Teach me Joy Give-away

These curriculums look great! I hope I can win one in the give-away. Check it out for yourself...there is something for preschoolers, young elementary, and a handwriting program.

Teach Me Joy Give-away

Baby #4, the delivery.

Well, baby # 4 is here. I haven't gotten around to blogging about it quite yet. Because of the personal information on our baby announcement that I created, I am not going to post it here, but if I know you and you want to see it, I can email you one. Just let me know what email address to send it to. If you are my friend on Facebook, you can see it there too.

The short of the story is that our dear little one decided to show up quite late, making it into the year 2011 and missing her Christmas due date. But that's ok. God had a different timing for her.

I feel like the whole week after Christmas I was in early stage labor, but just wasn't having the real consistent, painful contractions that would send me to the hospital. But at about 1 am, on January 3rd, a deep contraction woke me up in the night and I knew it was a "real" one. I let a couple more happen (at about 7 min apart) before I decided to get up and go ahead and shower and get some things ready to go. Being the 4th child, I knew that things could move quickly, so I didn't want to dawdle too much at home. By the time I was done with the shower, I was convinced I needed to go the hospital pretty soon. I woke Jim and told him, "This is it!" and had him call my sister to come stay with our other sleeping beauties.

Contractions were not ALL that close together (between 5-10 minutes), but they were to the point where I had to sit and breathe through them. We got to the hospital at about 3:45 am and staff immediately began getting me all checked in and all their computer/paperwork stuff done to get me an IV and what not. When the nurse checked me at about 4:30, I was 4 cm and 90% effaced. The contractions were pretty painful by this point and I told her that I would most likely be getting an epidural around 6 cm. The anesthesiologist just happened to be next door and she said that we should go ahead and grab him because I could dilate quicker than I think. Boy was she right! After the epidural I went to 7 cm in about 1 hour. The nurses were hoping that I would slow a little bit so that my doctor could get there. So they were not going to break my water or do anything to speed the process up. Jim, who was feeling the lack of sleep at this point, asked if he could go get some coffee. I thought that would be fine because Starbucks was not far away and what could happen in 20 minutes, right? Well, apparently a lot. After he had been gone about 15 minutes, I felt my water break and felt tons of pressure and the need to push. The nurse rushed in to check me, announcing that I was 10 cm and 100% effaced and the head was right there! YIKES! I immediately called Jim to see where he was. He said he was like 4 minutes away. "Hurry up!" I said.

A fury of excitement then ensued as the staff started getting the room ready for delivery and all kinds of apparatus and instruments began flooding in (at St. Lukes labor, deliver, and recovery are all in the same room--it's pretty cool!). Jim showed up in the midst of this, throwing off his coat and getting the cameras ready. My doctor was still not there, so I was slow breathing to make sure I didn't start pushing inadvertently.

A couple minutes later, the doc finally showed up and was kind of chit chatting, seemingly waiting for the nurses to finish set up. Then one nurse was like, "Uh, we are ready here! She wants to push." The doc was kind of like, "Oh! Really?!! Wow, get me in my scrubs!" The first contraction after that I started pushing and after one and half pushes, the head was out. Doc told me to stop pushing for a sec while they suctioned and slowed the baby's entry. Then on the next push, the rest of our girl entered the world with loud crying, at 5:55 am. She weighed 10 pounds, 6 ounces and looked wonderful with her mop of hair on her head.

The doc and nurses always laugh at how big our babies are and how easy the delivery is for me. When Jim and I were engaged, a woman came up to me and told me I had good birthing hips...little did she know how right she was. I didn't have any tearing or episiotomy either! That has been so nice because I have needed to bounce back physically a lot sooner this time around with all the responsibility I have in life.

So that's the story. Fairly uneventful until a few hours after birth when I had a bleeding/clotting episode and almost passed out. Apparently when you have huge babies and your uterus is as stretched out as mine got, you are more prone to bleeds and clots and need to have the uterus regular massaged back down for hours after birth to prevent issues. My recovery nurse was not as experienced in these matters and didn't do it enough so it was a slight scary moment. But all was well by that evening and I'm fine. I just have to take extra iron supplements to build my blood stores for a few weeks.

Now the baby and I are getting to know each other and I'm running on very little sleep. Pray for us to get adjusted quickly! Again, if you want a birth announcement, let me know. There are several pictures on there.

-J

Week 40

STILL HERE!!

Week 39

Final stretch...

Week 38

So cold!!!

Week 37.

Blast from the past. HA!

Week 36