A birth story

For those of you who like to read about these kinds of things...

Sometime around 3:30 pm I decided that natural childbirth was not for me. At least this time around. That was shortly after arriving at the hospital and learning I was 6 cm dilated, an hour and a half after I lost my lunch and contractions started coming every three minutes. I was not able to breathe through them like I had thought I should be able to.

But labor started more than 12 hours earlier, just one day after my parents had to leave town because my mom didn't have any more leave she could take. Sometime after midnight, I thought I started dreaming that I was having contractions. I thought to myself, 'If I get up in the morning sleep deprived and a week overdue because I was dreaming about having contractions, I am going to be mad.' But I woke up for good from the contractions about 3:45, and they were pretty much all in my back at that point. I spent a few hours wondering whether that day would be the day, because although by the time Justin woke up my contractions were only 7-9 min apart, they weren't particularly strong. I wasn't sure how many hours or days that could go on. So Justin and I took a walk, and then I sat on the couch in front of the computer for a while, and at one point (about 10:00) I didn't have any contractions for half an hour. Then Justin started bugging me asking if I wanted to walk or do this or do that. At which point I informed him that he needed something to do! So he made peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream. :) 

Around noon my contractions started getting closer and stronger, and at 2:00 I got sick from them. Then they started coming every 4 to 2 1/2 minutes, and at that point I knew I was ready to go to the hospital. I felt too uncomfortable to stay home, was having trouble breathing and relaxing through the contractions, and was beginning to question myself on not having an epidural. I wanted to know how dilated I was so that I could make a decision about having an epidural.

We left the house at 3:00, and Justin called labor and delivery to let them know we were coming. Whoever he was talking to asked to talk to me, and although I was between contractions at the time, she talked and asked questions for at least a few minutes. I was in pain again by the time I heard her say "Well if you're in labor we'll keep you and if not we'll send you home." I grunted out an "Uh-huh" and handed the phone back to Justin, but I really wanted to yell, "I'm in labor! Stop talking!"

By the time I got settled into the hospital I was 6 cm dilated. So we felt like I did pretty well with the timing, but I knew I wasn't going to have a baby in the next hour, so I asked for the epidural. And I also got drugs through my IV while I was waiting, but I probably should have skipped that. It didn't make me loopy, but it didn't help with my contractions particularly, just made me more relaxed in between. And I don't remember if it was before or after the drugs, but I got sick again and this time my water broke.

Then I got my epidural, and after that life was good. I never felt another contraction unless the monitor got over 100, and even then I felt only a little tension. I thought I slept for a good portion of the rest of my labor, but Justin says I only took a couple of naps. Either way, I was quite relaxed...and pretty knocked out from the Demerol. Rebekah almost certainly would have arrived at least a couple of hours earlier without the epidural because I never did have the urge to push. We all waited it out until just after 11:00, and 20 minutes later she was born at 11:31 pm--as I said in my last post, exactly the time a friend of mine had dreamt she would be born a few days earlier.

Welcome to the world, Rebekah Jane.

A new little love

Rebekah Jane Cook was born June 10 at 11:31 pm (exactly the time a friend of mine predicted through a dream a few days prior) weighing 8lb 2oz and looking too beautiful to belong to her parents. :) I still feel like she must be borrowed, although that feeling is starting to wear off. She is also just a little too close to perfect to belong to her parents. She nurses well, sleeps well (with the exception of only one night shortly after coming home that reduced me to tears but was still only one night), almost never spits up, has been mostly following a schedule for at least a week now, was born strong enough to lift up her head, and rolled over half a dozen times the day she turned two weeks old (although I have yet to see her do it again since that day). She has very expressive hands and stretches, so much so that I call her stretching her interpretive dancing. Either that or sometimes she looks like a little puppet master. She lost just over a pound by the time she was four days old, but that's more my problem than hers. After having to start supplementing with formula, she is finally gaining weight, but she's still not back to her birth weight yet.

This is her the day before she turned two weeks. I'll leave you with this for now and add more details and pics in future posts.

Playing catch up

It's amazing how quickly the days are slipping away, and I don't even have a baby in my arms yet! So I shall leave you with a few highlights/pictures of the past couple months.

1. We put our house on the market. Getting the house fixed up to show took up a significant amount of our time in April. I think the listing turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, but we have yet to hear even one inquiry about the house.

2. Justin was thrown on a somewhat random work trip to Altus during which he took the time to check out our housing options. And quite honestly, they all have their drawbacks. Base housing is privatized and seems to be severely lacking in quality and in general concern about upkeep on the part of the company that now owns the housing. Renting will cost significantly more a month than buying, and buying requires selling in a market that is not exactly thriving. But Justin (along with my parents who met up with him for the weekend) ended up taking a look at a foreclosure that is newer (1993) and slightly bigger than our house now while he was there, and after weeks of waffling and hoping for a bite on our house here, well the punchline is that we just had an offer accepted on the house! We are about to enter the extravagant world of dual home ownership. Yikes.

3. April showers. I was excessively spoiled at two showers in April, one hosted by our church and the other by the military wives Bible study I attend.

Meet Olivia. This picture cracks me up.

33 weeks

Reagan was so excited to bring me my presents.

Due two days apart.

My lovely hostesses. 35 weeks.

By the time If I ever finish my thank-yous, I will have written more than 75! That's some serious spoiling right there. That's larger than the number of people who attended our wedding! Which brings me to point #4.

4. Sunday will be our 5th anniversary! Is that really possible?? I couldn't have asked for a better start to our marriage. Well, okay, maybe I could have asked for a better first year. :) Three moves in one year about sent me over my mental edge. But Justin stuck it out with me, so I couldn't ask for more than that!

5. I am closing in on 39 weeks. And I have yet to feel any difference whatsoever. No contractions and I really don't think she's dropped. I sure hope her birthday isn't two weeks later than expected. My parents will be here June 4-9, and I am praying they get to meet their granddaughter before they leave. Justin is convinced she will be born in less than a week, on the 29th, which would give us three straight days of celebrating--our anniversary, his birthday, and our daughter's birthday.

6. We just finished the nursery! Olivia and I still have to set up a sewing date for crib bedding, but we won't need that until we get to OK. The room looks a little sparse without a real crib and any substantial furniture, but I actually really like the colors and how everything turned out. Not too shabby for being a space Baby Girl will occupy for less than two months. You might recognize the decorations over her crib. We're officially ready for you, Baby Girl!

The nursery before.

This is all the loot my friend Ashlei gave us, which she passed down from her little girl. She and her husband also gave us the swing and bouncy seat you will see in the pictures below. What a blessing they have been to us!

His eye is on the sparrow!

Schtuff

Hmm. Methinks I have been neglecting this little blog. I have a few highlights to catch up on!

1. Justin is home! Apparently his return date was moved up a week even before he left, but he decided to keep it under wraps to surprise me. He gave me 24-hours notice that he was coming home, which then turned into 48-hours notice when his jet was grounded for maintenaince issues the next day. He knew he'd be in trouble if he didn't give me some kind of warning! The whole thing was a kind of comedy of errors. I had scheduled my latest appt for the day, unbeknownst to me at the time, Justin was supposed to return. He enlisted Olivia's help asking me to watch her son that day so that I would reschedule my appt. Which I did. For the following day. Which is actually the day Justin came home. Oops. It was a nice try. I've been going out of town for my appts, but I was able to drive straight to base and make it just in time for his landing.

2. God continues to rule out one concern after another with this pregnancy! I never did write a post about how the whole band/sheet thing shook out. Well, as soon as we heard about the doctors' concerns, Justin started praying for it to disappear. I told him I didn't get the impression that's how it would work out, based on what the doctors said. But when I went in for my appointment, I learned that's exactly what was happening! I finally saw images of this...whatever it is...from all of my previous ultrasounds. At 16 weeks it ran the entire length of an ultrasound image. At 18 weeks it was much shorter, and at this appt it had shortened so much they almost couldn't find it! So while I think it was officially classified as a sheet, it's really fairly irrelevant because it's gone now, whatever it was. The next smaller concern was placenta previa, and that was also resolved at my most recent appt last week. Hallelujah! But there's something new at every appt, and this time it was anemia. But all that means is I have to take an iron supplement. I think we can handle that one. :)

3. Justin got his orders to Altus, OK, where he will be an instructor. He should have pretty steady hours, but it's also likely that he will have one six-month deployment. Six months! People do it all the time, but I can barely survive two. So that will be an adventure if and when that happens. I'm glad he got his orders and that there weren't any surprises, but I'm still not ready to leave Goldsboro. The report date on his orders was June 30, but that's cutting things a little close for our taste. Justin's pretty confident he can get the date pushed back to July 30. We'll be three hours from my parents, which will be good, but the town itself leaves many things to be desired. But, all in all, it is good news.

4. I'm not methodical about checking my weight, but I've gained six pounds in the last two weeks. At least, I think it's only been two weeks. And that's all I'm going to say about that. Go, baby, go.

Insanity and other frivolous matters

I have plenty of darn near miraculous things I could talk about today like the way God spectacularly answered our prayers about the whole amniotic sheet vs. band thing, and that most definitely deserves its own post and a post that is of higher importance than this one. But today my brain is in a frenzy, and I'll be sharing about much more frivolous matters, like diving in headfirst to the commercial side of parenthood.

First there was much researching of strollers. That one's still ongoing. Last night I moved onto trying to plot the nursery I probably won't even be able to put together until after our move, potentially months after Baby Girl is born. But I need to start figuring out what to register for, and a nursery seemed like a natural place to start. We'd already settled on a kind of nature/woodland/forest type theme. And, well...I'll let the email I sent out to Olivia this morning (unedited) do the rest of the talking. It will be sure to make up for the last several months of my inattention to silliness on this here blog.

Enjoy. Don't judge.

Subject: These are the facts of the case.

And they are undisputed.

Happy Birthday to your man!!!!!!!

Now onto my real reason for writing. The facts.

1. It is currently 6:38 a.m., and I am awake.

2. I actually woke up at 6:12. (I think. That one might be disputed.)

3. I was up until 12:15ish.

4. I was up until 12:15 after endless hours of searching for the perfect bedding.

5. There are waaaaaaay too many options for crib bedding on the market. And even with that, Justin and I still couldn't settle on the "perfect" set.

6. Justin was actually giving me some feedback, but I'm pretty sure he started to think I was crazy after what may have been hour #4 of sending him links.

7. I found a wall print a few days ago with the lyrics of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" and suddenly I couldn't get a version of that song that Justin introduced me to out of my head. It reminded me just how fitting that song was for this time in our life and for our little girl. (You can listen to the song here: http://blog.pagecxvi.com/post/10440429648/his-eye-is-on-the-sparrow. Please do! I love it.)

8. Sometime during my marathon search for bedding, I saw this line but determined it was not at all gender neutral and that it would force me into too many pink and purple nursery choices, even though I do find it very pretty: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/Search/Search.aspx/sparrow/baby/_/N-1z1412k?AggBy=0&dim=1&grid=20&nty=1&sstr=sparrow. However, it did inspire me to search for sparrows!

9. Sometime much later in my marathon search, after Justin and I had seemingly come no closer to making a decision, I showed him the sheets I just showed you. He loved the sparrows in particular and deemed these sheets his favorite. At last! Progress. But I still wasn't sure I could be girly enough to commit to those colors.

10, I proceeded to consult the one site I hadn't yet scoured--Etsy.

11. Etsy is not the site to go to when one has already been on the computer for hours on end and it should be bedtime. Seriously. Pinterest should probably also go on that list should I ever join.

12. I found some fabric with sparrows that I love and that Justin likes just as much as the pattern we'd looked at, and I found sellers who would make what I wanted a reasonable price.

13. I finally went to bed content.

14. I woke up at 6:12(ish) a.m. day dreaming about said fabric.

15. Then the cat started running all over the room with far too much energy. I took it as a sign, gave up the fight, and got out of bed after concocting the following idea.

Okay. You may now have paragraph form. It can't be that difficult to make a blanket, a couple sheets, and a crib skirt can it? (And maybe a changing pad cover?) Do you think Joann's would have a class on that? Or maybe it's something you could already show me how to do? (Assuming you'd have the time to do that.) And at the very least, I would love to see what you think about which fabric to use for which particular piece, along with potential wall colors, etc. Will you let me know what you think? (If I don't hear from you tonight, I will assume you got lost somewhere in this meandering email. Or that you had more important things to do. Like celebrate your husband's birthday or keep William from doing cartwheels off of his scooter.) Here is the fabric: http://www.hawthornethreads.com/fabric/designer/joel_dewberry/aviary_2, the first collection being my/our favorite.

Thank you! Maybe I can actually go back to sleep now (Now that I've unloaded this heavy fabric burden onto you)!

17. I am not responsible for the coherence/silliness of anything written prior to 7:15 a.m.