at 8:00 in the morning.  Woohoo.  I desperately hope that I have this kid before I have to be induced.  Meanwhile, when I dropped the kids off to my mother-in-law, she said I could just leave them there and she’d bring them home around four.  So they’re having lunch and napping over at her house which leaves me the rest of the day to do whatever.  I’m thinking I’ll go nuts on the nesting (is it nesting if you know you’re doing it and would rather be taking a nap?) in the hopes that I’ll make myself go into labour.  At this point, I think I’d do almost anything.

D-Day, so to speak

It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything.  A due date is just another day in the lives of most pregnant women.  Only a very small percentage of women deliver on their due dates.  So I’m going to get over it.  Meanwhile, my father-in-law says to hold it in tomorrow because it’s their anniversary.  If I remember right, my aunt actually said she would think it was pretty neat if I had the baby that day (my aunt and uncle share the same anniversary – year and day – with my in-laws).  However, my mother-in-law is quite busy tomorrow, but said that the rest of the week, she can cancel almost everything she has booked if it’s necessary.  She’s going to keep the kids when (if) I go in Tuesday to have my membranes stripped.  I thought it was a good idea just in case something happens really quickly, which I would love.  I’m trying to think positively and assume that it’s going to work and that I’m going to have the baby on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Of course, with my luck, it probably won’t work, but it’s always a good idea to be optimistic.  I think. 

Yesterday was, I hope, the last weekend day I get stuck with the kids most of the day without much help.  We spent the morning running errands and then Mike went to play Axis and Allies at his parents.  It’s a very long game, so I was home from just before one until five without Mike.  Fortunately, the kids slept for almost three hours and I had a nap as well, and then we drove over to have supper with the family.  I expected a nice relaxing evening, but then everyone wanted to play tennis, so we ended up at the courts being bombarded by mosquitos while the kids played in puddles and soaked themselves.  Because we drove separately and Mike’s friend needed a ride home, I made it home first and immediately put the kids in the bath.  The night wasn’t so bad in the end and we did get to bed early, but I was wiped out at the end of the day.  I felt like falling asleep in church this morning and of course had to tell a dozen different people that today was my due date and yes, I’m still pregnant and yes, I’m tired and of course, I want to have the baby soon.  A nice long nap this afternoon (for the whole family) was needed and enjoyed. 

Tonight when the kids are in bed, Mike and I are going to sit down and watch a movie and hope that the kids don’t decide to get up and bother us (well, Jenny, anyway).  We haven’t seen any new movies in a few weeks, and I’m looking forward to putting my feet up and turning my mind off (more or less) for a few hours.

Until the baby is born, I’m going to try to write as much as I can, seeing that this is technically a “pregnancy” journal, and therefore will end when I’m not pregnant anymore.  I’ll go back to my messy housewife blog, but I can’t promise any regular frequency since I will have a new baby.  I’ve actually been trying to decide what to do with this blog, since I titled it “baby number three” and can’t exactly change that.  I should have thought ahead, but there’s not much I can do about that now. 

Once again, I do really seriously hope that this is my last pregnant entry, but you just never know.