Belated

I've been neglectful of my blog and my friends. Mostly I blame my dial-up connection which disconnects every 5 minutes or so. But life has also taken over.

Without further ado, my pregnancy went overdue, despite all of my attempts with Evening Primrose Oil, Raspberry Leaf Tea,Chiropractic treatments and sitting on the exercise ball for HOURS.

After a biophysical profile on the morning of January 24th, I had sort of resigned myself to the fact that I would need to be induced in the hospital on Monday, January 26th. The tech had estimated baby's weight to be 8 lbs 15 oz and he scored well, so they sent me home. On Saturday afternoon, I took Campbell to his hockey practice and when I was going up and down the stairs to get to the dressing room, I found that I felt a lot of pressure in my pelvis every time the baby moved, but this wasn't new. I let the other parents know that I was feeling uncomfortable and that Damon would be coming in to help Campbell get his skates off and carry his bag to the van.

Hanna was sick and sleeping in our bed, and her tossing and crying woke me
up at about 3 am. I got up to go pee and felt a mild contraction. I lay back
down in the bed and noticed that about 10 minutes later, I had another. They
were getting more intense, so I eventually sat on my labour ball to see if
they were going to amount to anything. They were sporadic at first, 10 min.
then 7, then 13, then 15. Finally at 4 am, I had 3 in a row that were 5 min.
apart. I called the midwife at 4:20 and she said she would come soon. I was
very apologetic and said that I really hoped that I wasn't waking her up for
a false alarm. I could still talk through them. During the time I was
waiting for her, my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and getting much
more intense. I could already feel a lot of pressure.

She arrived at about 4:45. She checked me and said that I was 4-5 cm. She
called the second midwife to come because she didn't think it would be long.
I got into the shower and I felt okay in there, but after a while I felt
like I needed to get out and find a different position. As the second
midwife arrived, I lay on my bed and asked the midwife if she could just
break my water to relieve the pressure. She said that she would like to wait
15 more minutes in hopes that I would be on the other side of 5 cm (I didn't
do the GBS test, so they didn't want my water broken for a long time). The
next contraction I had, my water broke. She checked me and I was fully
dilated. The pressure didn't really let up, but at least with each
contraction I felt like I could squeeze a bit and feel the baby moving down
and this made things more bearable. I stayed on my side, but then I got the
urge to push and was in a panic because I couldn't find a comfortable
position. Finally I got on my knees and held my headboard and after a couple
of pushes the baby's head was out. He began crying before I even pushed his
shoulders out.

After 1 hour and 40 minutes of labour, Griffin Matthew Samuel was born at home on Sunday, January 25th. He weighed 8 lbs 14 oz.



Matt woke the kids up and they all came in to meet him while the second midwife was packing up. The kids are all smitten with him. Especially Patrick and Damon, they would hold him all day if they could.



It took us all day to decide on his name, but finally I didn't want to think
about it any more, so I just wrote down Griffin. lol I hope I don't have
regrets.

Having a home birth was great. I can't say that it was necessarily a wonderful labour because it was a bit too quick, but because of that it just made so much more sense to stay home. I can't imagine how I would have managed to get ready to go to the hospital (leaving sick children behind), gotten there and stood around waiting to be taken care of when I was feeling such intense pain. I even wonder if I might not have made it there in time anyway. And for me, nothing beats climbing into your own bed with your kids all around you after you've given birth. People have been bringing me food (that I conveniently stocked the fridge full of) and boxes of chocolates! That sure beats hospital food.

So far he is a very easy baby, a good sleeper, a great nurser and he lies
awake for long periods watching us all look at him. We feel very blessed.

Our little dancing queen

Kira is in her second year of ballet, and her first year of tap class. At her recent open house, I noticed how careful she was about her technique. Some of the girls in the class knew the dances by heart and would announce the next step before they had even gotten to that point. Kira very quietly follows the class, paying special attention to using her "yes yes" toes, following through with the WHOLE movement and in tap she is very careful about whether it was toe-heel, or heel-toe.

Very scary!

We had about a dozen decent sized pumpkins that we had kept for fall and halloween decoration, but we were all sick and tired, so in the end, only the 3 youngest carved a pumpkin each and the older 2 boys fell asleep instead. We even had a giant pumpkin that I had planned to carve "HAPPY HALLOWEEN" into. So we didn't bother, and I guess it doesn't matter anyway, nobody can see our house from the road and last year we didn't get ANY trick-or-treaters.

The 4 younger kids went out trick or treating in town this year. Patrick, being too old to be seen with his family, and too shy to go out with the group of boys and girls from school, stayed home and gave out candy. We had a whopping ONE clown at our door.

Hanna was the cutest butterfly ever. I need to get her to wear her costume again with the hood on, she got a lot of attention and was absolutely adorable. Kira was an "EVIL" witch complete with black nails, lipstick and a big ugly black wart on her face. I wish that Matt had taken a better photo of her make up job. Campbell wore the good old twice-handed-down zombie costume and got a lot of feedback on how good his costume was. Damon was Zorro, the masked avenger. All we got was a quick photo as they came out of the house to get into the van.




I wore my halloween shirt (it has a witch design on the front), black stretchy maternity pants and my black fur coat. Matt said that my orange belly sticking out the front of the black outfit looked freakishly huge. So we had to document it.



SCARY!!!!

Next year I want to have a Halloween party for Damon and Patrick's friends. Seriously, we have a graveyard. Manhunt in the halloween decorated graveyard! How cool would that be!

Thursday, on the way to take Damon to the family doctor.

Kira: Mommy, I think that I want to be a family doctor when I grow up.
Me: That's great Kira, I'm sure you would be a great family doctor, and we sure do need more of them.
Kira: Then nobody in my family would need to worry, I could take care of everybody.

The following Tuesday, after picking up a post-hockey game snack for Patrick at McDonald's drive-thru.

Kira: Mommy, maybe I DON'T want to be a family doctor. Do you know what I want to be instead?
Me: No, what do you want to be then?
Kira: I think I'll work at McDonald's in the drive thru! It's fun.
Me: Hmm Kira, that would be fun!

24 week belly shot

The camera is balanced on my faucet, hence the lack of a head.

Pregnancy update.

I got my amnio results back last week and I'm thrilled that our baby boy has a perfect set of chromosomes.

Eggs-ellent news!

After months of waiting, we have eggs! 2 eggs in our first day! Both of them were laid by pretty little Buff Catalana hens like the one in front in this photo. Now I'm eager to start seeing some blue and brown eggs too.