Starting all over again...

Call me inexperienced, but even after two previous newborns, I'm still at a loss as to how to get this newborn on a schedule! I'm sure that will happen every time, but so far she kind of has just been throwing us for a loop everyday. One night she ate every four hours on the dot and I only had to get up twice. I woke up the next morning after a good 6-8 hours of sleep pieced together and I thought I had it made. Then last night, I fed her at around 10 as we were going to bed, and she got on a "eat, fall asleep while eating, poop my pants, wake up while getting changed and burped and want to eat again" cycle until quarter to five the next morning. I got like maybe 20 minutes of sleep all together? We'll see what tonight brings. She's squirming somewhat contentedly on a blanket right now and I'm just going to leave her as long as I can in hopes that it will help her sleep when I do feed her. One nice thing is she squawks a lot, but doesn't scream and scream (at least not yet), and stays rather pleasant while she's awake for the most part. That is until you try to leave her in the crib and turn the lights off or anything silly like that.
Couple of things I have learned so far about her:

• She doesn't like the pacifier much, sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't, but hasn't taken to it a whole lot. Just as long as she doesn't find her fingers like Linus did, I'm okay with that (still haven't broken that habit with Linus yet!)
• She definitely likes to be swaddled when she's tired.
• She doesn't fit into any 0-3 month sized clothes like her sister did yet, so I have hardly any newborn sized stuff that she can wear. I'm hesitant to get much, though, because she's going to grow out of it quickly I'm sure, but she swims in just about everything she wears.
  
• I make way too much milk. I think it's helped with engorgement that she doesn't eat that much, so my body stops producing quite so much, but she doesn't eat like her brother and sister did.
  
• She likes to be held on her back with hands supporting her head. She totally chills out whenever placed in this position
• She gets the hiccups a lot, just like when she was still in my tummy!
• She poops in every diaper. Good for getting rid of her jaundice, but we are going through way too many diapers!
• She is really quite pretty, in my unbiased opinion. I can't wait to get some quality newborn shots of her, when I can clean up her room a bit (it's a mess) and not be a feeding machine long enough to get some creative shots. I have a lot of ideas, who knows if I'll get to all of them, but I'm excited to have another model to play with at home!
• She brings a very sweet, unexplainable spirit into our home that I am grateful for. I am completely smitten with her. :-)
  

Whew

Before I begin, if you're looking for pictures, they'll be in the following posts. I haven't had time to really take many besides the ones we got at the hospital and I'm really bad at taking pictures when people come to visit because I just want to talk and not be up in people's faces with my camera. So I will try to condense the "birth story" and current conditions into one medium sized post. :-)
Tuesday, August 10th at around 7:00 in the evening I started with some contractions that felt different then braxton-hicks ones. They were low and crampy and getting increasingly more painful. I wasn't breathing through them yet, so we continued on with our evening as usual. They weren't really getting that much closer together as the night went on, but they were certainly getting more painful. We went to bed at around 10 p.m. and I tried to sleep unsuccessfully. That was the first clue to me that we'd be heading to the hospital before too long because I couldn't sleep through the contractions. They were more uncomfortable when I was lying down, so around I think about 1 in the morning I went and sat in my rocking chair to time them for an hour. When I was sitting and/or standing, they started coming about 4-7 minutes apart. By then I was getting very tired, so I went to lie down again. Still no sleep, and the contractions would slow down when I was lying down to about 8-12 minutes apart, but they were stronger when they did come. I decided to just wait it out as long as I could (at this point I was definitely breathing through almost every contraction) and around 6:30 I was ready to head to the hospital. We showed up at MCR and the nurse there (who also happened to be a parent of some of the kids I teach at school) measured me at a whopping "stretchy" 4cm (which means that it's really about 3 cm, but when stretched became 4), 80% effaced. My heart sunk, I was fully expecting to be much further along than that and the thought of going back home with how uncomfortable and painful my contractions were getting was disheartening, to say the least. However, for some strange reason the doctor on call there (unfortunately Wednesdays are my doctor's day off and so she wasn't able to deliver this time) admitted me anyway and was confident that my contractions were dilating my cervix. But I still was apprehensive because I knew I had a long ways to go. Once we were in a room and I was changed, I labored in bed for a while- the contractions didn't seem to be coming on very quickly nor were they getting closer together. So we were instructed to walk around some. As soon as I started walking, they jumped right back up to 3-5 minutes apart. I took a cup of ice with me as we would walk and munch on it and actually walking helped me work through the contractions a little better, if I breathed through each one and just kept walking. After about 40 minutes, they hooked me up again and within a short while they were back down to 8-10 minutes apart. So we went walking again, same results, back in bed, same results. At around noon, they measured me again and I had progressed to 5 cm, which was good news because the nurse had mentioned the possibility of getting sent home still. So we made a plan to speed things up. Dr. S (the doctor on call) was confident that if he broke my waters that it would kick start me into stronger labor, so I decided to get an epidural and then as soon as it was administered, he came in and broke my water. Craig was just chillin' the whole time- we tried to watch a movie for a while, but the little remote they have at the hospital was the only source of sound coming from the TV, so it was virtually inpossible for the two of us to hear it at the same time. So two hours passed by while Craig watched Inkheart (apparently it wasn't very good) and thankfully the epidural was doing it's job because I konked out between contractions for a while. But they still weren't coming on very fast and after measuring me again, I was still at 5 cm. The next step was starting pitocin in my IV (so glad I had the epidural by then). Again, just a little bit because surely my body would take to it quickly. Half an hour later they had to up the dose again, I guess my uterus just wasn't getting the clue. After they upped the pitocin, though, suddenly my body got the picture and I was contracting about every 2-3 minutes. By this time it was about quarter to four and after that short hour and 15 minutes, I went from 5 cm to 9.5 cm (again, SO glad I had the epidural!). The warming tray was brought out and Dr. S was on his way over to see if we were ready. He checked me and asked if I wanted to try pushing, so I did once the next contraction came- he stopped me abruptly and said that we were ready and he needed to go get his gloves on. On a side note, the clot was continuing it's passage the entire time- and there was a LOT still left in there. At one point the nurse said I passed a good 6cm sized chunk of it, and that wasn't even the half of what came out. It must have been huge when it happened back at 14 weeks for it to be that much. After the doctor was ready, I pushed and bore down and the head came out, pushed again and the rest of her was out. Quite simple, quite painless, and she was a good healthy baby when she came out! She had some meconium *yuck* stuck in her lungs a bit that they had to suck out of there and then she just cried and cried and cried. They put her on my chest and wanted as much skin to skin contact as we could get- she was pretty ucked up in her breathing so they didn't want me nursing quite yet, but apparently the skin to skin contact really helps them work everything out when they're all gunked up. After a few minutes, I was able to nurse and after about an hour, we were moved to our postpartum room. Aside from it being rather long, it was probably my easiest delivery so far. So the clot passed with the delivery and for some strange reason, they couldn't find the cyst on the placenta/cord afterwards. He said the placenta looked healthy and there was an area that might have been where it was, but he didn't see anything that looked like a giant cyst. Huh. But he sent it in for my doctor to look at and I'll have to ask Dr. B at my six week visit what she concluded. So all that stress and worry and more stress and more worry and more stress and more worry for a healthy, beautiful girl in the end. Was it worth it? OF COURSE.
Odell has brought a very, very sweet spirit in our home so far. She's a pretty good baby, she hasn't been a screamer much and she loves to be held and cuddled. Her bellyruben (sp???) levels were high at the hospital, so she's had a few more blood draws since then. She looks yellow, but not any more than my other kids were and the more she feeds and the more she poops the better she looks. :-) Nursing is going...well, it's going. I had to resort to the breast-shield finally and am a bit more healed than I was, so I'm stating to try to take it off for a few feeds a day. She's eating really well, though. She eats about every 3-5 hours generally if she's sleepy, and will have a good cluster feed for an hour or two in an 18-24 hour span. So far they've usually happened at night, so from about 1-6 in the morning I don't get a lot of restful sleep. But she sleeps a lot during the day, which has helped in transitioning my other young ones to having a baby around and helped me keep my sanity a little more. I have definitely, unfortunately, sunk into some baby blues the last couple of days. I did with Chloe for about two weeks after she was born, didn't have a problem with Linus in that regard at all, but for some reason it's back with avengence this time around. It's pretty manageable during the day when the sun is out and I am occupied with the kids. But once night comes around, it feels like my heart kind of sets with the sun and I just start crying over everything. Craig has been very helpful this time around and just tries to be cheerful and help wherever he can with the baby and the other kids so I can recover how I need to. I'm not even sure what I'm crying about half the time, I just feel bad and depressed for no reason at all. Sometimes it's like someone put a magnifying glass on my faults, especially as a mother, and then turned up my water works full blast. Other times I just have to think about anything that involves emotion at all (which is basically everything) and the tears just squirt out. A couple things that I know have and will help me if I continue to do them:

• Read my scriptures or listen to conference talks or do something spiritual as frequently as I can
• Spend quality time with Craig when I'm around him
• Sleep when I can- the fatigue brings it on a lot quicker
• Eat good food and not junk all the time...and chocolate doesn't help anything, despite what my stomach is trying to tell me
• Spend time with my older two: the more quality time I can spend with them, the less misbehaving they do, and the happier we all become

Garrr...Odell had her blood checked on Saturday and the Youth Clinic called me back just now to tell me her levels were still high and that she should have gone in yesterday to get checked again, but to make sure she gets in touch with her doctor now as soon as possible. Thanks for telling me now! So that's all I have to report now, I'll try to find some time to get some decent newborn pictures and actually make an announcement to send out this time! Thanks for all the congrats and warm wishes. :-)

Odell Ann Ellingson

Born August 11th, 2010 at 4:03 p.m. Weighed 7lbs 13 oz (our smallest baby yet!), 21 inches long, and 14.5 inch head circumference. After a two night stay in the hospital and a couple of visitors, we are home now and happy and healthy! I won't post the labor story here yet, but I will post a couple of pictures. Expect more. Lots more.

38 weeks shouldn't feel like "overdue"...

...but unfortunately it does. I guess I can't say that because I've never actually made it all the way to 40 weeks, and I'm not really qualified to know what "overdue" feels like, however, I know what "I'm DONE being pregnant feels like!". It's amazing how quickly you can go from spending so much energy worrying about the baby coming early to spending so much energy wishing it would happen, like, now. I think my anticipation may have something to do with the fact that I finally am getting the last minute baby things done, so I feel like now that my checklist is getting accomplished that it's the baby's turn to checkout.
One thing is "checking out", though- that stupid clot! I thought I was passing the mucus plug...which I may have passed as well, this last weekend, but I have also been saying goodbye and good riddance to one of the unwelcome and long overstayed guests in my baby's home these last 6 1/2 months (the cyst being the other unwelcome visitor, but that one won't be out until the baby is). My doctor said that once I start dilating I would probably finish passing the clot, but that as long as it was dark (just like last time) than it would be okay. I really have no idea how much of it is left, but I guess it will just keep passing it until the baby comes. I'm hoping that means I'm past 2 cm dilated, though. My doctor's schedule has been really busy, so even though tomorrow is a week since my last appointment, Friday is my next scheduled visit, so if I haven't gone by then, I'll find out how much I've progressed at that point.
Anyway. Enjoy my fat 9 month picture! I won't show you the other ones Craig took of me from an ant's view- I'm like preg-zilla in those. I've never been very good at getting good "growing" pictures during pregnancy, but we always manage to get one when I'm huge at the very end! Because that's what I want to remember, right? :-) Also, I'm sworn to secrecy upon my immediate death if I break trust, but Craig and I sat down and narrowed down a few names that we like finally last night, boy and girl. Is it weird that I always feel like someone is asking me a really personal question when they ask if we have any names picked out? Especially when I don't know them well. I know I am one of the few who feels this way, but both Craig and I felt like with all of our pregnancies that a lot of people sort of give it all away before the baby is even born, and then all you're really finding out at the end is how much they weighed and how long they were when they came out. But I can also see, I guess, how knowing the gender and name and everything would help you connect more to the baby during pregnancy. Maybe we just like surprises. In any case, if you ask me, I'll give you a vague, non-definite answer, but there are names that we like, you'll just have to find out what we decided once the baby comes (and honestly, we don't really decide until it comes, we found that we think one thing beforehand and then think something completely different afterwards...). My contractions have been getting stronger...well, more like my strong contractions are coming more frequently, but I get so busy sometimes that I don't keep very careful track. Which to me just reminds me that I'm not ready yet, otherwise those contractions would be strong enough to prevent me from being busy. I've gone nesting crazy, but my energy level is also zapping away quickly, so my projects around the house are getting smaller as I go along. I've been using the bathroom about every hour-hour and a half, and it's getting tiring feeling like I'm about ready to wet myself urgently, and then I rush to the bathroom to just tinkle out a little tiny bit. This baby must be squishing the heck out of my bladder. All the furniture is up in the baby room (sorry, still haven't got good pictures yet...), I just need to go buy some darkening material and hem the curtains that I have for the window and it will be done in there. I was going to go out this morning with the kids to pick up the material and maybe a few small canvasses for painting some cute things to hang up in the room, but I started passing the clot a little more heavily and I had a sudden image flash through my head of my waters breaking with both of the kids with me in the isle at Jo-Annes...so I decided to play it low today and just let Craig help me with that later. We also packed my bag and cleaned out the baby carseat yesterday. We're not sure where to put it though- anyone out there with a Honda Pilot and three kids in carseats have any good advice on where to put the kids? No matter where we put them, it's going to be inconvenient for getting at least one of them in on a regular basis. Oh well, we'll figure it out I'm sure.
If I'm lucky, my next post will be loaded with akward mommy-in-a-hospital-robe-completely-exhausted-and/or-drugged-with-naked-pink-baby photos! ....but I probably just jinxed myself by saying that, so don't count on it...

Hip Pain

It might be kinda silly bringing this up now that I only have a few weeks left of this pregnancy, but anyone out there that had hip pain during pregnancy and have any good alleviating remedies they'd like to share? I didn't have any hip pain with Chloe...maybe had some soreness in my back with Linus, but with this one, from about 4-5 months on I've had popping, very sore hips. At first I thought I did something wrong, because it was right around the time that I had to be on bed rest, and so anytime I felt the pain, I would go lie down and try to rest it off. I found, however, that sometimes lying in bed too long made it worse, especially if I wasn't burying myself in pillows for body support. I know that it's common to have hip pain when when relaxin is released in the body and causes joints to be looser, particularly in the hips- I just want to know how to ease the pain so my body can keep up with my nesting! :-) I swept and mopped all our floors today, underneath the couches and toy area and bathrooms and everything...and now I can barely move! It's always a struggle when I wake up to use the bathroom at night and I have to sit in bed and debate for a while if the pain it will take to get out of bed and to the bathroom is worth releasing the pain in my bladder. Rolling over in bed is always a large chore. And most mornings, even when I'm taking it easy, I have to hobble around for a while before the pain when walking or standing is bearable enough to do a few things. I've tried Tylenol, and haven't used it enough to conclusively determine if it's working or not...and I tend to be the type of person that won't take a pill unless I have to, mostly because I think it's easy for me to become dependent on things, and I don't particularly like that. But like I said, the sweeping and mopping was just the beginning and if I don't do something about these hips, the rest of my house won't get much love for a while.
On a lighter note, discovered a few very handy things last night and today. Going out with the kids is much easier when I can lift, particularly Linus, into his carseat instead of forcefully verbally coaxing him in there and waiting impatiently as he touches every button and pocket hole and cup holder and light on his way into the carseat (sometimes a 5-10 minute ordeal). Time-outs have suddenly also regained their meaning in Linus's life as well (can you tell I have an active two year old boy?). Last night after he and Chloe had a tiff which ended in Chloe screaming at Linus and Linus in turn hitting Chloe in the face, Chloe moped her way to time-out without my help, as she usually does, but when Linus giggled madly and tried to make me chase him around the house like he frequently does when he knows he's in trouble, he was sorely disappointed when the chase ended abruptly and I stopped him mid-track and carried him myself to time-out. Also it was VERY refreshing to be able to push some of the couches (light ones) around myself and not have to wait for the evening when I have no energy for my husband to do it for me so I could clean this morning. I haven't swept or mopped under those couches for a while: I found about 15 lost lego pieces, a few fake food toys for the play kitchen, a very old and very dirty fruitsnack which Linus tried to eat before I stopped him, a lost Memory game card, a wide assortment of dead bugs (didn't know we had that big of a range of bugs living with us, good to know I guess...), a plastic coin for the toy cash register, 17 of the 26 alphabet puzzle pieces (still missing "O" unfortunately) and two animals from the farm puzzle, and a very large spider web with spider homeowner in tow (with his decaying food from the last few months) who unfortunately lost his home...and his life today (he was a big sucker too, I usually try not to kill bugs in my house if I don't have to, but judging from the large array of dead bugs in his web, it looks like he lived a comfortable life and didn't want for much, so I decided having a clean corner was more important than leaving his suite untouched). Just knowing that it is now clean under there has reduced my nesting stress significantly. My other projects include a full-frontal attack on the bathroom tubs and tile as well as cleaning out all the windowsills and vacuuming under as much furniture as I can. If I can get my hands on a carpet-cleaner, I might scrub down some of our carpets as well, but I'm not as concerned about that. Oh, also wiping down all the kids' toys. There is so much satisfaction in making one's home a clean place...
Okay, sitting here on this uncomfortable chair is aggrivating my hips again. Time to move on. :-)

Oh my gosh, I'm going to have a baby!

Kinda sneaks up on me sometimes.
Went to the doctor today for my *weekly!!* checkup. I'm at 37 weeks, which puts me at a bonafied full-term pregnancy. And I can delivery over at the Medical Center of the Rockies (15 minutes from our house, the new hospital in Loveland off of I-25- haven't heard much about it either way, but at least we'll have a nice new room).
Current stats: two weeks ago my cervix was high and closed. I expected it to be the same today, but I am actually at 2 cm right now and Dr. B says I've thinned out a little bit, but not much. She thoughtfully encouraged the baby to come this weekend on her way out of the appointment when she will be on call at MCR. Hopefully the baby will take heed. I somewhat suspect that she may have ruptured my membranes today...the only reason I say that is because getting checked today was more painful than I remember it being with my last two pregnancies, but that doesn't really mean much. She was putting quite a bit of pressure down there, telling me that she was just making sure she was feeling the head. But I don't know her to be the type of doctor to do that without telling the patient, so maybe that was just wishful thinking. :-) But she did tell me that I am OFF of bed rest, modified, regular, I'm done (wahooo!!!!) The point is no longer to keep the baby in there. I kind of assumed that, but I was surprised to find myself happier about this news than I thought I would be. I picked up my kids at Grandma's house and gave Linus a piggy back ride home to celebrate, first time I've done that in 6 months. I have grand aspirations of scrubbing my house from head to toe tomorrow...but we'll see what my energy level is tomorrow. Unfortunately I still feel 9 months pregnant, whether I'm on rest or not. Anyway, when Dr. B jokingly encouraged the baby to come this weekend, it sort of hit me: I've spent this whole pregnancy waiting to "have the baby at any time", and figured there was no use preparing for it because if it happened, it was going to be chaotic anyway, and if it didn't no use fretting about it. However it dawned on me that we're actually going to have to, like, take out the carseat and put it in the car, pack a bag, make sure the kids will be taken care of, get all my SCHOOL stuff put together now, start really timing contractions and not just ignoring them...this baby is actually coming! I don't think tomorrow, but it will be here before the end of the month. Weird. I was trying to remember when I was pitted at being 2 cm with Chloe and Linus how long it took before I went into labor- I don't think it was within a week, I remember with both of them being very impatient about it all. Well, it's started anyway. And it's nice to actually be surprised by it this time instead of anxiously waiting for it. Yay!

Four and a half...

...more weeks until my due date!
I've tried posting several different times, but the stupid picture uploader was taking too long each time and so I gave up. This time I won't post so many pictures, maybe that will help actually get this one on the blog!
So I'm 35 weeks along right now, 36 on Monday. I have three more appointments scheduled with my doctor, and then if I have been scheduled to be induced on my due date if I haven't gone by then (August 23rd), and that's mostly because of the cyst on the umbilical cord and not so much because of the clot...which as far as we know is still there. The baby is doing very well. A little too well, actually- at my 34 week growth chart, it was estimated at weighing 6 lbs 1 oz. And I'm measuring 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Which means I'm probably going to have another big baby. Chloe was 9lbs 2 oz, and Linus was 8 lbs 10 oz. I hope I go into labor before I'm induced, mostly because my contractions felt much worse in both of my other deliveries once the Pitocin was administered. I was induced with Linus because I was leaking amniotic fluid with him a week before my due date, and with Chloe I just wasn't progressing very fast. I had 18 hours of labor with Chloe, and 6 with Linus, but I got an epidural with Linus because the contractions came on hard and quick with him and felt much worse...although it's hard to remember the pain after it happens. Anyway...so there is an end in sight and I'm starting to think and consider that I might actually make it to term, which is sort of a weird thought. This whole pregnancy has felt like a big grey cloud that I can't see through at all, and all of a sudden it feels like the fog is lifting a little bit. It's a nice feeling to think that this baby will likely come out, survive, and have no problems to deal with afterwards- like the whole pregnancy were normal or something. It really is a miracle that I've made it this far, and I get emotional everytime I think about all the prayers/help/support we've recieved through this whole thing. It's not over yet, but the danger looks like it's behind us now. Amazing.
Now if only I could go just like a couple weeks early, and that way I can get over this HEAT! Having a baby in August is not something I will intentionally do again. Blahhhhhh...
In the meantime, remember that link I posted for the video on how to make a tu-tu? (You can find it here if you don't know what I'm talking about). Well I made one, and Chloe and I went out and took some pictures of her in it this afternoon. Love this girl. Now I just need to think of something costume-y to make Linus because he keeps asking to wear the tu-tu.