He's Finally Here

Happy 1 week birthday to our little boy! Last Friday, just when I was about to get bumped from our induction appointment, I finally went into real live labor and had our little boy that evening. Introducing....

CADE MICHAEL HINES

Born Friday, January 27th 2012 at 6:52pm

8 pounds 5oz

21 inches long

The last week has been one of hospitals, healing and adjusting to this big life change. We've also had visitors to meet the little guy, including my parents who are in the middle of a week long visit. At some point, I'll document the whole labor story and give more details on Cade's personality, Dylan's feelings on his new baby brother and other events that have been happening. Until then, here are some pics from Cade's first few days in this world.

Smoochy Face

Binky Boy

Momma Love

First Family Photo

My Little Boys

Mom and Dad Love Cade

Brotherly Love

Induction Fail

To say I'm tired and frustrated would be a serious understatement right now. Friends and family have all been concerned and really wonderfully supportive but I want to write everything in one spot for ease of communication because 1) there's a lot of information to give (and yet not a lot at the same time) and 2) developments are slow so I didn't want to contact anyone with full info until I had it myself.

First of all, here are the basics of what happened up until today. On Friday, we were supposed to go for a scheduled induction. The hospital was to contact us late Thursday night with a time and confirmation. My mother in law came over so that she could be here for when we needed to leave Friday, which would likely be early. The time for the hospital call came and went Thursday night so I started tracking down who to talk to. Come to find out, there was a mistake in the paperwork, we weren't on the list to contact and it was a full house so we would need to call the next morning to see if they could take us. Next morning, we called the Labor and Delivery unit at the hospital, the OB's office and the hospital again. We got bumped. No induction would be happening Friday. Instead it was a visit to Maternal Fetal Medicine for a non stress test that afternoon with a follow up at the OB's office for a what to do next plan. My mother in law was willing to stick around so we could do these things without having to drag Dylan along.

The non stress test went fine. My OB was actually sick so we saw one of the heads of the practice. Normally inductions aren't scheduled for weekends but as this doctor was the one on call Sunday, he was happy to put through the orders for us to come in for induction Sunday. We would be called Saturday night with a time. Thursday night repeat and we didn't hear anything so had to call and pester yet again. We were told to call back in the morning for that shift nurse to assess staff and let us know yea or nay. It was a yea, so we went in at 9am for induction.

My in laws both came over Sunday and Mike and I headed to the hospital. We were admitted, got shown to a room, I changed into a johnny, general health questions were asked and then we had to wait for a bit for the doctor's orders for inducement. Once those finally came, the pitocin drip was started around 11am. With pitocin, they start with a low dose and slowly increase. Apparently the increase over the next hour exceeded the baby's preferences because he became unhappy and the dosage was reset to really low levels. Over the next 7 hours, dosage went up and down according to baby's heartbeat happiness. Unfortunately during that time, contractions never became regular. Oh, I had them and plenty of them. They were just not really intense and would come regularly for 4 or 5 of them and then take a big break. By the end of 8 hours on "the drip," the doctor came in for another check. Still only 2 centimeters dilated and thick (ie baby still way up high)....the same I was at my check up on Friday! Grrr!

We were given 3 choices. 1) Stay the course and see if my body kicked into gear eventually, 2) do a cervix ripening, stay at the hospital overnight and start induction again Monday morning or 3) call it a day, get a good night's rest and go in for plan C during office hours the next day. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and was very tired so we went with option number 3 and headed home. We got there just in time to put Dylan to bed a little bit past his usual time.

This morning, I called the office after they opened and they said they would squeeze me in for an appointment when I got there. Mike, Dylan and I arrived at the office at 10:45. It was fully of waiting patients. My OB was held up in a c-section for some time so we were all going to be waiting a while. We finally got in to see her around 12:30, gave her the story of the previous day and discussed a new plan. New plan is Thursday, if labor hasn't happened naturally before then, we'll go into the hospital, get the thing to ripen the cervix (if needed....will have an appointment on Wednesday to check if there's been any more progress), get monitored for a couple of hours after administration of medicine then go home. Friday morning, we'll come back for induction attempt take 3. But first, an ultrasound to make sure fluid levels still looked good.

After yesterday's fail, I'm very happy to be able to give mother nature a few more days to do her thing. However, all of this hospital time and tests has been beyond exhausting to do and I'm really over it. I mean REALLY over it! As I said, I'm so grateful for all the concern but it's been difficult, to say the least, to keep all parties informed. So, it was easiest for me to detail it here for all that cared to read.

Until you hear otherwise, no news is no news. I promise to put out email and\or Facebook blasts when anything interesting happens. And, if all out there could cross your fingers and toes that this little boy quickly develops claustrophobia and decides to break out, I'd really appreciate it.

Big News (But Not of the Baby Kind)

Today must be documented because it was a huge day at our house. While everyone around expects to hear baby news when I say something about any kind of news (and I don't blame them), this has nothing to do with baby #2 and everything to do with big boy #1.

I was unpacking the last box of books in our guest bedroom tonight. Why? Well, when the nursery still needs to be finished decorating, what else would I be doing? Avoiding the bigger job for a smaller more manageable one, of course! Anyway, Dylan was making noise in the guest bathroom and I called him to ask him what was going on. He said he wanted to sit on the potty.

Now, up until now the only interest he's had in potty training is earning a sticker in the mornings for trying on his toddler sized potty in our bathroom. After he showers, he'll sit on it for a minute, study his Happy Feet Two book of stickers then pronounce he's done, get off and collect his sticker. While I've had nothing to do with pushing this business (new house, new baby soon, bad timing all around), Mike's been the one spearheading the training so I've just been following his lead. Anyway, there was an incident last week where we realized, a couple of hours later, that one of these potty times actually produced a little piddle in the potty. Dylan didn't tell us about it, we didn't hear it happen and we just assumed that the norm of nothing happening had happened. So, it went without the proper post piddle praising. We did congratulate him later of course but it just doesn't have the same effect, ya know?

Back to today. He wanted me to help him get on the adult sized potty, wanted no help holding himself up on the seat and then sat there a while. After a bit, he looked down and said "my pee pee disappear." I followed his gaze and, sure enough, he was peeing in the potty! Yay! What a big guy! I was so proud of him I wanted to burst and even felt a little tear fall from my eye. Funny how this little kiddo's bodily accomplishments can have such a profound effect on me! So kudos to Dylan on a major potty training milestone being met. I'm sure we'll mess up any progress by bringing your baby brother home and ruining life as we currently know it. For now, revel in your accomplishment you big boy!

As for me, well, we're still waiting. I had a doctor's appointment this morning and had the pleasure of enduring a procedure called membrane stripping. It's supposed to help induce labor within a couple of days for 50% of the folks that do it. I'm about 12 hours past that and still waiting for any signs of labor. Paperwork has been started to admit me on Friday for inducement if there's still no baby. However, given that I'm not 41 weeks pregnant yet (my charts show 40 weeks Friday but I know that I hit 40 weeks last Sunday) we'll be low man on the totem poll if our room is needed. That means I won't be counting on anything happening until it happens.

And, in other news completely unrelated to any of this, we got a fun addition to the house yesterday. A hot tub. Yes, I really know how to torture myself. Getting a nice luxury item to sit and watch my husband and visitors enjoy until I wait until after my post partum visit to be able to use. It's something Mike has pined for for some time and I've come around to seeing the fun in having. I figure it will come in handy when I'm kicking my butt over the next year trying to shed this baby weight again.

Until baby comes or I have even more time waiting to write up something else interesting, TTFN!

The Flip Has Been Switched

(Update note: It's been pointed out to me that I messed up the saying. It's the switch that has been flipped. See, I'm so grumpy I'm dyslexic about common sayings. Ugh!)
I have some pretty rough days over the last week and a half. But, the days that weren't so bad kept me going and even the days that were bad I tried to do at least a little something productive. Today, I woke up and I was DONE DONE DONE!!Done with all capitals. The flip has officially been switched to get this baby out of me.

I am HUGE!
(Don't let the smile deceive you. This picture was taken yesterday.)

A lot of this probably had to do with the fact that I thought it was going to happen last night. Mike's parents were over yesterday for the official briefing of the wheres and whys of taking care of Dylan while I'm in the hospital and Mike is trucking back and forth between home and hospital. Then, around 5 last night, I started having contractions.....real ones, I think. At least they were very different than the Braxton Hicks ones I've been experiencing for the last 2 months. By the time I went to bed around 11 though, they were about 2 hours apart. Obviously, far from going to the hospital. After 3 am, they stopped. Also when I went to bed, there was a snow storm going. Perfect (bad) timing for a baby to come, right? Well, by the time I got up this morning, realized contractions just weren't happening anymore and the snow had stopped, I realized desperate measures needed to be taken.

Dylan has been waiting and waiting for a snowfall....ever since we got our Halloween storm. Yep, this is the first snowfall since. A very odd winter for Boston indeed! I followed the boys out mostly to take pictures then realized I should grab a shovel and help. What harm could it do? Put me in labor? Well, great! So far, all it's managed to do is to make my back hurt even more.

Helping to Shovel

The Boys at Work

Snow Angels

Dylan Snow Angel

Trying to Taste the Snow

Snowball Fight!

Deer Tracks in the Snow

After we came inside to get ready, I called the massage therapist. There are pressure points that are said to help to induce labor. I had an appointment there at noon and gave explicit instructions to work all those spots well. I followed up that appointment by some lunch that included some spicy salsa. Still nothing.

I'm grumpy. Really, really grumpy. I've spent the rest of the day trying to avoid people, Mike and Dylan included, because I am just not a joyful person to be around at the moment. I'm extremely uncomfortable, extremely done and ready for this boy to come out.


Tomorrow I have an appointment. My doctor said she would try to do something to my cervix tomorrow that, in 50% of cases, does induce labor. If nothing happens tonight, let's hope that works. Because after that point, she'll try and do a more official hospital induction as soon as possible. However, given that my medical chart's due date of the 20th is past my calendar's date (ie the true 40 weeks) of the 15th, we'll get the boot pretty quickly if our bed is needed as I'll be a pretty low priority case until at least a week past the 20th. For every one's sake that has to encounter my sour attitude, let's hope this show happens much sooner rather than later.

Just Waiting

Well, I'm officially on maternity leave. With my company's generous policy of giving 6 months time off, me getting increasingly uncomfortable sitting in an office chair all day long and my labor seeming inevitable, I called it quits until July and Friday was my last day.

I was hoping to have at least 3 days to get a few things done around the house before this baby decided to make his grand entrance. Unfortunately, 5 days later I've gotten my wish and then some. At this point, I'm okay with not having any more time to get things done. I've ticked off so little off my pre baby to do list that it would be somewhat ideal to have more time to get a bit more accomplished but my energy level has been so low that it would probably take another month to get even just a portion of the list done. So, I don't care about it anymore. I'm ready to have this baby.

I had my weekly appointment today. It included an ultrasound and an exam. The ultrasound showed that this baby probably weighs in the vicinity of 7-7.5 pounds and it scored 8 out of 8 on the health checks it did. Already a high scoring tester. All right! While things look great and healthy all around, there's no knowing when this guy is coming. Next week if I make it to my appointment (god I hope I don't have to wait that long) she'll start doing some tricks that sometimes help your body go into labor. If I still haven't had the baby by the 20th, my doctor assures me that she'll do what she can to get me in to be induced asap.

Pretty cool picture of the face we got during today's ultrasound.
Hard to say for sure, but I think this is going to be one cute baby!

So, how am I spending my time? Shuffling around pretty slowly. Getting up and ready in the morning is just completely exhausting. It's pretty pathetic but standing up long enough to shower and brush my teeth is absolutely torture to my back. By the time I've had breakfast, I'm pretty much ready for a nap. When Dylan goes down for his afternoon nap, I'm usually not far behind.

In between sleeping times, we've been doing a little decor work on the guest bedroom. It's going to be seeing some folks sleeping in it pretty soon and there's not much more to do to make it "done" in my mind. Over the last 5 days, we did one little paint project in there and bought and installed a new light fixture. If baby waits another day, it's possible I'll even have a completed room picture to show!

More importantly, I've been trying to get the nursery decorated. Everyone keeps saying that it doesn't have to be done now and I know and agree with that. Bambino's not even going to be sleeping in there for a few months and won't care how it looks for much longer than that. However, time is not something I'm going to have more of once said kid comes around so it would be ideal to get it done now. I'm pretty much doubting completion will happen, but progress is happening slowly but surely. As I've spent a lot of time and energy on planning this room, I won't give away the full theme of it, but I'll show what I did today on it for your sneak peak:

Other than those things, we've had a few play dates, hung out at home a good bit and I just move from location to location trying to find some position that will give me some kind of comfort for a small bit of time. I have to admit, I'm feeling pretty lousy and ready not to feel this way anymore. I'm ridiculously tired, queasy a good bit of the time, having lots of back pain and lots of pain in lots of places I just don't want to talk about publicly. I'm a mess, have been for a while and hoping not to be for too much longer.

This Year, I Will.....

I did pretty good on last years resolutions! A quick review on those:
1) Weekly Date Night - Ok this one was kind of a big fail. The house hunt and moving seemed to keep us so busy that we didn't keep up with this. But, the point is to do it regardless of how busy we are so it's on the list again this year in an updated way.
2) Lose last of baby weight. While I didn't hit the exact number I wanted to, I definitely got to a good weight, and maintained it for a few months, before getting pregnant again. I vote success on that one!
3) Lift weights 3 times a week. To be honest, I can't remember if I was doing that consistently or not. Once I got pregnant, weight lifting quickly got booted. Even though I muscled through (pun intended) when I was pregnant with Dylan, it just wasn't going to happen this time around. It was too exhausting to try and do. I felt like I was doing more harm (fatigue) than good (muscle conditioning) to my body.
4) Get to Amsterdam. CHECK!
5) Make a will. Just under the gun, we signed our will\trust documents just a few weeks ago.
6) Stop sitting with my legs crossed. I had to revise this to not doing it while at work. On that front, I totally accomplished it. Outside of work, not so much. However, I haven't been able to sit with my legs crossed for a while due to pregnant chubby thighs and a big belly in the way so thanks to baby #2, I have definitely stuck by this one the last couple of months in all facets of life.

Not bad, I'd say. Given all the articles I've been reading about how you shouldn't make new years resolutions (poppycock) due to a high failure rate (I think they said 80%), I'd say I've beat the odds they've been reporting.

This year, here are some of the things I'd like to do:
1) Blog a little more about me and what's stirring in my noggin' in addition to all the family stuff. I know what most of my readers (ie close family) want is pictures of Dylan and future spawn but darn it, it's my blog and I want to be able to get some of my thoughts down for journaling purposes. Of course, given spawn #2 happening soon, this will certainly be a challenge. Maybe I should commit to (an average of) 1 non kid centered blog a month. I think I can do that!

2) Utilize our home gym. A little over a month ago, the gym that's right next door to my work....you know the one I've used as my lunch break for 12 years (!)....up and closed on me. Given how harsh baking this little baby has been on my body, I have completely fallen out of a fitness routine. A lot of complications in trying to make work outs happen that I haven't had the time or energy to figure out. In any case, once this baby is out and my body is (somewhat) mine again, I will be working VERY hard to get my booty back in shape. I'll probably start with my home gym (as in the beginning, it will likely be too hard to get out anywhere for any length of time solo) and will then need to come up with a longer term gym membership plan for my life.

3) Organize my craft room and workshop. I really like being crafty and handy. Making stuff with your own two little hands gives such a great sense of accomplishment and I love it. Having spaces in our new house dedicated to these purposes made me so happy in buying it. Unfortunately, getting them set up, organized and in a condition to easily go in and utilize them as they should be has fallen on the back burner to higher priorities. If baby gives me next week to do some things at home, I hope to make some headway on this resolution. If not, I'll have to figure out how to make time to do it.

4) Time with my hubby. We really stink at being creative and doing more at night after Dylan is asleep then hanging out, maybe discussing our day, and watching a little tv. Though, we have had the occasional ping pong rally lately in our new game room in the basement. I really want to do more at home date nights (meaning not spend money!). I think this will be even more important this year as our lives will very much be run by new baby and crazy big brother. We'll have to find time to reconnect on a regular basis. As this involves him (and surprise surprise...I haven't had time to discuss it with him too much!), I'm not going to put in writing any quantifiable time or frequency. But, we will come up with a plan and resolve to stick to it.

5) Blog to Book. One of my main motivations for keeping up with this blog is the hope that, eventually, I'll take advantage of some of the ways you can transfer the documentation to book format. I'd like to get started on that front. With baby #2 soon to arrive, I'd like to make a book for Dylan. Perhaps of his first year or maybe of just all of his time with being the only child. I'll have to do more research on how these blog to book services work and see what I want to do but I definitely want to start building our blog book collection this year.

So, that's what I've got for this year. 2012 is definitely going to be an eventful year in our family. In probably only a couple of weeks (or less??) we'll welcome a new family member and chaos will ensue. I'm both very much looking forward to it and absolutely terrified! It's only occurred to me in the last 24 hours or so that to get this little guy out, I'm going to be going through a pretty rough day or 2. I'm glad I haven't thought of it too much before this point (benefits of staying busy) but the Braxton-Hicks contractions that have been getting bad enough at night to wake me up have also been giving me some pretty gnarly birthing dreams. It's kind of made it impossible to ignore this inevitable fact of child birth....it's gotta come out and it's not going to be easy! I hope to be posting more before this big day occurs but it's never too early for my supporters to send me good wishes.  :-)

Holiday Season Recap

Well, here we are. Officially in 2012. 2011 was a great year for our family and a very busy one at that. Seeing as how spawn #2 will be entering our lives shortly, I don't think 2012 will be short of adventures. I look forward to meeting this little guy and hope that I'm ready for the challenges of expanding our family of 3 to 4.

As it's customary to do this time of year, I will have to do one of those reflection\look ahead posts. But, for now, I thought I'd do a recap of the 2011 holiday season. We packed a lot in and, as this blog is a journal for me as well, I want to see it all in one spot. Plus, being 37 weeks pregnant, our New Years Eve was nothing exciting to post about (a movie and bed long before midnight) so I wanted to give something more interesting to read about

The holiday events started the day before Thanksgiving when my parents where visiting and we all went to the Enchanted Village. The next day we hosted our very first Thanksgiving. Not to waste any time transitioning from Thanksgiving to Christmas, on black Friday, we went shopping for our Christmas tree. And, since we're zoo nuts and a kid's gotta see Santa for a photo op, we went to Zoo Lights the next week with my in laws and Mike's niece Emily. After hosting Thanksgiving, we kept the hosting ball rolling the following weekend with our 3rd annual Cousin's Christmas. The third weekend was 3 days of going into downtown for Mike and I to attend the Urban Nutcracker performance, my company's holiday party at the Museum of Science and then a trip to the holiday market with friends.

In addition to all the activities outside of the house, we kept the holiday spirit going when at home too. Not only did we make ginger bread cookies but we had some daily events as well. As evidenced by all the photos posted on facebook, we had a tradition that a lot of other folks participate in as well - the Elf on the Shelf. We got our elf, Overton, last year. This year, Dylan had a great time finding him every morning when we came downstairs. He had quite the knack for it too and would often spot him before I did (Mike was the one to find his new hiding spot the most nights).

Overton, our elf, also would bring a treat from Santa every night that he would put in our advent calendar which was shaped like Santa. Every evening at dinner, Dylan would be anxious to "open Santa" to see what kind of treat he got for the day. We also tried to use it as an exercise in counting and numbers. Still a little ways to go on that front but it was a fun opportunity to try and help his knowledge there along. Santa usually held a very small toy or some candy.

Opening Santa for the Night

Sporting Our Holiday Head Gear

On either Saturday or Sunday morning, we will try and make pancakes for breakfast. Mike gets pretty fancy when he's the chef and makes Mickey Mouse shaped ones. Adding to the fun for Christmas, he started doing snowman shaped ones as well.

Yummy Mickey and Snowman Pancakes

Dylan also loves to paint. We hadn't done it in a while so on Christmas weekend, we brought them out for some fun. And, just to bring some holiday festivities to the mix, we did a special project with the paint. Thanks to an article on toddler craft activities (thanks Aunt Sarah), we painted on bubble wrap, pressed paper on the paint then cut out Christmas tree shapes out after the paint dried. Dylan gave them to family as a Christmas present and he was pretty proud of his creations.

Way back in my college days, when my roommate and I got our first tree, I figured out pretty quickly that having enough ornaments to properly decorate a tree costs time and money - money to buy them and time to collect enough up. Thanks to Mom and Dad, I got a big collection of cookie dough ornaments that they were ready to pass along. To this day, the ones that have survived the years still hang on my tree. Since my Mom is great at documenting things, each of the ornaments have a date on them - some dated as early as 1975! Talk about a cookie that lasts! In any case, I thought it time to start making some of our own. Dylan did such a great job with the cookie cutters on the ginger bread cookies that I knew he was ready to take on the project. So, we looked up a recipe, made up a batch of dough and cut out shapes - most of which would help to represent the year 2011 in ornaments.

Cutting Shapes Out

I tried to convince Dylan the dough wasn't good but he couldn't resist
taking a bite. I was sure he'd get it out of his system since it wouldn't
taste good seeing as how it was mostly salt and flour. To my dismay
he wanted to eat more. Plan backfire! Gross!

If you look closely, you can see that the bottom two
ornaments are kitty paw prints. Though not thrilled about it,
 Oliver and Luci got involved in the project too.

And, of course, a Dylan hand print.

We also had a "2" for Dylan's age, a tulip to represent our
trip to Amsterdam, a plane for all of our family air travel
and the state of Texas for our trips (and heritage) there.

Of course, now that the dough has been made, cut and baked, I have a tupperware full of dough ornaments that need to be painted. Who know how long it will take me to do that. Perhaps it will get done before the tree goes up next year? We'll see!

Well, that's my holiday recap. I had some other random thoughts over the last week that I also wanted to include here so I can start my next post with New Years thoughts and activities. Here goes.


Dylan big boy bed progress - still doing great. We did have to put him back in on Thursday night. Heard a thump and, thanks to our new video monitor (thanks Aunt Pam!), saw that he had fallen out of bed. Instead of letting him fall back asleep on the floor, which he was about to do, I went up and got him back on the bed and tucked in. I don't think he ever really woke up.

Our dryer works too well. It seems to be shrinking all of my clothes. I actually had to go out and buy some clothes of moo-moo proportions so I can have a couple of items to be somewhat comfortable in the next couple of weeks.

Thoughts on working the week between Christmas and New Years. The commute rocks. The quiet of the office rocks. Despite being busy, the days dragged. That did not rock. Only 4 more working days left before leave. I will be glad to say goodbye to my uncomfortable (at least during pregnancy) desk chair for the next 6 months. Sitting in it all day gets more difficult every day.

Happy New Year to all of you out there in blog land! I'm looking forward to giving you more stuff to read while you're bored in 2012.