Welcoming Baby to the World

Liliana made it! Wednesday at 9:43 am she made her grand entrance! We are so utterly in love and fawning over the newest bundle of baby that things in general have been put on hold.

Because of this I'm copying a message I sent to a friend with the details of the labour and delivery. I don't care if *you* read it, but I thought it'd be funny to have it recorded out on the internets for the internetted to read and comment upon.


So...my labour/delivery went like this - Tuesday night I got really depressed and started to feel pretty sorry for myself and considered myself a "failure" for not getting labour going on my own. Totally retarded I know but I was so moody and pregnant and wanted to be done on my own terms not by some chemical being pumped through my body. I didn't get to sleep until like 2:30 or so that morning. Then just before 5 I woke up having contractions and was pretty sure I'd just moved wrong in bed and was having like a charlie horse or something (which I'd had happen the other week - I pulled a muscle IN MY SLEEP!). Anyway, when I got another contraction like 2 or 3 minutes later I suddenly realized that wait...this was really happening and my body suddenly loved me. I was HAPPY to have freaking contractions. Happy...can you believe it? So I woke up Mike and we discussed what to do. They were such short contractions...less than 30 seconds - usually less than 20. So after an hour of them being regularly 2 or 3 minutes apart but still short we arranged for someone to come stay with Damien while he slept (cause Mike thought bringing him in would've been ok for a few hours where I said very much NO) we headed in to the hospital.

After sitting in the assessment room for an hour and a bit my doctor (who was doing her morning rounds) comes in and says she wants to admit me, and give me a low dosage of oxytocin to keep my contractions going (apparently when they're this short they have a habit of stopping) since they'd planned on inducing me anyway. So by 8 I'm hooked up to the drip of doom and have told the nurse that I can probably handle the contractions for a few hours because really they're strong but not nearly as bad as they'd gotten with Damien and I wanted to avoid drugging myself up too early. By 8:30 or so I've noticed that these ones aren't just keeping steady but they're WAY stronger and lasting a lot longer too. So my nurse checks and I've gone from 3cm to almost 8. At which point I start asking where exactly the doctor is with the pain killers cause I'm in a hell of a lot of pain.

My doctor comes in and checks and I'm at 8 and I have no idea what time it was except for the fact I was expecting to get an epidural around 9 so it must've been around then because I start getting kind mean and bitchy like Kirstie Alley does in Look Who's Talking when it's the INSANE anger/pain talking and not at all the person who's in pain. Around 9:30 I start freaking out because I'm in severe pain and I want my epidural. And then...AND THEN!!! I start to feel like wait...I'm not far from being done. So I get all rude and demand the epidural, nobody knows where the anesthesiologist is and they start getting a bit panicky telling me I'll have to do it without anything and I tell them I won't. I swear I was like squeezing my bits together in my attempt to not give birth 100% naturally. Finally the drug doctor walks in, tells me (kinda rudely I might add) that if I scream or move while she's doing her thing then she's going to walk out. And you know what I wanted to tell her? That if she hadn't taken her bloody time getting to me I'd have been in a much more reasonable state both mentally and physically instead of on the brink of popping out a demon child on my own thankyouverymuch. So she gets everything ready and my nurse gets me all positioned and then very calmly reminds how important it is for me to stay still. Then I feel a glorious swab of iodine on my back and a poke and then GLORIOUS pain free numbness goes into my toes. Turns out that because of time constraints I didn't get an epidural but a spinal tap that literally numbed me from the waist down. And then pop out comes a baby.

Ok that's not all, for awhile both Mike and I were all panicky because they started talking about heart rate droppings and it wasn't mine because I felt pretty fine. Apparently after my first big push, Liliana's heart rate dropped to 80 and my contractions stopped for a few minutes too so they were telling me if I couldn't get her out right away they'd have to vacuum or worse. My doctor got really stern (mean is definitely the wrong word) and then my contractions came back and I don't know how many pushes later out popped a pretty blue baby. The NICU team was in the room and scooped her up shortly after Mike cut the cord and started suctioning and doing all their listening stuffs to make sure she wasn't in mega danger. Nobody told us what so going on until she was cleared, but it ends up my placenta ruptured a bit during delivery and she swallowed a good amount of blood so they spent a very long time suctioning and listening and suctioning and then more checking. She was fine but it wasn't fun to sit (lie) and wait for the results.


And this took forever to type...Liliana is awake again and looking for the boob so I will be off.

The Report!

Alright, so I think I like my new detergent. I did a load of sheets and the like and they feel nice, they smell decent. They do not smell like yummy lemon fresh or yummy spring fresh, and this is honestly kind of a big deal for me.


I'm going to sit online for hours tonight trying to find a solution that isn't essential oils (I can't imagine they'd work well in a powder...or would they? if you know please please let me know!) James has suggested lemon zest but my concern is that the oils from that could leave residue on such things as baby clothes or cloth diapers and then I'd be causing more damage to the poor as yet birthed child than is worthwhile.


On a happy note though, the nursery is 95% ready...its now a matter of me just getting over this anal obsession on placement of dresser, chair, change table, etc. I'm kinda being ridiculous about it, and I'm sure Mikey is seconds away from killing me sometimes, but hey, the feeling is mutual.


Oooh...things I want from the "save energy, save the world" type businesses out there: CFL's (compact fluorescents) that can be on a dimmer switch. K thanks!

A change

I realized I wasn't blogging without any purpose behind my blog. Sure I had random ideas (Hello cute baby monkey) but I wasn't making any attempts beyond the random post here and there.

So I thought to myself, what's going on in my life that I could actually write about and share with readers here and there? Sure I'm a mom, but so are bazillions of other bloggers out there, and I have no problem being mainstream and identical to other women out there (it's what brings us together) but I wanted something that was more *mine*. Hell yes I'm a greedy one...woot!

So...here's the things going on currently:

• I'm 41 weeks pregnant. Yeah...you're supposed to be done around 40 weeks...epic fail on my part.
• I have Preschooler named Damien, he's 3 and some months and is currently the center of my universe (he will be sharing this position gladly soon - he constantly talks of the baby this and the baby that)
• I am going to be cloth diapering baby # 2 shortly after his/her arrival. With Damien we did disposables, and while I didn't feel any remorse or guilt at that point in time I now realize how much money was wasted not to mention the growing environmental aspect of it all. Our plan is to use disposables for the first short while during the adjustment period and then in emergencies or longer outings. Hopefully the rest of our family will get on board with this too.
• I just finished making my own laundry detergent - recipe HERE - and am very excited to see how it turns out. Everything but the Fels Naptha soap was ridiculously easy to find between normal grocery store aisles and a lovely visit to our "green" store - Earth's General Store where I got to scope out cloth diapers AND buy washing soda all at the very same time.

So I decided, screw it, sure I can still be a mom and blog about daily things like crayons on the walls (which btw, white bread apparently works just as well as a Mr Clean Eraser - another subject I'm sure I can go on and on ) or who pooped where and what their response was...but I can also try to catalogue the trials and very clear successes I've had with various things I find. I have a lovely book Clean House Clean Planet which will be considered my bible for this beginning stuff. If you have other books you can recommend I'll gladly check things out because I'd like to make life as easy and green as possible.

It's getting late, I'm going to go throw on a load of laundry to see how I feel about my new detergent, and I will hopefully be back in the next few days with a report and possibly a new baby :)