No rest for the weary...

Last night, E was having some trouble sleeping, which is not surprising as the night before was one of the best nights he had and I only got 5 hours until Daniel woke up and let me take another 3 hour nap (I love my husband!). I stayed up with E because I knew Daniel could take care of him again as he didn't have to be on campus until 1:30 today. So I actually got some sleep between 7 and 10, then fed E and at 11 was going to settle in for a 2 hour nap... or so I thought. At 11:30 the hammering started. We live on the first floor in the University Housing here, and maintenance decided that today would be a great time to finish the work they started 3 weeks ago... So they hammered from 11 to after 3 this afternoon... so much for sleep! Some day I will have a house where I won't have to worry about noisy neighbors, maintenance of surrounding apartments, or funky smells in the hallway.

Some more pictures

E after his first bath, he loved it!!
This morning he was looking so happy and content so I snapped a few pictures (ok, more than a few... but I got a few good ones!)I love this one because of the smile he has...
In this one he has just such an interesting expression.

Sense of Humor

I am under the belief that God has a sense of humor... This is just one instance that goes to support my theory.

So after E was born and we were taken to our hospital room from the labor and delivery room, I wanted to read out of the scriptures, which I try to do every day. We only had Daniel's set so as I thumbed through to find where I was in the New Testament, the first verse in Matthew (where I am currently reading) that I saw was Matthew 11:28 (King James Version) - "Come unto me all ye that labor..." at that point I just had to laugh, it was too perfect!

Welcome E!

We welcomed our oldest child E to the world on Monday, March 16th at 11:03 PM. He was 8 lbs and 13 oz, 20 inches long and has about 3/4 an inch of black hair. For those that don't want the story, you can skip to the pictures...

I woke up Sunday with contractions 8-10 minutes apart. They stayed that way most of the day, occasionally dropping to 6-7 minutes apart. After dinner they started to pick up in intensity. We finally went to the hospital at 2:30AM. At 3 when they checked me I was 4 cm dilated and 80-90% effaced. At 4:30 I was 5cm dilated. Whew, this was actually labor!!

We were taken from triage to a birth suite and waited... Hours later still at 5 cm, they tried to break my water... The attempt was probably successful, but we didn't know that until E was born. After that my contractions worsened and eventually I made it to 6 cm. At 9PM I started to feel the urge to push, and after 2 hours we had a beautiful baby boy.

39 Weeks

So apparently the nurse practioner was a little more hopeful than she should have been... From what I have learned in the past week, it is possible to be further along the progression to having a baby than I was at that time and still have weeks to go! Oh well... maybe it was a good thing so we could get everything ready instead of waiting until the last minute. It may have been a good thing because the last week was a hectic one for Daniel and I was pretty exhausted all week so we wouldn't have had much time to do Baby stuff.

A week ago we did go into the hospital because we thought we were in labor, but the contractions died down shortly after we arrived. According to the nurse who checked me there, I was only 50% effaced. I don't know about you, but well effaced to me would be more than 50% so strike 2 against the nurse practitioner last week.

I had 3 more bouts with false labor this week - the contractions would be about 5 minutes apart, getting stronger and then before they went an hour they would die back down. I think that is what is making me more anxious than anything!

At my OB appointment on Wednesday, I was 70% effaced, so apparently the false labor is doing something... Although I wished they had made some more progression than 20% effacement (maybe I'm just grumpy because 2 of the 3 times were between 5-7 AM). We'll see this Wednesday if anything has changed since then (unless Baby decides to come before then - I won't complain! - but I'm not holding my breath for it either.)

On another note, the weather this week in Madison turned out to be gorgeous for a few days, I wore a short sleeved shirt into work on Friday, and then today there is snow on the ground! I LOVE Wisconsin. Really I'm just ready for spring (and for this baby to come)!

Getting Ready Frenzy

So Friday I had an appointment at the OB office, it was with a nurse practitioner because I somehow missed scheduling this week and the OB was all full for the week... Anyway, at the appointment the nurse told us that Baby's head is pretty far down in my pelvis (no wonder I get up every hour to go to the bathroom every night), and that I was pretty well effaced. To sum it up she asked if I had an appointment for next week and then said that we have a 50/50 chance that Baby will be here before then! We were excited at that prospect, but then remembered that we still weren't ready for Baby to come...

So Friday night we went and got all the last minute things that we absolutely needed before Baby comes... Then I had an hour and a half of false labor (contractions 4-7 minutes apart, but not getting stronger then eventually fading) that night from 10:30-12 which made us glad that we had gotten the things we need, but our apt was not ready. Which made today the frenzy that it was...

Today it was laundering all the last minute items (plus all our dirty clothes) and then having our Home Teachers bring over the Cradle that Adam and Bethany are nice enough to let us borrow (thanks again!). We also cleaned out the car (way overdue) so we can put the car seat in. So when it is light tomorrow we're going to install the car seat, then we'll be as ready as we can for Baby to arrive.

Pictures

So I've had people ask about seeing pictures of me showing how pregnant I look... So here is one of me today. It is weird for me to see this view as the only mirror we have in our apartment shows only from my neck up.
While I am at posting pictures, here is one of all the people from our ward who attended the Baby Shower we had last Saturday. (Such brave souls, they came even though it was snowing!)