She is here!!

My due date of December 6th came and went and still no baby. I was scheduled to be induced on December 11th if she didn't come before then. I really didn't want to be induced because I was going to go natural and give the water birth a go. So I was hoping she would decide to come before that. December 10th rolled around and I woke up at 2:30 am feeling some weird feelings and had to go to the bathroom. I realized I was actually having contractions. I didn't really remember what contractions felt like with Alivia and I never had any contractions at home with her either so this was different for me. The contractions were not intense or very long but were about 3-5 minutes apart. To go to the hospital they like your contractions to be pretty intense and about a minute long and 3-5 minutes apart. They were uncomfortable enough that I couldn't sleep. Greg woke up around 4:30 and I told him " I think this is happening today." He went to work for about an hour to finish some things up. I was scheduled to have a prenatal visit that morning at 8:45 am, I decided to go to it because my contractions weren't extremely close together so I figured they could at least check me and see how far dilated I was. My mom came and picked Alivia up around 8 and then Greg and I headed to the hospital shortly after. I was dilated to a 4+, but my contractions had pretty much stopped since we left for the hospital. The midwife encouraged me to go home and get some rest if I could and then come back when my contractions were closer together and stronger. She thought since I was a 4+ it would go pretty quick once they started up again. I got excited and we decided to go home and try and get some rest. As soon as I stood up in the room I had another contraction and they continued to come until we got home. When we arrived home they were coming closer together and there were a few more intense ones. I was just uncomfortable and couldn't rest very well so after about a half hour I told Greg I wanted to go to the hospital. We arrived there between 10:30 and 11:00 am and they admitted me. I told them I wanted a water birth and figured they'd start filling the tub up, but they didn't get to that real soon. Well to make a long story shorter, I labored for a couple hours, they checked me and I was only a 5. So I had been having more intense contractions for a couple hours with not much progression. Suddenly I felt a little de ja vu. I started to feel a bit discouraged, but continued laboring after a bit we decided to have my water broken to help things progress a little. When the midwife went to break my water she discovered meconium in my amniotic fluid and she said there wasn't really a sack to break, so my water must have broken before without me knowing. So with the meconium a water birth was no longer an option. I still wanted to labor in the tub though to see if that would be more relaxing. So I labored in the tub and by this time I was having a harder and harder time coping with my contractions. I was getting discouraged  because I felt like this was taking a long time. They checked me a few hours later and I was at a 6 then I eventually got to an 8 1/2. It was getting harder and harder and I was growing tired. I got stuck at an 8 1/2 for awhile and they started talking about giving me pitocin so my contractions would be stronger and closer together. The baby was also turned a little bit so that made things a little harder and weren't progressing very well. I told them I didn't want pitocin cause I couldn't deal with harder contractions. I ended up getting an epidural because things just weren't progressing, I was tired and I wanted to enjoy the birth of my baby. I got the epidural around 6 pm and felt so relieved after and I finally got some rest. The midwife was going off her shift at 7, and she really wanted to see this baby be born since she had been there the whole time with us. So she checked me about 6:50 and I was ready to go. So I pushed and she was born at 7:03. I was so relieved that I got the epidural because I felt the midwife pulling and tugging on the baby. She had to help her out quite a bit. Then I ended up tearing and bleeding quite a bit so it was nice to not worry about all that pain. I saw my beautiful little girl and was so happy to finally have her here. They immediately put her on my chest and I held her and was filled with this intense love and gratitude. She was beautiful. I thought she looked just like Alivia, but then later realized how she was her own person with her own little features and actually looked quite different. She is now almost 3 weeks old and time is going so fast. We are loving having this sweet babe in our family.

37 Weeks 4 Days

I still haven't taken anymore pictures of the baby bump, but I am now 37 1/2 weeks. Things are going well. I am sleeping much better this pregnancy than the last. I'm still kind of in shock that I'm going to have another baby in less than a month, but I'm also really excited to hold this little babe.

About a month ago I decided to switch from my doctor to a midwife. I've just never felt that connected to my doctor and I started thinking about my birth plan and what I wanted. I really want to give it another go at a unmedicated birth and I didn't feel like she was on the same page as me. So I switched to the midwives at IMC. So far I have loved it. It is a little different because it is just a group of them so you don't meet with one specific one, but so far I've enjoyed each one that I've met with. We are also going to have a doula. I haven't felt as prepared for this birth and I heard really good things about this doula so I figured it would be good to have her there to help me through the labor. They now have an option for laboring and giving birth in the water at IMC and I am going to try that. I'll at least try laboring in the water and see how that goes.

Sometimes I don't feel ready at all for this baby to come and other times I just want her here right now. It is hard not knowing how it will all happen and when it will happen. We are excited though and I think Alivia will be a great big sister.

24 Weeks

Well I'm actually now almost 27 weeks, but Greg took a couple pictures of me at 24 weeks so I figure I should post them on this blog. I'm really not thrilled to ever have my picture taken at this point in my life, but I do think it is good to document things. So here are just a couple pictures of me at 24 weeks. Currently things are going well with this pregnancy my only complaint is at night time I have a hard time sleeping. I think I have a little bit of restless leg syndrome so I have a hard time falling asleep at night. I'm going to try to do more exercising and see if that helps. Other than that things are great. I'm excited to meet this little one and see what she looks like. It will be nice to have a newborn again in so many ways. I'm sure it will be difficult but I am looking forward to it.

It's a Girl!!!

We found out on July 18th that our second little bundle of joy will be a girl. We are excited to add another sweet girl to our family. The only bummer for me is if it was a boy I was looking forward to having to buy more clothes. During our ultra sound they focused a lot on all the important body parts and kind of skimmed past the girl parts. She asked us if we wanted to know and we said yes and so she got a picture of the legs and said "looks like a girl" and then moved on to some other body part. So it wasn't as exciting to find out and I wasn't totally convinced so I asked her again at the end if she thought it was a girl for sure and she said "yep looks like a girl". Anyway they had to have a dr come in because they couldn't get great pictures of the heart. He still couldn't get them so they said I needed to come back in about two weeks. When I went back I asked them to double check if it was a girl cause I wasn't really convinced by the other sonographer. She showed me and said yes it is a girl. I was finally convinced.

19 Weeks

I'm now 19 weeks pregnant. I haven't been great at documenting this pregnancy for a couple reasons. One is that it is going pretty quickly as I chase a little toddler around so I don't pay attention to the weeks as much. Another is I just feel really fat and don't really feel pregnant. I'm just barely starting to notice some movements inside. So for the second reason I haven't taken any pictures either. Part of the reason I don't really feel pregnant and I just feel fat though is that it has been a pretty easy pregnancy. I only threw up a couple times and have really been feeling fine other than being tired. I am getting pretty excited to see what this little one looks like. It seems like a lot of people around me are having babies right now and it makes me anxious to meet this little one. We will find out the gender of the baby in 3 days so we are excited for that. Maybe that will make it feel a little more real.

Our friends Barry and Megan Schenk are having a baby boy (their 2nd) just a few days before us. Well I guess we never know when either of us will have the babies, but I think our first babies both came on their due dates. They are due December 3rd and we are due the 6th. Our friends Steve and Lindsay Tingey are going to be induced this Thursday the 18th with their second baby. Their first is a girl and this one is a boy. We are pretty excited for them.

Sleeping is beginning to be a bit uncomfortable since I can't really sleep on my back anymore and I'm waking up multiple times a night to go to the bathroom. So far my record is 4 times in 6 hours.

I think those are all the updates for now. So until Thursday when we have our ultra sound.

Ready or Not Here Comes Baby #2

It has been about three weeks since we found out we were pregnant again. We weren't really trying to have another but we weren't stopping it either, we figured we wouldn't prevent it and it would happen when it was right. It just so happens it happened a lot faster than we thought. So it was the beginning of April when I started thinking that I was pregnant. I was going to wait a little bit to take a test, but I'm not very good at waiting so April 2nd I went to the gym and on the way home I texted Greg to see if I should get a home pregnancy test. He said it was up to me, therefore I got one. I took the test waiting on the bed with Alivia and then Greg went into the bathroom to see the results. He sounded really calm and then said "what is it supposed to say?" and I told him either "pregnant" or "not pregnant" and he so calmly said "it says pregnant." I didn't know whether to believe him or not. I was having mixed emotions this whole time. Part of me was getting excited because I was feeling baby hungry for awhile. The other part of me was scared to death of raising two kids and I also felt bad that Alivia wouldn't get all our attention anymore, but then I know I'd be kind of heartbroken if it was negative. So I went into the bathroom to see for myself and he wasn't lying it said "pregnant" the first words that came out of my mouth were "holy crap!" I know not the best words to say but I had so many different feelings going on inside. I was excited, yet scared. I actually kind of struggled with the idea of having another baby for a few days. I was just sad that in 8 months or so Alivia would have to share her attention and time and I wouldn't be able to give all my focus and attention to her, but I know it will be good and I'm getting more excited as the days go on. 

The sad thing is just about a month before all this Ney and Lynn told us they were expecting and would be due the end of October. So this would make our babies about 6 weeks apart or so, but just a few days after us finding out we were pregnant they found out that Ney miscarried. We felt bad for them because of how hard that would be to be so excited to welcome a baby and then have it just go away like that. I can't imagine how hard that would be to go through. We were also sad because we were excited to have babies so close together. I hope that they can get pregnant again soon.

Just last week we went to lunch with Barry and Megan Schenk and they told us that they are expecting and they are due end of November or beginning of December. We are excited for them, they have been trying for some time. This will be their second baby. I was excited that we were due about the same time, but we haven't told anyone yet and we wanted that moment to be theirs. 

Anyway so that is how we found out. It's weird because I don't feel pregnant at all, I didn't really with Alivia either. Which is nice but it's also scary to me cause I feel more paranoid that I'll miscarry.