Nursing baby

Yesterday when I was nursing Keziah, Matthias came and sat beside me on the couch. He had brought one of their baby dolls. He lifted his shirt and brought the doll's head to his breast.

"I'm feeding baby too Mom!"

I was too busy laughing to correct him. I'll have to remember this story for when he grows up and gets married!

I knew it

I knew it was going to come. It's been coming every March for as long as I've lived here (true it's only been 6 years, but that's a long time...). It was only a matter of time.

Snow.

And alot of it.

For as long as I've lived here, there's been a major snowfall in March. I remember this b'cos every March there's a youth retreat in Strathmore that we drive to (more often than not during or right after the big March snowfall). This year we (Steve and I) didn't drive so I suppose it's only fitting that the snow waited till after the retreat (altho' seeing pictures looks like they had to drive thru some whiteout conditions anyway) to come. And boy did it come!

Sigh...

I was so looking forward to spring and the smell of summer coming.

Oh and Steve sent me this personality test thing. I thought it was pretty cool and seemed to describe me head on. Check it out. I hope the link works.

2 weeks

It's been almost 2 weeks now since we've had Keziah and there are a few things that I've noticed since we brought her home.

I hate waking up at 3 am.

I hate waking up at 7 am.

Having a baby is harder than I remember, yet at the same time, I find myself thinking about the possibility already of a #4.

Memories of "periods" are too hard to ignore (one of the reasons I like being pregnant is that I don't have periods for 9 months!).

I hate breastfeeding. To me breastfeeding is more of a nuisance than bottle feeding. One of the reasons I breastfeed is because I feel like I will be publicly "marked" if I don't. I love how nurses and other people get this tone in their voice when you talk about formula feeding. This one nurse in the hospital even said, "you do know the consequences...". Uh yeah, my baby will be fed instead of shrieking for milk that (at the time) was not coming in. Anyway...

I'm ALWAYS tired. I thought the lack of sleep in the 9th month was supposed to prep you for the lack of sleep you'd get after baby arrived. No deal in my case.

The kindness of other people is mind blowing.

Keziah looks like a snapping turtle.

And I realized how much I love my family. How helpful and supportive Steve is. The joy Matthias and Callah bring me and the love I feel already for Keziah as I rock her to sleep. I feel so completely blessed!

It's a girl!!

Yeah for us!! Keziah Ruth arrived quickly (once we were "accepted" at the hospital) Monday early evening (5:03 pm to be exact) with only a few minor complications. We're all super excited to have her with us and now that we're home, are glad to start making her a part of this family! She was 6 lbs-3 oz and 20" long. Blue/grey eyes, dark brown hair. A picture of beauty!!

* A HUGE thanks to Dixie for bringing her camera (taking the pics) and the yummy drink!! Thanks!!

Just call me wimpy

The contractions started this morning around 6 am. I thought nothing of them 'cos I've been having them off and on for awhile now. Usually I just get up out of bed and they stop. A little more intense than usual 30 mins. later I got up out of bed and stood around waiting to see if they'd keep coming. Sure enough. They came. 30 minutes later still, they were coming every 2 minutes. And finally another 30 minutes later I woke Steve up.

We got the kids away to the families and were on our way to the hospital before 8. I should've known it was too early when everyone kept asking me if I was in labour. Oh yeah, and the fact that I was laughing between contractions. That definately should've given it away!

The head has come down more (altho' not all the way) and I'm definately having pains. In comparison, with Matthias from start to finish it was close to 27 hours. Callah on the other hand, from the time I first felt any sort of contraction to the end, it was only 4 hours. So that's what I'm basing things on. Good grief, if this were Callah, she'd be out by now. The rate I'm going this time, looks like it's going to be very long, very uncomfortable, back pain filled day. I felt like such a wimp when they were examining me and I was barely even dilated. And of course, once again the nurse there said I should be back within' 24 hours. Right, I'm not holding my breathe. I asked her, if my contractions are like 2 minutes apart and I'm barely dilated, then when should I come back to the hospital. She said, normally they look for contractions to be 3 minutes or so apart (okay??), my water actually breaks (none of this slow leak stuff) or the contractions get unbearable.

Right. Thanks for the help.

I hate waiting...

..especially when every 2-5 minutes I have to remind myself to breathe!

uhhhh....

yeah.....

...no baby.

I'm at the point where I'm sitting in front of the TV with a slurpee and a bag of chips.

Ohhh....baby.

And we're off!

I woke up yesterday to a gooey gush in my pants.

I know...nice.

It continued for awhile and I started to freak out. Luckily I had an appointment with my doctor at 10. I left early for the appointment hoping he'd be able to see me early. It was a good thing I went early as he was heading out to deliver another baby, so he quickly saw me and put me on a day of rest. It turns out that I was leaking amniotic fluid and he said it should heal within 24 hours. If not then I would have to be induced or if the leaking got worse, then again, I would have to be induced. So I spent the day pretending to be a vegetable, which drove me nuts!! Only to wake up again this morning to a gooey gush in the pants. Granted it was a smaller gush, more like a gob, but gooey all the same. So off we went to the hospital.

Once there I got hooked up to the monitor where we listened as the babies heartbeat kept a nice steady pace (except for one really low dip that caused some concern, but after waiting another 30 minutes, we were given the "ok") and saw the little "tightenings" which led the nurse to "swear on supper" that I was going to have this baby in the next 24 hours. Hey, as long as the babies head drops I don't care when it arrives. The doctor was just doing rounds when we showed up and it was kinda unnerving how he had no idea who we were, even tho' I had just seen him yesterday. And again unnerving when he said the exact same thing that he had said yesterday. "If it's still leaking in 24 hours you should be induced." Sure he's busy, but c'mon.

Anyway, so now we just wait. I'm suppossed to do this little "funky chicken dance" every time I feel a "tightening" to help drop that head. It's my Grandma's 89th b-day party this afternoon, so the family will all be up for it. I hope the baby doesn't come till after, I really don't want to take away from her big day. When you get that old, you don't have many special days and I know she's REALLY looking forward to it all.

So if you're the praying type, please pray that we wait till after the festivities and that the head drops. It would be greatly appreciated from all of us here.

Until next time...
...we'll keep you posted.

conflict

Do you think conflict in a relationship is a good thing? Or should one just keep their thoughts and opinions to themselves?

backtalking and babies

The other night Steve and I went to a movie. Steve is very determined to sit in the middle of the theatre and I like sitting more in the back, so that's where we sat. Unfortunately it was right infront of 3 teenage boys (I'd say around 17). As soon as we sat down I felt the urge to move. It wasn't really that they were talking loudly, the movie hadn't started yet, but more so what they were talking about. They were talking about "hot" girls and their sisters and who they wanted to hook up with. It made me think of property or a possesion. It didn't make me feel right. And then they mentioned the name of one of our youth girls and they phoned her and told her to get her "pretty little ...." down to the theatre. I totally wanted to turn around and tell them to grow up and treat girls better. Then I thought of telling this youth how these guys were talking about her and I thought, but wait, what would she think? Would she be glad that they were even talking about her or would she feel offended like I felt?

I've been talking this bible study called "Fight Like A Girl" by Lisa Bevere for a few months now and the whole idea behind it is how women have been losing sight of their true selves. That (in some cases) we've been ashamed of our femininity and the actual power that comes with it, of course now she's challenging women to discover their beauty, strength and wisdom and celebrate it instead of hiding it. I've felt kinda ho-hum about the whole study, but I do agree with how she thinks that society has been giving women a bum wrap for awhile now. That God did not intend us to be seen as how society has placed us as we are right now. Does that make sense?

Anyway, the more I try to be thoughtful and "deep" the sillier I sound. All I know is that the way these young guys were talking felt really wrong. And it's up to us, as parents, friends, etc to teach the next generation how to properly respect the opposite sex and treat them with as much.

As a side note and back to baby I've been thinking lately about the whole labour/delivery thing. With roughly a week and half to go, it would be silly to say I'm eagerly awaiting it. True I want this baby out, but then I think about the hospital room, the screaming, the pain, the pushing and all the other wonderful joys of childbirth. There's no real easy way out is there? You're in pain and uncomfortable at the end of the pregnancy, then you want the pain to get worse so you can go into labour, and then you finish with a different kind of pain as the uterus shrinks down to it's original size and you recover with a screaming infant. Someone remind me why we do this again?

*as a side note, I'm trying hard to sound intelligent in this post. Seriously. So if I said something completely absurd, please keep it to yourself and e-mail me later about it. Thanks!

What's been on my mind?

I just rec'd an e-mail from my Babyzone calendar thingy and there was an article highlighted that started like this "Four Ways to Boost Your Energy During..." and then you had to click on the link to actually read the article. Well the first thought that flipped through my mind was ..."sex". A bit disappointed to find out the article was actually about boosting energy during...pregnancy.

sweet menopause

So I have Oprah on at the moment. They're talking about menopause (and actresses getting older) and they just mentioned that your armpit hair and your hair "down there" grows less often and starts to fall out. Sweet! Finally something to look forward to!!

floating head

I went for another check-up on Friday. Once again everything looks good and clear. He said the babies head is still floating (ie. hasn't engaged yet...still sounds like a rocket launcher or something completely odd like that) and so I've ran with that. I googled "floating head" and the only real thing that came up was this.

It's late and I'm tired. What else can you expect?

sleep

As I was writing the post last night, Steve was in bed reading. So by the time I actually got to bed, he was already fast asleep. Which reminded me of another thing that I most often think about when I can't sleep.

And that is how incredibly cheesed off I get when I'm tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable and then when I finally do, he starts snoring to high heaven! Not only is he enjoying his night of slumber while I lay in bed covered in pillows that don't work, but then his "plumbing" is louder than any of my thoughts could ever be, and that continues to keep me awake. There's nothing more that I would enjoy doing at those moments than to push him off the bed.

However, I did have a better sleep last night (only 1 "official" pee break!) so there is still hope.

this and that

Last night I had one of those nights. I usually have one or two of them towards the end of a pregnancy. The kind of night where you have every intention of going to bed early, but then you wind up peeing every 20-30 minutes for a good 2-3 hours. Thrown into that is the complete lack of comfortableness, so you're constantly tossing and turning. Thrown into that there's some sort of "domestic dispute" by our "lovely" neighbours that we can actually hear down in our corner room of the basement. At times like that, I find myself sitting up in bed and just sitting. I'll lean against a wall and just pray that God will help me fall asleep.

And then I start thinking.

I thought about moving ourselves back upstairs. It's not like people haven't had 3 kids in a room before. We can do it. If we moved this here....and that there....and took away the other thing. Totally do-able!

I thought about the many other pregnant people I know of and those who have had babies in the past few months. How they're coping and their lives have been changing.

I thought about how sad it was that Ryan Smyth got traded to NY. I always thought he'd be one of those players who spent their whole career with one team. ( This is how much Steve has influenced me, I cried this morning when we saw his news conference at the Edmonton airport.)

I thought about my different bible study groups. How upset I am over getting annoyed with different people in them. That is so not the point of a bible study group! I'm totally evil and deserve to be called out and shot in the street!

I thought about our kindly neighbours and once again the thought popped into my head about how you should not be afraid in your own home. Home is the one place where you should feel safe. Non?

I thought about how this was probably all due to that half a slurpee I had had a few hours ago.

Eventually I think I must have passed out around the 3 am mark.

So here it is again. 11:22 pm and counting. Please God let tonite be better!

Pain pain...

Go away!

Actually, let's bring on the pain so I can GET THIS BABY OUTTA HERE!!

This past weekend I was away at our church Ladies Retreat. In my opinion it was one of the best that I've been to with this church (well done organizers!). Friday and Saturday night we had Vespers and I really enjoyed them. We do something similiar at my Wednesday night biblestudies. Something about ancient prayers heaped with tradition that I find soothing and comforting. This is just a sample of what we did on the weekend.

The Lords Prayer (taken from here)

Because we love God, we say:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Because loving God means that we yearn for God to make his glory known, we say:
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Because loving God means we love others as God loves others, we long for all to have the necessities of life, and we say:
Give us this day our daily bread.
Because we love others, we seek to unleash God's grace of forgiveness and say:
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Because we love others, we long that they will love and live God's will, so we say:
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Because we love God, and because we love others, we lift our hearts to God and say:
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.

We say this today becuase we love God and love others.

In the name of the Father precious,
and of the Spirit of healing balm.
In the name of the Lord Jesus,
I lay me down to rest.

The peace of all peace
be mine this night
in the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Magic words

When you're pregnant there are certain words that bring a smile to your face and there are some that don't.

When you walk into an office and the secretary takes one look at you and says," Whoa, you don't look good."

Those aren't no magic words.

Tuesday...

Is usually an enjoyable day. I get to go to Mom's and hang out kid free for a bit. The kids get a chance to go out and play with other kids. Steve spends most of the day at the church which frees us up to do whatever we want at home. It's usually a good day.

This morning I could barely keep my head up after I "woke" up. The kids didn't get to come to Mom's with me 'cos I had to leave early for a doctor's appointment (2 stones...the kids didn't get out and I had to leave early). Then Steve and I waited for 2 and a half hours (that's right, 2.5 hours!!!!) to see the doctor for a 10 minute pre-natal check up. I still can't believe it! Ugh!!

2 and a 1/2 hours...

So of course by the time we actually got home, the kids were up from their "nap" meaning I was given a slim-none chance of napping myself. And Steve took off right away for a chiro appointment that he had made, thinking he'd have tonnes of time beforehand to do some computer work himself.

What a waste.

I just hope the rest of the day goes well.

Oh yeah, and incase you're wondering, baby is fine. Meeting the delivery doctor went good (Steve made some crack about how we like to eat the placenta- which we don't- so I'm sure he's really looking forward to delivering our baby!) and now we just wait.

Pathetic I am

The kids have been home roughly 18 hrs. 10 of those they've been asleep.

I am

SO

TIRED.

It's amazing how much energy they suck out of you. Now I really know why I'm so tired this pregnancy. It's b'cos I have two extremely energetic kids.

Not to mention 10 minutes after they got home they managed to torpedo all the toys from their room into the living room.

This morning there's Rice Krispies falling from the roof. I mean where else would they come from to wind up all over the kitchen and living room. It's a miracle!

I can't wait for a nap.

Feet

I love feet. I love all the lines and muscles and veins that stick out and add character to a person's foot. Back in my drawing days (and Steve usually gets on me for not "re-living" my drawing days more often. My excuse is that I have no time nowadays, he says that's a lie, I say alright...I have to be in the right mood, he says it seems like I'm only in the mood to watch TV these days, and then we sit there glaring at each other for a while until I mutter something about he's right, that's all I feel like doing nowadays) I would take black and white photos of people's hands and feet and then sketch them. A person's hands and feet can tell alot about them. If they're workers, they're hands will be rough and grainy, if they're old they'll have wrinkles and life lines, and the young are smooth and sleek.

One of the things I love most about my body are my feet. I love how the veins stick out the top and you can see all the bones. One of the things I HATE most about being pregnant is that my feet swell up and I can no longer see any of these things that I love. It's like the last straw. I'm okay (well, no not really, but let's pretend) with the weight gain, the heartburn, the cravings and painful kicks, as long as I can still see and love my feet. But I tell ya, once those feet turn swollen and ugly, all hope is lost.

Same goes for my hands. I hate how they turn into little porker sausages and there's no hope at all of ever getting my ring off my wedding finger (well unless I stick it in the snow or the freezer for a length of time).

I really thought I'd avoid the whole swelling thing with a winter pregnancy. Sadly it appears not.

Happy BirValentine's Day

A few years ago I received a card from my hubby that said, "Happy BirValentine's Day". At the time I was both impressed that he remembered both (Valentine's Day and my birthday) and upset that he had combined them. You see today is my birthday. The day after Valentine's day.
The whole time I was growing up they never got entwined. It wasn't actually until I married Steve that they became one. And it wasn't until this year that they got righted again. B'cos the kids were gone all week we celebrated my birthday on Monday with supper out. Desserts with friends on Tuesday. Wednesday was Valentine's Day and today we headed to S'toon for a day out. In fact I'd have to say that this year has been one of the best in recent years. The phone rang this morning to wake us up. It was the kids singing Happy Birthday. I can only think of one better way to wake up, and that would be having them here. Then my 2 yr. old nephew phoned to wish me Happy Birthday as well. We had clear roads to and from S'toon. Got to see an awesome movie and had yummy burgers in our favourite pub for supper. It was a really good day!

In less than 24 hours the kids will be home and our "freedom" week will be done. I accomplished everything I set out to do, plus some, so the week in my opinion was a complete success!! I feel ready for the new arrival and can't wait to see what the next few weeks have instore!