So, What's It Like?

I know that's the question that would run through my head when I would read about my friends and their rainbow babies / take home babies. For me? It's totally amazing, incredible, wonderful, blissful...

Seriously. I love it. I love her!

Honestly, I had a lot of anxiety that I might have bonding issues, or emotional issues, or that the grief would all come rushing back. It hasn't been like that at all, thankfully. I mean if it was like that, I would work through it but I feel very blessed to not have to, and so thankful that I can just enjoy Stella and the miracle that she is. OK... I did have to choke back tears as we were walking in the house for the first time. The sun was shining, we were buzzed by two hummingbirds and Jim said "Say hi to your brothers, Stella!" And also as we climbed the stairs to bed that first night. More so for the fact that without all the loss I wouldn't have been snuggling our day old daughter at that point but there was also a small pang of grief in my gut. With a sigh, it lifted.

Transitioning her into our family has been pretty easy. The "big kids" were a bit off for the first couple days but I chalk that up to being tired as much as anything else. Now, 12 days later, they're helpful and back to their "normal" selves. We'll keep normal in quotes :) Stella's a mellow, easy going kid so far. She generally lets us sleep in 4 hour stretches at night and naps for a couple hours at a time during the day. Nursing is going really well which is a relief since I was so taken aback when, after a great experience with Karleigh, Rylan was so difficult.

I realized that I don't think I mentioned that her hear murmur was undetectable by the pediatrician on her second day. So we were very, very thankful for that. Our newest concern with her is that when she spits up, it often comes out her nose and/or she chokes it back down. She sounds stuffy quite often but that's probably from the spit-up. She sneezes a ton, again probably the spit up. She's generally a really happy, content baby so I'm hoping it's really just newborn-getting-used-to-the-outside-world stuff and not something more like reflux or a milk protein allergy but those are both on my radar right now and I've been praying about it.

But really, she's simply wonderful and everything about our new family feels really, really perfect.

What a Week!

I didn't know it was possible for a week to go by with such great speed. I realized that I should probably write down Stella's birth story before I forget the details. I could, and HAVE, just spent hours on end holding and snuggling her without any regard to time. I do wish it would slow down just a little bit (I guess that makes up for all the times I wished time would speed up).


Wednesday night, April 14th, my water broke on its own a little after 10pm. I was lying in bed but on blankets because I had just been feeling "off" the whole day. I had spent the last 2 weeks with off and on contractions that would be around 5 minutes apart but after 6 hours or so, they would peter out. But on the 14th, emotionally I just felt different too. It was actually a bit of a depressive state which was odd. Anyway, after my water broke I came straight downstairs and Jim was headed up. He said that he heard me jump off the bed and knew that something was up. So, we gathered our things, I called my friend Jamie who had so graciously offered to take Karleigh and Rylan regardless of the hour. I called my mom and let her know. Turns out that she would be able to get a sub for her class but only if she needed her on Thursday, Friday or Monday. That worked out well! Then we called the hospital to let them know we'd be heading in. Jim woke the kids. Karleigh sprung out of bed totally excited. Rylan looked at him said "OK", rolled over and went back to sleep. :) We walked out to the van, Karleigh holding my hand and telling me I could squeeze it if I had a contraction. And that's when I had my first one. Since we didn't lolly gag around like I did when my water broke with Rylan, the ride to the hospital was actually not all that uncomfortable for once! They were probably about 5-6 minutes apart but not too terribly strong yet. We got the kids to Jamie's house and she had set up a whole area in the living room for them to try to sleep.

We checked into L&D at 11:15pm. Everything was ready for us. My nurse commented that she would need to do a pH test just to make sure it was my water and then she laughed and said "yah, I'm not going to need that" as she checked me out a bit more. I KNEW there was a reason I was so uncomfortably huge those last couple weeks! We sat on the monitor a bit, got checked out and I was around 4 cm so I decided to walk the halls for a while. Believe it or not, this type A, have everything planned out, person did not go into this delivery with a single plan in place. I had a few thoughts in the back of my head but my birth plan merely consisted of "get her here, alive". Anyway, I labored for a while on my own, with tons of kudos from the nurses, but ultimately I opted for the epidural. I wanted everything in place in case of an emergency. It is a bit sad how history played a part in how it went but my ONLY goal was Stella's safe arrival. I got my epidural around 2am and my mom showed up just as he was finishing up. My contraction pattern was great on its own so I didn't need any pitocin which was nice. For the next few hours, Jim cat-napped and mom and I chatted and tried to rest a bit (yah, right!).

Around 6:45 I decided it was baby time. Pushing though my first contraction felt a bit useless. I could feel it all in my face and I knew that wasn't where I needed to be pushing. We let a second contraction pass and then I pushed through the next three contractions. Between the second and the third, I could hear the nurse on my right side, talking to a nursing student about heart rate decels, I turned and looked at the heart rate tracing and my head went to "that place". Needless to say, Stella was born at 7:00am with the next contraction. :) She was beautiful, and cheesy, and had a ton (speaking from a baldy) of almost black hair.

And she was perfect...

(don't forget to pause the music at the bottom before you click play and sorry about the format difference between the way I created it and the way Blogger publishes it... good gravy! it took me way. too. long. to figure the video portion out!)

Welcome Stella Claire!

Stella Claire

April 15th, 2010

7:00am

7 pounds 13 ounces

20 1/4" long

She is beautiful (and has a ton of nearly black hair under that hat!) and happy and everything that we had hoped for and more. We are drinking up every new moment with her and looking forward to the future with such joy. She does have a small heart murmur that we are praying will resolve itself and I'm not going to worry unless I'm told that there's something to worry about. I will write up her birth story in the next few days (mainly so I don't forget!) but right now we are relaxing, getting ready to eat a little cheesecake and then turn in for the night.

This is bliss!

It's Been a Week?

Hum, looks like it's been a week since I last posted.
What a slacker.
You would think that I'd have time to blog since I'm basically just sitting around here waiting for Stella to quit teasing me and make her entrance into this world. Because really? That's. All. I've. Been. Doing. But also doing it in a very hermit crab sort of way. Hard to explain.

We survived Spring Break. Which really was a blessing because the weather was quite cold, and wet, and just yucky. We spent nearly the entire time inside watching movies, playing games, etc. etc. Jim had to work the whole week so we really couldn't go anywhere and I wouldn't have gone far anyway since I've been having prodromal labor for over a week now. That's just a nice way of saying, "lots of contractions with zero action". However, when it gets going it still wears me out and keeps me wondering, "is THIS it this time?" So far? No.

My mom had her Spring Break this week so she came down for a couple of days and got to enjoy our snow. I know. Snow. April. Blah. For the last several days it has snowed all morning long and then the sun has come out in the afternoon.

Of course this leaves me thinking about little Stella's come home outfit... which isn't exactly snow friendly. Of course it really doesn't matter but I decided that I wanted to get a little knit/crochet beanie, ideally with a little flower on it to match her outfit. While walking the mall yesterday, before my appointment, I did find a cute one at particular larger retailer but A) wasn't ready to fork over $26 for B) a hat that didn't match and C) was going to be too big for a newborn. It was cute though. So we just continued to walk the mall and I beat myself up about how I should have just ordered one from Etsy several days ago blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the mall walking was getting uncomfortable and we were getting close to my appointment time so we just headed over to the docs office which is connected to the hospital.
And got there way too early.
So we decided to make sure that we know where we need to go when since I was in a total fog the last time I was there. When we got to the correct floor there was a little baby only gift shop, separate from the regular hospital gift shop. Aha! Surely they have a cute little hat. So we went in and looked around but still didn't really see what I had been looking for. But then, there on the counter was a box of hats, the perfect size. And one the perfect color.
"Excellent! How much is this one?"
"It's free"
"Really?"
"Yup, go ahead and take it now!"
"Serious?"
"Yup, the church ladies bring them in by the bag full"

Love this little hat. I added the flower to it after we got home.

So cool! So we got our hat and headed off to my appointment. No weight gain this week. BP is still good and although I was hoping for 'more' after days of contractions and walking the mall, I was at 3cm and about 50% effaced or so. More waiting. Of course he thinks that once things start they're going to go very fast which is the part that has me kind of anxious because after all this on again, off again stuff, I'm really worried about waiting too long to see if it's for real! I'm sure it will all work out in the end and if not, well, then at least I'll have an interesting story to tell!

Friday Fotos!

I don't have a whole lot to say. Clearly, "baby" is just about all that's on my mind now that I'm technically full term and more pregnant at this point that I ever was with Rylan. Now begins the guessing game of "was that a real contraction or not?" and wondering when it's going to happen.

I'm so glad to have Spring Break just about over. It's been nice not having to worry about getting the kids ready for school and on and off their buses but the weather has just not been cooperative so they've been inside far too much and everyone is getting on everyone elses nerves. They actually start out pretty good for a while but it can quickly decline. Honestly, I'm sure they're picking up on my nerves as well so I'm having to try really, really hard to be more willing to put up with their antics but... I'm tired and I'm sure there's been too much yelling from me too. And honestly, at this point, it's actually more like they're teaming up against me. I guess that's better than them being at each others throats all day long. They are ready to get back to school though as they both check the calender every morning and remind me of the count-down throughout the day.

There is still lots of this:

which quickly turns into this:

so I really can't complain! (and in fairness, these are from yesterday, not today)

A little bit from the baby/pregnancy department... I had an appointment on Wednesday where we talked about the itching, since it's not just normal belly itching, Dr. C was on-top of things and sent me down for blood work to check my liver functions and had the results the next day. Good news is, everything came back normal so it's just some weird hormonal itching I suppose.