Saturday, February 19, 2011

He's Here!

Well, he's here! Our little baby has arrived. I think most people who read this have heard the stats and all that, but if you haven't, let me know and I can give you all that information. The birth didn't go quite as planned, which I know that during labor and birth, a lot of things don't go quite as anyone planned, but one major thing changed in my plan: I gave birth in the hospital.

Originally, I was planning a home birth and was thrilled about my decision. No travel involved, familiar with my environment, and no strangers coming in and out. So when you spend 9 months planning and gearing up for a home birth, it's a little shocking to discover that it's not the way that you are going to give birth. The past few weeks, I've had high blood pressure. I was working on trying to get it down and succeeded for like a week. This past Wednesday, however, there was an added surprise in my prenatal appointment: I had protein in my urine. Combined with the high blood pressure, it's a sign of pre-eclampsia. So because of that, I had to go to the hospital to be induced.

I wasn't very happy with the need to go to the hospital, but I knew that it was necessary. Hospitals are there for just such occasions. I won't go into the details of the birth, I wouldn't be able to give a very good hour by hour account anyways since my sense of time was obscured by the fact that I was in labor and it being late at night. The whole labor took about 9 hours though. Besides having to be induced, I was able to have a natural labor, which was the most important thing to me besides having a healthy baby.

Although I don't like hospitals in the slightest, and I would have preferred to have given birth at home, I'm happy with how it worked out. Yes, I would have been even happier without having to fight the nurses about what procedures would or would not be done, and it would have been nice to be able to go home when I wanted to. I have to say though that it was kind of fun to hear the OB resident beg me to stay for the 24 hours that they wanted me to. On the whole though, I can't complain. I have a beautiful baby who is healthy and happy. What more could I want?

Monday, February 7, 2011

Strange Strange Weekend

This weekend has been a bit strange in regards to the weather. Saturday started off good with sunshine and temperatures warm enough to melt the little bit of snow we had. We decided it was a good day for Ashton to play mechanic on his car, the accelerator was sticking in the freezing cold temperatures that we had early in the week (by freezing cold I really do mean freezing cold -20 degrees). While he was doing that, I was going to run some errands.

Well, I left Ashton trying to figure out where the part was located in his car that he needed to clean and headed out. It was slightly colder than it was earlier, but not by much. It was still warm enough to melt snow so I wasn't too concerned about the fact that I wasn't wearing a coat. Not that any coat actually fits me anymore. Sure, I can get my arms in, but there's no closing any coat that I own and I am too frugal to go out and buy a winter coat for a couple months. I actually haven't been able to close my coats, besides maybe a button or two, for months now. In any case, I felt that wearing Ashton's sweatshirt was good enough for running to a couple stores and then coming back home again. No big deal.

So, I went to Target and suddenly remembered that the Superbowl was the next day. The parking lot was packed, but it didn't take too long to find a parking spot and thankfully, I didn't have to park out in the outskirts. By the time I came out of Target though, it had started to snow. Not blizzard conditions, but enough to make it chilly. Still, it wasn't bad enough for me to head home. I still had to run to the grocery store.

So I head over to the grocery store and do my "quick" shopping. Let's face it, nothing gets done quickly when you're 38 weeks pregnant. It was still snowing when I got out, and in fact, it was snowing even harder. Hard enough that snow had accumulated on my car. I had managed to get front row parking, which was nice, but of course that meant hiking to put the shopping cart away. I got a call from Ashton as I got in the car asking if he had to come and dig me out of a snowbank somewhere. Apparently, I was taking longer than expected on my errands and he was worried. So sweet. I assured him that I was fine and just had to brush the snow off the back windshield, I wish I had a back windshield wiper, and then I'd be heading home. I've been lucky so far this winter that by the time I have to go anywhere, the snow has melted off my car, or if my car has to be scraped off, Ashton has done it for me. So, I actually haven't scraped off my car all winter, until Saturday. Thankfully, it was just a little bit of wet snow and I only had to do the back windshield. I made it home safe and we spent the rest of the day hanging out at home. It started snowing before Ashton could actually fix his car.

So, it snowed off and on the rest of Saturday, and into Sunday. There was actually quite a bit accumulated by Sunday morning, but we decided to head to church anyways. We kept watch of our phones just in case we got a call that church was canceled, but there was nothing. After brushing off the car twice and having to drive around to the other side of the building where maintenance had actually done some shoveling of the sidewalks so I wouldn't have to wade through the snow, we were off. The roads weren't really slippery, but they sure didn't look freshly plowed. In their defense, it seems that the snow was coming down to heavy to really keep up with it.

In any case, we made it to church safely. As we were walking from the car to the church building, however, we were met by a member of our bishopric who asked us if we wanted the good news or the bad news. Yup, we trekked all the way to church to be told that church had been canceled and that the bishopric had just gotten the call 10 minutes earlier from the Stake that the bishopric could decide to cancel church but that the Stake wanted everything canceled. So it was back in the car for us and we headed home. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but it did continue to snow off and on the rest of the day. All told, we probably got a good 6-8 inches.

The one funny thing we have discovered through all this snow is that our dog likes to eat snow. I don't mean that she'll just start chomping on the snow while she's outside. I mean that when we come inside and the snow that was on shoes, pants, etc comes off in pieces and fall to the ground, she'll spend time going around and eat each chunk. Yup. That's my dog.