A Birth At Home.

Baby A, born January 16th 2013, At 11:15 pm.

 Now that things are starting to find a new normal I feel I have time to tell the story of our delivery of our third little one.

My parents came to town and stayed for a week in hopes of meeting the new baby and helping us after she was born. As it turned out she needed more time in the oven and didn't make her appearance for them. With my other two babies they came before or just after my due date and so by the time I was a week passed my due date I was ready for her to be here. I was having a very hard time sleeping. My hips were killing me and some nights I had a lot of contractions. It was nice to have my parents here to take the kids in the daytime I spent quite a few days sleeping while they took the kiddos out to play. Finally last Tuesday I decided to get my membranes swept. I have never considered doing this before and I had mixed feelings about it. Deep down I was hoping it would work immediately (which is super unlikely  it takes about 24 hours if it even works at all) and she would be born before my parents went home the following morning.

At about one in the morning on Wednesday I was having solid contractions that were real. They came about every 10 minutes and lasted about 30-40 seconds long. I told hubby and we called my midwife at about 3:30. She lives about an hour and a half away so I told her I didn't want her to come until later that morning especially since I hadn't had any blood or fluid. We were all expecting the labor and delivery to be fairly fast because my two previous children were. I got up at 4:30 and ate some food while hubby took the kiddos next door. Then we went back to bed. I woke up at 7 and realized I hadn't had a contraction in about an hour. I called my midwife back because i didn't want her to drive all the way here for nothing. After that I called my neighbor and we decided that she would keep the kids until at least noon to give me a chance to see if things would start back up. Hubby was convinced things would start back up and at 8 am I had another contraction. Hubby then decided to try to trick my body into thinking it was night time and he covered all the windows to make it dark in the house. Then he started recording all of my contractions and the times they lasted. We did this and watched a lot of X-files on Netflix until about 2 pm.

 I took a shower at some point and was surprisingly hungry. I ate a lot of food all day long. All that time I had about 2-3 contractions an hour and they were pretty mild in intensity but they were lasting 30 seconds to a minute. At about 2 they started to speed up in frequency and length and my midwife called and said she would be coming to town later to check on me. By the time she got here at 6:30 at night I was having a contraction about every 4 to 5 minutes and they had started to last longer and were more intense. She decided to go get some dinner and I was debating setting up the birth tub in our living room. Right after she left things sped up dramatically. I was having a harder time with the pain and I decided to get in our tub. I didn't want to set up the birth tub because now that I was having baby three it was less of a "fun" thing and I always commented before how I felt it slowed things down for me. Hubs drew me a bath and I got in it and then my midwife returned with take out. She decided to be fast because of how things seemed to be progressing when she left. She listened to the baby's heartbeat and told me the water was to hot. We put in cool water and shortly after that I was out of the tub because the cast iron cools down so fast it stopped being effective for me. I also wanted to be checked to see how dilated I was.

 I was at an 8 and things were getting intense and I was hoping the baby would be out soon. I think it was about 7:30 at this point I kind of lost all sense of time and my contractions were coming really fast and hard. I remember moving around the house a lot and trying to get into all sorts of different positions. I found myself praying that the baby would come out quickly and everything would be fast. I had my midwife check me a couple more times and then at some point I decided I would like to try to push. I had been feeling a lot of pressure. I did a few pushes and then I ended up lying on my side on the bed. As I pushed in this position I started to feel really large movements from the baby and I started being very vocal about how much pain I was in. All I remember is how bad those movements hurt. They almost opposed the contractions and when there was a break in the contractions the movement would happen and it was worse then the contractions themselves. This lasted for what I think was like 5 minutes or more and when it was done I declared that I swore that the baby just spun around inside me. After that I got up never to lay in that position again and we went into the bathroom to push from the toilet.

I have no I idea how long all this went on and I tried to leave the bathroom a few more times to do various other positions  I kept saying that everything hurt and nothing felt good. I remember our midwife saying "well ya everything is going to hurt because I was in labor." Eventually I started to ask to have my water broken and my midwife told me it would break on its own when it was time. Sure enough it did break while I was pushing in the bathroom.  Right after that my contractions went away for a while and we moved into the living room. While we were in there I whispered to hubs that I couldn't push this baby out and that I didn't want to try anymore. I was starting to be really tired. We moved back to the bathroom. Shortly after that I managed to muster more energy to push and I could finally feel it working. Her head started to come out and I remember  feeling so relieved to have that sensation. I remember my midwife announcing that the baby was posterior and that she had been having suspicions that she was. Shortly after that she was born and I was holding her in my arms. We went to the bed and I was so happy she was out.

During the time I was being attended too just after the birth we talked about the position of the baby. How I had felt her turn during the labor. Hubby said that it was weird looking when she started to come out and that he thought it was a bunch if cord all balled up but then he realized it was her face. I realize now that it was because of her position that made me so tired and made it take so long. Really it wasn't that long of intense labor and pushing, just a little over 4 hours.

Looking back I am glad we have decided to have our babies at home naturally. I have found that it truly is possible to manage the pain of natural birth. I have thought a little about my 2nd and 3rd labors and the untypical or strange way they progressed and it makes me shudder to think about what would have happened if I had been  at the hospital. You can read about the birth of our middle child here. Baby three was a whole pound lighter than the other two and I finally accomplished my goal of not tearing.

I am grateful we live very close to a hospital in case something had gone wrong. I am grateful for my midwife and her assistant and the relationship I have with them. I am grateful for my husband and the awesome support he gives my during labor. He holds me up, stands in uncomfortable small spaces to encourage me for hours and is right on the same page as I am of how and where we want to bring our children into this world. I see the birth of a a child as a special spiritual event and am grateful I am healthy enough to have my babies at home.

I am looking forward to our future as a family of five and am happy to be on the other side of pregnancy and delivery. Lets hope I can keep it this way this time.

And Now There Are Three..

The day finally came last Wednesday that our newest member of the family decided to make her appearance. We have been hit by the kid tornado. Sometimes I look around and laugh at all of the little bodies in our small house. Hubby took two weeks off to be with us and help me heal and adjust. He has been working really hard to keep everything together. It has been really nice to just be together as a family of   five.

I can't quite remember what day I took this picture of all of them on the couch. I am pretty sure it was the first day I left the bedroom. I think it was Friday. Look at how snugly they are. If you look really close you can see R just tanked out sleeping in her daddy's arms. She has always had a soft spot for her daddy and it was really nice that after I had the baby she has been able to be clingy to him.

Sweetie also came down with a nasty case of the hives. She had them for several days. At first we could give her relief with some Benadryl but by Saturday she refused to swallow it. We still are not sure what caused them and we are suspecting a mild food allergy.

Here is our little Bean all snuggly and sweet.

Big Brother has been super sweet with his newborn sister. I cant quite figure it out. He has always been good at picking on R and I was nervous how he would treat baby A. As it turns out he just wants to give her soft kisses and pats and hold her nicely in his lap. I guess it is because he is a little older now and he can tell how little she is.

 I have been having a hard time taking pictures of R with baby A because she is a little rough. Still she is getting good at giving kisses too.

Waiting for Baby

Its been quiet around here and I have been just waiting to have this baby. It keeps snowing and  I don't think I have been outside in a few days. I like the snow. It makes things cozy and I have been preparing my home for her arrival and the work it will take to get her here.

At first when I found out I was pregnant I was really upset. Mostly because my last pregnancy was still so fresh. My memories of labor and delivery were so fresh. I couldn't comprehend another nine months of feeling sick and uncomfortable. Now that its has been almost two years of being pregnant I cant really remember what it feels like to be normal. I have the knowledge that I will have more energy and no longer have heartburn but I am having a hard time imagining my life that way.

My official due date is tomorrow and last week I decided that I needed some projects to take my mind off of the waiting and wondering when this baby would come and what the labor would be like this time. I was pleasantly surprised with baby 2 how much easier it was than baby 1 but I am a little nervous about baby 3 for some reason. I decided to finish an old project that has been on the back of my mind since we moved into our house. I did a blog post of it way back when and you can see it here. All I had left to do was the binding and thanks to the internet and Pinterest I was able to find a couple of tutorials on how to do a binding fast and easy. It didn't turn out perfect but it is finished and I am happy.

Here is another project I finished. I got this idea off of Pinterest as well. They are burp clothes. I used some fat quarters that I had lying around from a project I thought I would do almost a year ago but never felt quite right about, and some old towels I had. I was really tempted to use some of my more tattered cloth diapers but decided to go with the towels because I thought they would look better. Normally when I use something for burp clothes I use my infant sized prefolds because they are just so dang adsorbent, but they are not very cute out in public. I am hopeful these will be adsorbent as well. I don't know about you but something can be as cute as it wants but if it doesn't work I will use something that does.

Here is a picture of our back porch  It is my staging ground for our home birth. It turns out that you have a lot of stuff to gather to have a baby at home, especially if you are going to have a birth tub. It is nice that we have a room to shove it all in so it doesn't have to take up a corner of our living room.

I am anxious to get this baby out of my body. I am ready to feel and look normal again. I love how right after  I have a baby I am so happy to eat. The negative associations that have built up around food for the past nine months immediately go away. Last time we ordered in Indian food and if we can we are going to do it again. It was sooooo good.

I am nervous about what labor will be like and how long it will be. I am nervous about how it will start. Even though I am doing this for the third time I still worry about my water breaking and soaking the bed while I sleep. Deep down I know I can do this at home, in the setting I have chosen surrounded with the people that I know. I know that once it starts it will be ok and I will make it to the other side. Its the anticipation that makes it hard.

I'm going to hope and wonder again if this baby will come tonight.

Our little Girl.

Here is our little sweetie. Now that she is one I thought I would tell you a few things about her...

She is walking and has been since the night before her birthday,

She is getting pickier about her foods.

She loves to snuggle blankets.

She is starting to work on her language skills, copying words we say to the best of her ability.

She loves to try to put things on as if they were clothes, always around her neck and whatever she can drape around herself.

She loves the coat her Grandma sent her for her birthday and if it gets left out she insists on wearing it.

She wants to do what her brother does and play with what he is playing with.

She really likes  to play music.

She is starting to be interested in books. She brings them to me and we read them. Her favorites right now are Richard Scarry's Boats, My Very Fist Book of Colors by Eric Carle, and Sesame Street's Bubbles Bubbles.

She likes to play and is very good at independent play.

She still really likes to play ball.

She has four teeth.

She gives kisses and hugs.

She has taken to stuffed animals and likes to hear their animal sounds and get kisses from them.

She growls when she sees a dinosaur.

She has crazy mad scientist hair that stands up and is whispy.

She is getting better at naps.

She is generally happy and easy.

She loves to snuggle, and that is one of the reasons we call her sweetie.

It Was a Very Merry Christmas.

We had a very relaxed Christmas this year. We had a nice time opening presents and we spent they day at home together relaxing in our pajamas. I couldn't have asked for anything better since I am so enormously huge with baby 3. I cooked a fancy and simple meal and we spent the whole day playing with our new toys and watching A Christmas Story (we only watched it once but it took all day with interruptions from kids and meals and such).

Here is buster in the early stage of unwrapping. It was really fun to see the excitement he had this year now that he is 3 and fully understands what is happening. The only thing that was hard for him was stamina. He got so much cools stuff he was a little lost. He didn't know what to do with him self and after 2 hours of unwrapping he lost interest and just wanted to play.

 Here is one of the cool presents he got. It initially was my idea but in the end his daddy executed it. He loves to drive cars and machines and such so I thought it would be fun to make him a canvas with roads on it. At first we thought we would paint buildings and scenery but then last minute (day before Christmas eve) we decided to just leave it green. It was a combo of me being to pregnant to crawl around on the basement floor to help paint it and the idea that with out buildings and scenery it was a little more open ended. He can use his imagination to build things out of blocks and cardboard and/or we can buy him city sets from Melissa and Doug as future presents to add to it. I think Busters Daddy did a super good job painting it and am really happy with how it turned out.

This is one of the few pictures I was able to get of little sister as she was sick on Christmas day. I would say it was one of the only bad things of the day. It was a bummer but as a parent, if your kids are going to not feel well it is nice for it to be a paid holiday and be able to stay home with them and relax. At least that's how I felt, even though it is daddy that actually goes in to work. She spent most of the day on one of our laps just snuggling. She had fun with the presents for about a half hour and then she was spent. I think that is why it took so long for the presents to get unwrapped and why her big brother got so burnt out. He ended up having to unwrap a lot of her presents because there wasn't much room for me to do anything but hold her.

This picture is silly because of the faces on Buster and his daddy. Our little guy recently took to superheroes (wonder who showed them to him?). All he kept talking about is spider man and captain america. He got a mask and shield and then proceeded to try to attack his dad. This face he has is him trying to not smile and be serious. It was pretty silly.

We hope you all had a very merry Christmas too.

This One's for Sweetie

 I am a little behind but wanted to post some birthday pictures of our little sweetie. She turned the big ONE just before Christmas. We had a small party for her and tried to make it a very special day

We decided to make it easy and had homemade pizza and cupcakes for dinner. I put up a few decorations and piled all her presents on a table in the living room. When I went shopping for the food I decided to pick up some fancy fruity soda in bottles. When her big brother took a drink of his he asked us if his drink had spikes in it.

She ate her pizza in her party seat like a champ. When she got to the cupcake we lit it up and sang to her. She tasted the frosting made a funny face and then didn't eat it. It was really silly. I guess she was just shocked by how sweet it was. I tried really hard to keep her away from sugar until her party. So her birthday cupcake was pretty much a first sweet for her.

She was pretty good at unwrapping her gifts. She got a lot of really nice presents. Many super cute clothes came her way which she was in need of. We got her a dolly and she also got a cradle from her Grandma. I was a little surprised at how much of a hit the doll was. She was in love with it and so was her big brother. We had to keep telling him that it was her little doll because he would take it away and play with it.

 It was a good party and we are so happy to have her in our family. Happy Birthday Little Girly!