Westyn stats update

My Mom and I took Westyn to her 2 week appt this afternoon to get her 2nd PKU heel shot and she has put on 1 full pound since her birth and has grown 1/2 an inch! As most Moms know this is not the norm when it comes to a newborn's birth weight but I am absolutely ecstatic... My most dreaded situation when it came to having a baby was breastfeeding and since she is putting on so much weight I now have nothing to worry about. Last week she was 8.4 (3 oz. over her birth weight at 6 days old when most baby's are still under their birth weight) and in 7 days she has gained 12 ounces when the normal weight gain is an ounce a day. Yippee! I literally feel like super woman and know that my sleepless nights of constantly feeding this little monster are well worth it.

Is this the begining of a lifetime of bragging about my child?

Dinner with the grandparents

This weekend Troy's dad and his wife came to visit from South Carolina to meet their new grandaughter and so we thought we would invite all of the grandparents over for dinner last night for a mini get-together. Since I am definitely not up for cooking yet my Mom (of course) made a huge spinach salad and dessert and we got some Papa Murphy's pizza's. It was nice and relaxing and we were still able to watch the Sounders win their 2nd game. I think we probably went through about 5 bottles of wine seeing that Troy and I are the offspring of a bunch of winos.

Here are some pics from last night.

This picture is from this morning after Westyn had a major blowout in her diaper. (Misty - I now know what you've been talking about.)

The details

This is how it went down...

Tuesday night (3/17) at around 10:15 my water broke and shocked the hell out of me. I absolutely was not expecting this but was hoping that it would happen this way so that I would know for sure that I was in labor. I had been having super sharp pains all evening but didn't think they were labor pains and still don't think they were. We were getting ready for bed and luckily I was in the bathroom when my water broke. Troy started running around like a madman and grabbed the suitcase, put it in the car and changed before I had even thought about what exactly was happening. I thought I would just dink around for a few minutes making sure I had everything I needed - I was obviously in complete denial. We called the on-call doc and she said to come in right away so we drove to Swedish and since it was around 10:20 there was no traffice - thank god. I immediately went to triage and I was dialated to a 4 even though my contractions weren't painful at all and they then set us up with the most amazing birthing suite we could ask for. They started me on pitocin since there is more risk for infection when your water breaks and they wanted to speed up the contractions and make them more intense. About 3 hrs after that I finally asked for the epidural and was so relieved when I did as I had miserable back labor since she was facing my spine.

I started progessing quite fast and before we knew it I was dialted to a 7 and then a few hours after that a 10 - when you're a 10 you start pushing. But no... not me. They wanted me to labor down for a few hours (it was about 7am by this time) which means they let the baby progress down the birth canal a bit more without me pushing. Finally at 10am I started pushing and three hours later we had a beautiful baby girl. Troy was an absolute super star the whole time; it was only him and the nurse with me in the room for about 2 1/2 hours while I was pushing and then the doctor made an appearance. Troy was in charge of telling the nurse when I was peaking in contractions and he was really doing most of the work, besides me of course.

It was the most amazing day of our lives. Now that we have a child together that is equal parts him and me it really is incredible.

Here are a few more pics that I have taken in the last couple of days along with another hospital pic.

Welcome to the world Westyn Marie..

She was born Wednesday March 18th at 12:59 in the afternoon after about 16 hours labor. She weighed in at 8 lbs 1 oz and 21 inches long. She is the most beautiful thing we have ever seen and Troy and I can't believe our eyes every time we look at her

I'll post more about the day once I get some time to breathe.

Thanks everyone for thinking of me.

280 days and counting...

If you notice the little baby ticker on the upper right side of my blog you will see that time has apparently ran out. But that's not the case..... she's still in there sitting pretty and doesn't want to come out. I've been having quite a bit of contrations but of course nothing to start timing. Obviously all the natural induction practices that I wrote about a few days ago are all just wives tales and really don't work at all.

I have my next Dr's appointment on Wednesday but I'm really hoping I don't make it that far, and if I do and I have dialated some more he will strip my membrane (sory for the gross phrase) to get things moving. This is when he places his finger through my cervix and sweeps the amniotic membrane free of its attachment to the lower part of my uterus. This will then release the natural hormone called prostaglandins which will start my contractions for labor. We asked him when he would chemically induce me and he said that if even if I'm a week late or more and my vitals and the babys' are fine then he would let me keep going - but once I get to 2 weeks overdue then they would induce me. The reason for the hesitation is because once they use pitocin for induction there is a higher risk for c-section.

So, that's all for now. Hopefully you won't hear from me for a few days which would mean that I'm in the hospital.

Is no news good news?

Yeah you got it....no news.

Seriously..

.... that's all I can say right now due to the fact that I am 39 weeks pregnant and driving myself literally insane. I can't sit still and I can only google "natural ways to induce labor" so many times until I've read the same article over and over again. There are some pretty funny things they say to do though; stimulate your nipples every 20 minutes, go on bumpy car rides, drink raspberry tea????? I went on a rather rigorous 4 mile walk with my Mom this morning on the trail where we take the dogs and I swear I thought the baby was either going to fall out of me or I was going to pee my pants, but if this helps to get things moving along then I will be on that trail 4 times a day weights in hand.

Ugh.

Photo shoot

So I wasn't going to get any maternity pictures taken until my neighbor Deb who is a photographer http://www.brandnewsoul.com/ asked me if I would be her guinea pig so she could try out some new accessories/backdrops she had purchased for her studio. Of course I said yes, who can turn down a free photo session??? Not me. She will have them available for me to look at in a few weeks but sent me a sample this afternoon. What do you think???

Almost there

Today marks the beginning of my 38th week - yippee!! I wish I could report on some progress over the weekend but unfortunately there has been nothing new. I have been feeling a lot more intense sharp pains in the very low region so hopefully this means something interesting is happening. I have my next appointment on Thursday so maybe there wil be some news, keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime here are some pictures of Troy and I in the nursery and one of me at about 38 weeks, make-up free and just about ready to fall asleep - I look rather hot if I say so myself.