The one about the baby

So I didn't want to just bust up in here and overload you guys with all that's been going on the past 4 or 5 months all at once. I figured I should start small. Then you wouldn't get so bored with one giant post and maybe you'd come back to read more later on. :o)

I figured I should probably start with Ella. I'm sure that's who you're most interested in anyway, am I right?

You know, I'm not quite sure where in my pregnancy I left off from blogging, but the last about 2 months I started getting high blood pressure and lots of swelling. While my doctor never actually diagnosed me as having pre-eclampsia, it was bad enough in the end that she decided if Ella hadn't made her debut by 40 weeks, we were going to induce. At my last appointment, we scheduled the induction for 6am on Thursday October 7.

You can imagine my surprise when I was awakened at 2am on the 7th by contractions! At first, I didn't know they were contractions, but after I had 3 in a row, almost exactly 10min apart, I was sure. I decided I should go ahead and take a shower, wake up John, then we'd get our stuff and maybe head to the hospital. Well, by the time I got in the shower (was only about 2:40am now), my contractions jumped all the way to 3 minutes apart! So I had a quickie shower and John woke up as I was starting to get dressed and I told him we needed to go already! He jumps up and gets dressed and gets the rest of our stuff together, feeds the dogs and puts them outside and finally helps me get in the car. The contractions were pretty rough by this point and I had to stop and breathe through them...still about 2-3min apart.

We left the house around 3:45am and got to the hospital about 4:15am. Once I got all checked in and changed and in bed, they checked me at about 5am and I was already 7cm! I went in hoping to not need an epidural and they basically said it's now or never after my first check, so I said no. Sure, it was painful, but it definitely wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I opted for a shot of an IV drug, but that mostly just made me a little loopy...didn't seem to ease the pain too much. The contractions continued to get stronger. My parents and sister got there around 6am and John's mom showed up shortly after. By 7am, I was more than ready to start pushing and after about an hour, Ella Renee was born at 8:14am, weighing in at just 6lb 5oz and 18.5" long. She was so little!

My first baby and I only had to endure a 6 hour labor and an hour of pushing...all without an epidural. It was so much easier than I was anticipating! I did, however, end up with full blown pre-eclampsia post delivery. I was on a magnesium drip for 24 hours which made my head feel like it was floating in a bowl of water. And because I was still hooked up to the darn IV, I had to call for a nurse every single time I had to pee. That sucked. But after a day and a half, I finally got off the IV and got an oral blood pressure medicine. That was helping enough that by Saturday morning, I was cleared to go home. As was Ella, who was doing just fantastically!

There you have her story...now I'll share some pictures of her first 3 1/2 months so far. :o)

Newborn...obviously...



Going home from the hospital



One week old



Halloween



One month old



Two months old



3 months old, but we didn't have any good pictures of her in one of her Christmas outfits



3 months old



Ummm...

...hello?

::crickets chirping::

Anybody out there?

::chirp...chirp...chirp::

Hey, it's okay. I understand. I haven't been around. At all. In quite a while.

Sorry.

But, if y'all will have me, I'd like to come back. Would that be okay?

We've now gotten through the first 3 months of parenthood and things are starting to get a little easier. I might actually have time now to write more! I've actually been thinking of different things to write about lately, but I was a little embarassed to just come back full force with no "re-introduction".

If you've followed me in the past, you'll notice that, (yet again, I know...), I changed up the blog a bit. I was tired of wondering so much if my blog title was a right fit for me, or if it made sense to anyone...or whatever. So now, it's just me. And my ramblings. Hope y'all don't mind too much. I think I'm done making changes. I think. We'll see, I guess. :o)

Well, if there's anyone left reading, just wanted to let you know I'm back. And I hope to continue writing at a fairly consistent pace this time. And I really hope to come up with more interesting things to write about so you all will stick with me! :o)

Thanks for letting me come back!!

Birth Announcement

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I give up

Well folks. I think it may be time for me to throw in the towel. As much as I've enjoyed meeting you bloggy buddies, I am a HORRIBLE blog buddy myself.

There was a time in my life, not too long ago, where I craved the connection of people and their stories and wanted to do it all. Blog. Tweet. Comment. Read. Obviously, times have changed a bit and I'm no longer able to do all these things. And frankly, I'm okay with that. I'm so busy and wrapped up in my own life right now that really it's just rude to lead y'all on any longer.

Now, don't write me off completely just yet. I PROMISE to at least come back and post when baby Ella makes her arrival. I'm not that rude! And really, who knows? Once I'm not working anymore and start getting totally bored during the day, you may see me again. So I will keep the ol' blog running and I may be back. If not regularly, at least from time to time with little updates.

But I won't kid myself anymore. I'm too busy, tired, and uninteresting at the moment to even try to keep up with blogging.

And with that I say, "Farewell, my friends!" At least for a little while.

Afraid...and an ultimatum

Let me start with a little back story. I believe I posted about this early last year, but I don't have time to go find that post right now.

Anywho...so last March, John and I travelled to Florida for my cousin's wedding. On the flight there, John fell asleep. I can never sleep on planes so I just sat there while he slept. After a little while, I noticed his strange breathing. He would take about 3 or 4 breaths and then he would stop. Stop breathing. For a good 10-12 seconds. It went on so long I started counting. I thought it was really weird. I'd never noticed that before.

While in Florida, I mentioned it to my mom, who is a nurse. All of a sudden she gets very concerned and says that that is sleep apnea and it can be very dangerous. I had no idea! She asked how long it had been going on and of course, I didn't know. Most of the time when he's sleeping, I'm sleeping so I don't notice. John, like always, brushes it aside as overreaction. He says his dad has sleep apnea and it probably just runs in the family. Uh, well, his dad is also a good 150 pounds overweight. Not a good comparison. So my mom tells him that if he lost about 20 or pounds, it would probably go away. We already had a vacation planned for July, so I told him he had to lose 30-40 pounds by the trip or he would have to go do a sleep study and get treated for the sleep apnea. Well, he only lost about 10 pounds before the trip, but I didn't push the issue of a sleep study. It was really regular that this would happen and I didn't notice it often, so it kind of faded to the back of my mind.

Fast forward to last night. I woke up about 5:30am after having a terrible dream, so I snuggled up close to John to make myself feel better. Wouldn't you know, it was happening again. 3 breaths, then nothing, for 10-12 seconds. I could not fall back asleep. I just laid there listening to him breath. And then not breath. And then breath again. For half an hour. Every time he stopped breathing, I would nudge him, try to make him breath. Didn't help. I got out of bed about 6am, 45 minutes before my alarm was to go off. I couldn't lay there anymore. I had too much on my mind now.

I just kept thinking about what my mom had said. If he lost about 30 pounds, it would probably go away on it's own. Granted, John could definitely stand to lose a good 40 pounds. And I try to ask all the time, "so...when are you going to lose weight?" He knows he needs to. He wants to. He just never does anything about it. Well, tonight, that's going to change. I refuse to take a laid back stance on this any longer. I don't care what the excuses are. I don't care if he hates me for making him do it. He WILL start to work towards losing this weight.

It definitely frightened me, last spring, when I thought that he might die in his sleep one night. I never want to wake up to find my husband has just stopped breathing entirely during the night. Never to wake up again. But back then, it was just me. I would probably survive.

But now.

Now, there is a whole nother life that depends on this man for everything! As much as I don't want to lose my husband to something that could be so easily preventable...I will NOT let my daughter lose her father before she even has a chance to know who he is.

And so, tonight, I will sit down with John and tell him. If he does not start to lose weight, and lose at least 25-30 pounds before Ella is born, he WILL go to a sleep study and get treatment for this. I am not going to sit around any longer on the side lines. I won't go to bed every night anymore wondering if he'll wake up in the morning. It's not just me anymore that he should be worried about leaving behind. He has a family now.

Thanks for listening guys. I really needed to get that out. I just hope I have the courage to do it all over again once John gets home tonight. Wish me luck!

Finally!

Okay, so I've been feeling Ella kick and squirm around for several weeks now. In the past maybe 3 weeks, you could start to feel her in the outside of my tummy. Kinda neat, right? Well, John thinks it's so cool and he wants to feel her kick! So when he's actually home and she's kicking, I'll tell him to try to feel. No joke, EVERY single time this has happened, the second he puts his hand on my belly, she stops! He'll even sit there for several minutes waiting for her to kick again and she never does!

I started joking with him the since he's gone so much, she doesn't know who he is. Or that she just doesn't like him. Mean, I know. But it was funny! This happened several times a week! He started getting so frustrated!

So last night, I'm lounging on the couch reading. Go figure, John I working late so he wasn't home yet. Well, Ella was all up in my side just squirming up a storm! My belly was contorting in all kinds of weird shapes. And let me tell you, when its in your side, its not that comfortable! Anywho, this was going on for a good half hour. Just about then, John gets home. Like usual, he's on the phone as he walks through the front door. I swear, I kid you not, she was moving when I heard him in the driveway, but the second he opens the door, blabbing away on the phone, she stopped!

He comes and sits on the couch, still on the phone. (can you tell it kind of annoys me how much he's on the phone??) She did a few twitches here and there, but of course I can't tell him since he's ON THE PHONE.

Not much later I went to bed. Did I mention he didn't get home until 9:30pm? I wake up 3 hours later, 1am mind you, and John is still not in bed. What. The. Heck. He's on the computer. Looking at boats we can't afford, no doubt. Seriously?? So I'm awake, so of course I get up to pee. He finally comes in to bed about 20 minutes later, just as I'm dozing back off to sleep. He gets all cuddled up and puts his hand on belly, like he does most nights, "just in case" she's kicking. Well, turns out she actually was this time! And he finally felt ONE kick! He goes, "I felt her!" And he started moving his hand around to try to feel more.

At that exact moment, Major starts barking. No big deal, right? He sometimes will bark in the middle of the night if he's sill awake and some teenager drives by with the radio too loud. Of course, not this time. This time, he doesn't stop barking. And then Cocoa started barking. Now, Cocoa does not bark often so when she does, there's usually something wrong.

John gets up, takes his gun from the nightstand and goes to check it out. He takes the gate off the top of the stairs and both dogs go running downstairs just barking their heads off! So, what was all the commotion about? There were cops, on foot, chasing somebody through our subdivision!! John said he look out the window and saw two cops running across the cul-de-sac, then they jumped in a police car and sped off through the subdivision! Crazy, right??

Boy, it was a long night, I tell you what. After all the cop chasing is over, at least from in front of our house, John comes back to bed. I'm like totally awake now since it was all just a tad on the scary side. Ella is kicking like crazy, which is also keeping me awake. Then I realize she must be kicking so much because I am STARVING. My stomach starts growling and I can't fall asleep. So at 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm heading downstairs for a snack just so I can go back to sleep for 4 1/2 more hours!

Longest night ever, I swear. And I totally wish I was making all this up! But no. Apparently this is what my life is actually like these days.

Just call me "little miss fattie"

I went to the doctor on Monday, right? Well, I had noticed that I had already gained my initial recommended 25lbs. ::gasp!!::

I know, right? That's MORE than a pound per week for the entire pregnancy!

Well, since I've had a couple appointments where my interval gain has been higher than expected, my doctor has mentioned this fact to me and told me (multiple) times to "watch that weight gain". I was completely dreading this visit. I mean, I know I've gotten larger in other areas BESIDES my belly, but I didn't think it was that bad. I can still squeeze into my old pants...as long as they aren't buttoned...or zipped.

So I'm a little nervous waiting in the room. Then the nurse comes in and starts going on and on about how I barely look pregnant at all! And I must not have gained hardly any weight so far!

Then she looked at my chart.

"Oh."

But then she discovered my starting weight and said I shouldn't have been that skinny to begin with and I just look fabulous. Blah blah blah. I mean, it was nice to hear, don't get me wrong. But she said, and I quote, "You just look like you've had a few too many beers!"

Gee...thanks lady. And I don't even drink beer! Like, ever.

Anyway...she leaves and the doctor comes in. She kind of "tsk, tsk"s about my weight gain thus far. "You may need a little more crunch per your calorie."

Well, poo on you, too.

Said I REALLY need to watch it from now on and if it really starts to ge out of hand I'll have to start writing down everything I eat to go over with her at my appointments! Gah!

Thank heavens for water aerobics twice a week for the next month and a half. I obviously need to get my fat butt in gear!!

I am pretty disappointed in myself for allowing my butt to get so cottage cheesy. Yuck. I've gotten rid of cellulite before and by god, I'll do it again!!

Okay, fattie rant over.

Think I'll go find something to snack on. :o)