Allison just rolled over! What a cute cutie :-)

so i gave in and joined facebook, and apparently everyone in the whole world is over there, but seriously, what's it for? what do you do? i don't understand. it's not like lj at all ...

I weighed 140 before I got pregnant (which is pretty high for me, I'm 5'4 and generally like to be between 125-135 ... if you'll remember several people suspected/downright ASKED if i was pregnant before i actually was)

My high for the pregnancy was 166, the week before Allison was born. (I went down to 165 the day before she was born)

The day after she was born, I was 155, which makes sense considering she was about 8 1/2 pounds, plus placenta and amniotic fluid.

Starting about two to three weeks her birth, I was getting the WOW, you look great comments. You know, OMG, I can't believe you just had a baby a few weeks ago, I hate you, etc.

So I stepped on the scale again and was 145ish. WOW. Only five pounds above my prepregnancy weight!!!! Just from breastfeeding. No exercise or diet limitations whatsover. In fact, I was eating like a horse. Anything in sight times 100 million.

It's nice to be me, I thought. Yay for wearing my old clothes again so soon, I look smashing, etc. etc. etc. Soon this belly will be gone gone gone, just in time for swim suit season! YAY!!!!!


ha ha ha ha ha.

so would someone like to tell me how/why i've managed to gain 10 pounds BACK AGAIN in the last two months? Seriously, I'm BACK in my maternity clothes, my belly looks like it did when she was only 10 days old. And I'm starving all the time (I eat about three times as much as Stephen does these days, NO JOKE!!!!!) it's not just comfort eating either, I feel physically faint if I don't stuff calories in my face every two or three hours. I've been afraid to restrict anything because I truly believe that my body should be listened to and followed, and that if I'm feeling like I need all this food, then I must actually need it. The last thing I want to do is endanger my daughter's health by messing with my milk supply at exactly the time that it switches from hormone driven to supply and demand only.

But why did I lose all that weight so fast in the first place? And how can I get this belly to start going back down again? Slowly is fine, but still, we need to at least be headed in the correct direction. My high school reunion is in August, and it sure would be nice to not have to wear maternity clothes to that ...

I just participated in my first eBay auction (that's right I'm 27 years old and have never bid on eBay ...) and it was really exhillerating!!!! I've purchased two things on eBay before (and sold one, but I had my step-mom do it for me, so that was on her account, not mine) but both of the purchases were just buy it now for this price kind of a thing, just like regular internet shopping.

This was something different all-together. I couldn't resist the idea of getting a nice brand new AIO cloth diaper for $5. (We paid $16 for ours!!!!!!!) So I just went for it on a whim. Well, the next thing I knew, it said "You have been outbid" and the high bid was $5.50. OHMY!!!!! $6 is still a whole lot less than $16 (sure there's shipping, but we paid shipping for our expensive dipes too) So I bid again. And then I was outbid again!!!!! I got suckered in hook-line-and-sinker.

I bid again, without hardly thinking about it. Someone was trying to steal my awesome diaper!!!!!!!!!

At $8, the other bidder stopped bidding, and I had about 8 minutes to wait. I clicked refresh like nine million times, just sure that they were going to outbid me by $0.50 at the very last second. But OMG, they didn't and I bought the diaper!!! $10 total, including shipping!!!! And it's pretty cute :-)

(ETA: actually it came to $9.63. Apparently they didn't charge me my whole $8 bid, just $7.63, to outbid the other person's last bid of $7.50. WOW! I totally would have happily paid $8.)

I don't even care if it's not as good as the ones we have, I can't believe how fun it was to buy it :-)


(this might be the start of something bad though ... perhaps I should back slowly away from the computer at this point.)


ETA again: so i just went into my paypal account to make sure that i had the money to pay for this sucker, (i was pretty sure, but i wanted to double check, and it turns out there's like $50 in there I didn't know about!!!!!!! I have a very stupid grin on my face right now :-)


Oh, and this is the diaper I bought. I can't get over it's unique cuteness.

I can't remember when Ben was able to do this, but I think he was like twice Allison's age. Maybe even more?

How old was your baby when this first happened?

( Be impressed. Be very impressed. )

It occurs to me that the nursing photo, though adorable, doesn't really count as posting a picture. for one thing, it's almost a month old, plus, you can't really see her!

So, in the icon she is three days old, and in this photo, she's 8 weeks.

tada!




(at some point, i'll have to try to catch her with her eyes open. then you can note the adorable froggyness)

i can't believe i haven't been online in a month!!!!!!! the longer i'm away the less draw lj has for me. strangely the thing i miss the most is the documentation of my own life, so i'm here doing it, because i know that i'll appreciate it later. i can't believe how much more i remember of ben's life between the ages of 1 and 2.5 than between 2.5 and 3.5 ... it's really sad to lose so much.

so, uh ... allison is 2 months, and the sweetest, most low-key baby ever. she's so happy and mellow and easy-going. she doesn't sleep through the whole night, but i hardly notice her nursing ... she never cries, she just squeaks and says "ehhh ehhh" and punches me and kicks me until i wake up enough to unhook my bra, latch her on and then fall back to sleep. who knows if she nurses for 5 minutes or 30? not me! i'm asleep. :-)

let's see, i love cloth diapering ... i don't mind washing them or even changing her ... she's just so cute and sweet. she has great big eyes and looks like a frog. i call her my little frog princess :-)


we went to ocean shores for the weekend (family reunion) a few weeks ago and ben got up at some godawful hour of the morning like 6:45 (that's about 90 minutes earlier than he usually gets up) because the light was streaming in so early. so we went to the ocen really early before most people were up. it was me and ben and allison and mary (a cousin) and aaron (my BIL)

Mary took this picture of me nursing allison at 8 a.m. on the beach in early may. it was NOT warm, lemme tell you. but i'm pretty proud. it's mucho adorable.



While on that trip, I asked Mary all about what Forks was really like (she's from there) and how wrong they got it in the movie ... it's amusing apparently they went there, took a bunch of photos and then recreated it somewhere else.

(if you don't know what i'm talking about, don't worry about it. i'm slightly embarrassed myself, but not too much, because i don't mind feeling like a teenage girl on this particular subject. lemme tell you, i returned three of mary's books, but number four? i'll be keeping that for awhile :-) i've already read it three times!!!!!!!!!!! can you say happily ever after? cause i can, and trust me, it does not ruin the story the way television writers would have you believe ...)



so, today we're hanging out with my mom since she has the day off and she's providing fun traditional memorial day type picnic barbecue items. hmmm. yum. it's been a long time since we've been over there, and i know ben misses hanging out with his nana. she's the one person in the world who completely ignores the baby and thinks of him as the special one. (and it's not an act either, my mother really truly dislikes babies. i think ben finds that a relief to be around!)

i feel like there's a ton more, but my kids are starting to demand my attention (at the same time, of course!) so i guess i'd better go.

Stephen said that as we left town for the last time after signing all the closing papers. (It only took 15 minutes, who knew? I can't believe we drove 3 hours for like four papers.)

We were wanting to celebrate, but we ended up being hungry at like 4 p.m. so we just went to KFC and then got cheesecake later.

Mmmm. Cheesecake. We'll probably still do something else celebrate-y another day, but not too fancy because the very best thing about being rid of the house is that we can now actually start to pay down all of our debt instead of just accumulating more and more of it. It sure hurt to pass over the $12,000 check, all of which was borrowed money, but at least it was at a decent interest rate. Now our expenses are $1,100 less per month and we can actually start putting our lives back together.

Wow.

Suddenly I feel like I need something new to stress about. Things are going far too well. Surely that must mean something terrible is about to happen, right?

So our real estate agent called at 8 p.m. yesterday to tell us that we are closing for sure in 4 to 6 days. OK, nothing is REALLY for sure until it's over, but our house passed the VA inspection and somehow miraculously, the buyers managed to get financing. Of course, the orginial extension we signed from March 20 only went until tomorrow so we have to sign ANOTHER one, which is why I'm at the library using the computer, trying to print out the forms, except for the part where THEY WEREN'T THERE!!!!!!!!!

Drat. Now we have to call our agent and pester him and then find somewhere else to print them because you can only get on the library internet once per day. GRRRRRRR.

But other than this tiny snafu, things are looking very very very up around here.

Cute kids are still cute. And I think that's all I've got for right now.

Allison Rain was born at 10:26 a.m. on Tuesday, March 24. She weighed 8 pounds and 10 ounces and was 20 ½ inches long. I was 39 weeks exactly, and it was also exactly 2 weeks after the first time I tried to have her.

( Allisons birth story )

NO! No she has not. It has been 11 days of prodromal/early labor. There have been four separate occasions where contractions were timed and questions were asked, "is this it?"

no. it wasn't. it always stops. usually at about 6 a.m. i fall asleep and wake up several hours later with no baby in my arms. :-(

so my midwife has agreed to help things along by stirring me up tomorrow (only if no one else is having her baby at the same time though ... which was the case the last time we tried to do this, so that got canceled)

it's not an induction, no drugs or anything. just stripping my membranes (if they can be stripped, last time i was checked the apprentice said they were already seperated) and a more aggresive check. hopefully its enough to send angry uterus into REAL contractions that don't stop until the baby is out. (pretty much everytime i've gone 2-3 minutes apart, it's been right after a check.) in fact, the last time i was checked, she tried to be really gentle because she had someone else who was overdue who she was trying to get to go that day, and it STILL set off wicked contractions.

anyway, one of the things that really helped me feel better about how things ended up the first time was that

a) i wanted a spring baby (WE MADE IT!!!!!!!!!)

b) i really wanted my 14-year-old cousin to be there. her's was the first birth i ever saw, when i was 13, and she is like a sister to me. i would really really love if she were there when this baby comes. and last time, she had the flu. so stephen told me that maybe that's why it didn't happen. because marissa was meant to be there.

wish me luck.

no time to do individual replies, but wanted to say thanks. i talked to charlotte, the main midwife who never even came to our dress rehersal (because i never truly established active labor) about what happened and what will come next.

what she said is that she has seen this lots of times (she's been a midwife for 23 years) and it usually means either the baby or my body wasn't ready. and when it happens EARLY, as it did with me, it is totally possible for me to go all the way to my due date or perhaps even over it. but what she also said, is that every single time she's seen this, when labor starts again, it goes FAST! like, sometimes just 90 minutes after active labor starts, you have a baby in your arms.

like whoah.

so stephen and his mom have agreed that i am not to be left alone until she comes. they're taking turns :-)

So after 28 hours of labor, I get ... NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!


I made it to 6 centimeters and then bam, everything came to a screeching halt. Now I have a mild contraction every 7-10 minutes or so. Occasionally they require my attention, but mostly I can talk through them and hardly remember that they are there.

I am really really lost as to what to do now ... it's just so weird to think you're having a baby and then not get one. But she's fine and I'm fine and she is still quite early (I'm 37w2d today)

Stephen took a week off work when we thought that this was it and has decided to stay home with me and wait for her. Everyone has told me that I've already done most of the work and that leaving off with her at -1 station and being 80 percent effaced, things will probably go really quick when they pick back up again. I did clench down though, back to a 3. I'm glad I read Ina May so I knew that was even possible before it actually happened to me.

My MIL is staying close by, and Aberdeen is happening on Saturday now, with or without Stephen, because our house closes on the 20th and there just isn't any other time to push it back to. He's enlisted lots of help and is pretty sure everyone will understand if he ends up not being able to go. And if he does go and I start again while he's gone, at least his mom will be with me.

It's been a really long emotional couple of days. Here's hoping for a healthy baby girl sometime relatively soon.

So yes, I realize this post would go better if I had some new photos ... believe me, it's on my mile-long to-do list.

But somehow, in the last couple weeks, I went from people asking me if I was about to squat down and have my baby on the floor right then and there (that was at the children's museum near the end of February) to asking me if I was pregnant and then saying that I looked only 5 or 6 months!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, when I was 5 and 6 months, everyone thought I was due, and now that I'm due, I look teeny tiny!

I've definitely decided that I was carrying her transverse for my entire pregnancy, right up to 34 weeks when she finally turned vertex. Once she was head-down, she fit better and no longer stuck out so far. Now I just look cute and no one believes me that I'm 9 months already :-)

Crazy. Now if only my poor swollen ankles could hang in there another couple weeks ...

this is copy/pasted from my entry in my due date community, but i figured you guys might be interested too. sorry it repeats some information that you already know ...



36w6d today. Contractions every 3 to 5 minutes for a few hours, but they peter off when I sleep or get in the bath. I know it isn't real yet. I was only 1 centimeter at my 36 week appointment, and 0 percent effaced.

I have my next appointment this afternoon. And I'm terrified.

1. My son was born at 37 weeks and ended up in the NICU anyway.

2. My husband HAS to go out of town this Thursday. It's non-negotiable. I don't know what I'm going to do if my midwife tells me I'm at 3 today ...

3. I WANT A SPRING BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This may seem ridiculous and superficial, but this pregnancy was originally planned for May and then things went a little too well and I ended up with April 1, but it's still early March and snowing. :-(


Please send me "stay put baby" vibes.

Let's make it to the 20th at least. That's the first day of spring and I'll be 38w3d. That seems pretty safe, right?


Also, I've been musing things in my sleep recently. (I think my daughter is trying to tell me not to worry about her so much) Anyway, this came to me in a dream ... I wasn't charting back when I conceived my son. So that pregnancy was done by an LMP date. Once I started charting, I learned that I do not ovulate on day14 like textbooks say everyone does. So it's likely that my "37 weeks" baby was really only 36w3d or so ...

This baby was charted and my dates were calculated back from an ovulation date, including my lying about my LMP so that it would all match up. So my gut tells me that she's already older, bigger and stronger than my son was when he was born.

Did I mention I really wish it wasn't snowing?

It used to be that I hardly ever shopped online, because I was nervous about what kind of quality I'd get and whether it would arrive at all. But I guess I've joined the 21st century finally, because I'm finally starting to understand what it is that people see in online shopping. First, though I have about all the baby clothes that I need at the moment, I'm sure she won't stay in 0-3 months size forever. (At least I hope not!!!!) And I love the idea of ShopWiki where you can learn about what you're getting and find a bunch of different deals all side by side to find the best deal. This is considerably harder with brick and mortar stores, especially at 36 weeks pregnant while hauling around a 3 year old.

At least we don't have any big things on our list, like baby furniture because I imagine that the shipping on that would make it pretty pricy. I'm really pretty proud that we aren't going overboard getting too many things for her. I mean, she'll be sharing our room and bed, so there's just not a lot that we need.

So far, my only weakness is diapers. I wonder if ShopWiki has a page about cloth diapers? I'm afraid to look! (I'm also afraid to look at the toys and games page, because I'm a sucker for high-quality wooden baby things like puzzles and rocking horses. Again, a bunch of stuff that we don't really and don't have a ton of room for. But man, it sure is nice to browse and sigh and wish. (Says the girl who just got a ton more stuff than she could ever imagine at her baby shower on Sunday.)

(this is a sponsored post)

One homebirth coming right up!!!!!!!!!!! Sometime between today and April 15, our daughter will be arriving at home into happy loving arms.

I am 1 cm already, which is about what I expected. 0 percent effaced though, so I'm not worried that she's going to fall out in the next week or anything. (At my 36 appointment with Ben, I was 2.5 centimeters and 50 percent effaced.)

So honestly, I'm kind of expecting to go around 39 weeks. Or so. The best part about actually making it to the end of my pregnancy is that I get to go in every week and hear the progress report, at which time guesses can be reformed.

Anyone want to start a baby pool? :-)




Anyway, today is also Stephen's birthday ... I'm not real sure what we're doing yet, but I hope that it turns out well. He was pretty sad about being 28 last night ... though we did ah-hem, already celebrate ;-)

(That had been on hiatus for awhile due to my preterm contractions and also just my overall misery with the flu. So it had been about two weeks ... lemme tell you, I believe them now when they say that sex is the most effective natural induction method ever. I had so many wicked strong painful contractions afterward that I was kinda scared we'd actually booted the baby out for awhile there ...)




The house appears to be moving forward as well as can be inspected. They sent us papers to sign, which, I THINK, means they secured financing. So, uh, I guess the next step is to plan how and when we (by we I mean Stephen and whatever help he can secure) will be getting our crap out of there ...


Did I mention I still can't believe this is actually happening? It still feels like a big fog that I've dreamed up. I keep waiting for someone to jump out from behind a hidden camera and laugh for like an hour about how stupid we were to believe that our house actually was going to sell :-)


OH, and my stupid piece of crap good for nothing phone finally decided to bite it yesterday. So I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to get a new one at the busiest Verizon store I've ever seen. It was chaos. Have you ever been in a cell phone store where you had to get in line by cue (taking a number) and sit and wait for 30 minutes just to BE HELPED? After that, it then took them 50 minutes to actually help me. Anyway, I have a new phone now (same number) and though it was about $100 or so for me, it was WAY better than replacing the battery AND the charger on my old piece of crap phone that was going to be going extinct in June anyway. I hated that phone. It makes me feel so much better about this impending birth to have a phone that is dependable. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess no bad news equals good news at this point. They have a week to get qualified for a loan. (Yes, they were prequalified before making the offer.) They are declining to do an inspection, even a VA one. (?????) And as soon as they are qualified, the house will be appraised. This is I guess my only worry left. A friend of mine just had a deal fall through on her house because it appraised for less than the buyer was offering. Please oh please don't let that happen to us ... I don't even know what I would do ...

We're scheduled to close March 20. That's 12 days before I'm due people. No pressure, no pressure.

What's worse than being pregnant? Having the flu. What's worse than having the flu while pregnant? Having the flu while 35 weeks pregnant and contracting everytime you have a coughing fit.

This has been one of the most miserable weeks of my life. Only once that I can remember was I ever sicker than this, and that time I ended up in the hospital on an IV on New Years Eve, Y2K. Boo hiss.

Ben of course, caught the deadly bug too, but Stephen avoided it somehow. He teetered for a day or so, but managed not to fall deep into the sick infested yuck with the rest of us.

Luckily, since I've already been sick for an entire week, I know I'll be better enough to go to my shower on Sunday. I actually am almost feeling better enough today, but I still don't have ANY voice. I might not have it all the way back by Sunday either. That should make things interesting. We'll see how much sleep I get tonight. So far, the thing that's made this flu different from all the other flus (so asks the wise daughter) is that I've been KILLING myself to stay hydrated. I started counting so that there could be no exageration, I drink about 8 ounces of water every hour, all night long. During the day, it's slightly less, maybe 8 ounces every 90 minutes to two hours. But seriously, do you know how much that is in 24 hours? It's a wonder I don't float away!!!!

But the crazy thing is, I'm not even really forcing it, just paying attention. Every sip tastes so good in my burning throat. And sure I'm peeing every hour as well (great for sleeping, by the way) but I don't feel water-logged or bloated the way you usually do when you try to force way too much water down just to find out what will happen.

I mean, you're supossed to drink 64 ounces a day, regularly! (Know anyone who actually does? I don't.) Add to that, late pregnany (my amniotic fluid completely replaces itself every three hours at this point) AND the flu (got to flush out all those nasty buggies) and I really am using all the water. So though I've been miserable, no lives were ever in danger.

I just wish my throat would stop burning.

Strangely, even though I've been HUGE this entire pregnancy, I think these photos make me look pretty small ... almost the same size as my last shots at 29 weeks.

I was particularly excited about these ones because I found the exact same shirt that I was wearing in my only belly shots from my pregnancy with Ben and I just couldn't wait to compare them to each other and laugh about how much bigger I am this time. Except honestly, I think they're going to look about the same. Ha ha, oh well. I think it's because she is actually settled into a nice up and down position instead of fighting to be diagonal or transverse. So my belly isn't as bulging as it previously was. In some ways, it's kind of nice. :-)








Here are the shots from my first pregnancy, same shirt. Taken sometime between 27 and 34 weeks ...

http://thesynergizer.livejournal.com/260757.html



EDITED TO ADD: OK, I went back and looked and I seriously do look a ton bigger in my last photos, which were taken 5 weeks ago. Trust me, I really am bigger now, it's just that she settled into a little nook just as these shots were being taken. Maybe I'll try again next week :-)

See for yourself: http://thesynergizer.livejournal.com/358031.html