I realize it's been more than three years since I posted in this space. Work, yoga, running and other obligations just took over and I lost the motivation (and time) to keep writing here. Recently though, I've been reading back through old posts and realizing how great it is to be able to read back through recaps of our wedding, honeymoon, my graduation from business school, and even just the everyday memories from a few years ago.
On November 30, 2017 our son Alexander was born. We are both so smitten and head over heels in love with this little pumpkin, and going back over old blog entries made me want to start writing again, so that I can preserve these memories and come back to them over and over. This is really more for me than for anyone else - but if you're here, awesome! Hope you like babies, dogs, cats and yoga ;)
Ben and I found out we were pregnant on April 5, 2017 when we were on vacation in Florida with my parents & my sister (I'll tell that whole story later - it was a fun 5 days of trying to hide the fact that I wasn't drinking...). My pregnancy was generally pretty easy - minimal morning sickness, I continued to practice yoga the entire time and was running until a few weeks into my 3rd trimester (and continued going for long-ish walks after). No swollen ankles and almost no back/hip/joint pain. I know some of that is a total crapshoot, but I also give credit to yoga.
WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS OF BODILY FUNCTIONS FOLLOW. NOTHING TOO GROSS BUT IF THE WORDS 'MUCOUS PLUG' OR 'AMNIOTIC FLUID' MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE YOU MAY WANT TO GLOSS OVER SOME OF THIS.
Going into week 39 I was still feeling pretty good and staying active, just waiting for baby to arrive. I had wrapped up most of my work projects on the Friday after Thanksgiving, so by Monday (the 27th) I was feeling pretty prepared for maternity leave and was able to be there on mostly a consultative basis, and was planning to start working from home on Wednesday the 29th. Starting that Monday, things started to feel different. Baby had dropped at least a week ago, but on Monday the 27th I really started to feel like he was pushing down - almost like I had an anvil strapped to my stomach pulling towards the earth. That night I began having mild contractions that were pretty regular. I started timing them around 11pm and trying to sleep but they were fairly uncomfortable. At about midnight I got up to use the bathroom and discovered that I had *definitely* lost my mucous plug. I won't get into the graphic detail, but for some reason I was thinking it wouldn't be obvious when I lost my plug...it definitely was. I texted my doula with the update (yes at 12:30am...) since she'd said this would be one of the major signs we were getting close. She said it sounded like early labor, but that he could be on his way any time between a day and a week from now.
I went back into the office on Tuesday for the last of what I considered to be critically important project handoffs, thinking we were still several days away from baby time. I also handed out my holiday gifts for my team, knowing that I wouldn't be around for Christmas. Leaving the office that day just felt weird...I had been planning for weeks to work from home from Wednesday onward, but it just felt strange saying this would be my last day in the office for three months. As I was leaving I thought, maybe I'll come in on Friday just because this feels too final. On my way out the door, my boss asked if I could write up a a few things from home the next day, knowing that being remote and thus would be much less likely than he would to be constantly interrupted (our workplace is super collaborative, which is great but can also sometimes mean that it's hard to focus and get things like writing or large reports done). I said of course, talk to you tomorrow, and headed home.
The next morning (Wednesday the 29th), I rolled out of bed, made coffee and for some reason decided to start working at 6:30am. This is one of many pieces of evidence that the body is smart and often knows what's going on before we do. I knocked off three deliverables for a project I was working on, and the write-ups for my boss. He and I are both early risers, but when he saw me firing off emails before 7am he wrote me back to ask if I was OK. "Yep! Totally fine, I'm just paranoid that this baby is coming any second and trying to knock a few things off this morning."
Haha.
At about 8am I shut down my laptop and Ben and I drove the clinic for my 39 week appointment with my OB. I'd been having mild contractions again, on and off throughout the night. They had sort of calmed down as we got ready to leave, but were still coming occasionally. When we got to my appointment, I told the nurse and my doctor that I'd lost my plug and was having mild contractions - all totally normal for 39 weeks btw. I was about 2 cm dialated at my checkup, and even my OB said baby was *very* low but thought it would be at least another week before anything happened. I was skeptical...I didn't exactly thing he was coming that day, but I definitely didn't think it would be another week. On our way home, Ben and I stopped at Target to buy M&M's (because why not) and talked about where we should go for one last date night.
When we got home I logged back into my computer and started catching up on email and Ben left for work. Further evidence that the universe was looking out for us that day: on his way out the door, Ben stopped and said "Oh - by the way! Nicole (his principal) insisted that I give you the office number at school. Reception in my classroom is not great, so if anything happens and you can't reach me on my cell you can call the office number." So he gave me the number and I entered it into my phone.
About 30 minutes later (around 10:30) I decided to start getting lunch ready. I put a pot of rice on the stove, went over to the freezer and bent down to grab something - and as I stood up I felt a gush. Not a huge one, like stereotypical water breaking, but definitely different than anything else that had been going on for the past few days. My first thought was that I was leaking amniotic fluid (aka my waters had broken but not dramatically). I knew this wouldn't be great, because I was Strep B positive and they would want me on antibiotics as soon as my membranes ruptured to avoid infecting baby. My second thought was, did I pee myself? I called my clinic immediately, and when I described what was going on they agreed it might be amniotic fluid and that I should head into the Mother Baby Center to get it checked out. Thinking that it was nothing and that I'd probably be back in a couple of hours, I moved some meetings to later in the day, grabbed my purse and a book and called a Lyft.
Oh but hey, remember that pot of rice I put on the stove? Yeah, it was still cooking. In my panicked rush to get out of the house I had completely forgotten about it. Freaking out, I called my mom who happened to be volunteering about 3 minutes from hour house and has a key. Crisis of burning our home down averted!
When I got to the Mother Baby Center they checked me in and a nurse took me to one of the triage rooms where I put on a gown and sat down on the exam table. The nurse took one look at me and said "...Yeah. I'll do the test but I can pretty much tell you right now that's amniotic fluid. You're sitting in a puddle basically."
"So, I'm not going home today am I?"
"Nope!"
I tried calling Ben's cell but, as I mentioned earlier, he sometimes doesn't get service in his classroom and my call didn't go through. So about one hour after he gave me the office line for his school, I ended up calling it. Poor guy had literally just gotten to school and was about to start his first class of the day when the office manager came in to say "hey, your wife's on the phone, you should probably take this"... Sorry babe! :) Because I really thought I was coming home, I hadn't even grabbed the hospital bag or made arrangements for the pets. Ben stopped by home to get the bag and my mom offered to take the dog and feed the cat. Another crisis averted!
I won't go into too much detail about the labor/delivery process but all told I was in labor for about 16 hours from the time I arrived at the Mother Baby Center until Alexander was born, at about 4:18 AM on November 30th. Aside from the fact that I'd planned on laboring at home for several hours before going in to the hospital (which was shot to hell when my water broke), the delivery went pretty much according to plan! The only thing that really threw me for a loop was back labor, which was pretty awful and almost made me abandon my plan to go drug free. My doula and I thought he might be posterior (when the baby's spine is against your spine) which is often the cause of back labor. We did a ton of Spinning Babies exercises to try to get him to turn, none of which alleviated my back pain at all... so we finally came to the conclusion that this might just be how things were going to go. If you haven't experienced back labor, you really don't want to. Basically by the time I got to late active labor and transition, I felt like my back was going to break in half during every contraction, and following each contraction my low back spasmed with pain to the point where I almost dreaded the end of the contraction more than the contraction itself. Plus the back pain was continuous so there really was no break from the pain between contractions. Honestly I'm not sure how I got through it, except for the constant encouragement from Ben, the nurses, my doula, and the OB on call.
When we got to the pushing stage, I found that the best position to relieve pressure on my back and let gravity help was on my knees with the back of the bed elevated to almost 90 degrees, draping my upper body over the back of the bed. We were all nervous that the OB wouldn't let me deliver in this position and that she would make me continue pushing on my back. Luckily, she was totally on board and even made a diving catch to grab Alex as he came out! Just looking at him during those first few hours was the most amazing thing I'd ever experienced - realizing that this little being was the same one who had been living and growing inside me for the past 9 months just blew my mind. When we first locked eyes, my heart melted. I never, ever want to forget that moment.
The next couple of days were a whirlwind of activity, trying to figure out how to breastfeed, visits from friends and family and deliveries of delicious food. Thank you to everyone who came to see us and brought us meals during those first few days - we are so grateful!
For now, we are just hanging out at home, snuggling Alexander, drinking a lot of tea, watching some great shows on Netflix and gearing up for the holidays. Hope you're all having an amazing holiday season! Back soon with more :)
(^^ I started this post a few weeks ago - I thought about editing it but decided to leave it as-is and just post it now! Given how long it take me to get this post up, I'm obviously not doing so hot at writing more often o_O)
On November 30, 2017 our son Alexander was born. We are both so smitten and head over heels in love with this little pumpkin, and going back over old blog entries made me want to start writing again, so that I can preserve these memories and come back to them over and over. This is really more for me than for anyone else - but if you're here, awesome! Hope you like babies, dogs, cats and yoga ;)
Ben and I found out we were pregnant on April 5, 2017 when we were on vacation in Florida with my parents & my sister (I'll tell that whole story later - it was a fun 5 days of trying to hide the fact that I wasn't drinking...). My pregnancy was generally pretty easy - minimal morning sickness, I continued to practice yoga the entire time and was running until a few weeks into my 3rd trimester (and continued going for long-ish walks after). No swollen ankles and almost no back/hip/joint pain. I know some of that is a total crapshoot, but I also give credit to yoga.
WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS OF BODILY FUNCTIONS FOLLOW. NOTHING TOO GROSS BUT IF THE WORDS 'MUCOUS PLUG' OR 'AMNIOTIC FLUID' MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE YOU MAY WANT TO GLOSS OVER SOME OF THIS.
Going into week 39 I was still feeling pretty good and staying active, just waiting for baby to arrive. I had wrapped up most of my work projects on the Friday after Thanksgiving, so by Monday (the 27th) I was feeling pretty prepared for maternity leave and was able to be there on mostly a consultative basis, and was planning to start working from home on Wednesday the 29th. Starting that Monday, things started to feel different. Baby had dropped at least a week ago, but on Monday the 27th I really started to feel like he was pushing down - almost like I had an anvil strapped to my stomach pulling towards the earth. That night I began having mild contractions that were pretty regular. I started timing them around 11pm and trying to sleep but they were fairly uncomfortable. At about midnight I got up to use the bathroom and discovered that I had *definitely* lost my mucous plug. I won't get into the graphic detail, but for some reason I was thinking it wouldn't be obvious when I lost my plug...it definitely was. I texted my doula with the update (yes at 12:30am...) since she'd said this would be one of the major signs we were getting close. She said it sounded like early labor, but that he could be on his way any time between a day and a week from now.
I went back into the office on Tuesday for the last of what I considered to be critically important project handoffs, thinking we were still several days away from baby time. I also handed out my holiday gifts for my team, knowing that I wouldn't be around for Christmas. Leaving the office that day just felt weird...I had been planning for weeks to work from home from Wednesday onward, but it just felt strange saying this would be my last day in the office for three months. As I was leaving I thought, maybe I'll come in on Friday just because this feels too final. On my way out the door, my boss asked if I could write up a a few things from home the next day, knowing that being remote and thus would be much less likely than he would to be constantly interrupted (our workplace is super collaborative, which is great but can also sometimes mean that it's hard to focus and get things like writing or large reports done). I said of course, talk to you tomorrow, and headed home.
The next morning (Wednesday the 29th), I rolled out of bed, made coffee and for some reason decided to start working at 6:30am. This is one of many pieces of evidence that the body is smart and often knows what's going on before we do. I knocked off three deliverables for a project I was working on, and the write-ups for my boss. He and I are both early risers, but when he saw me firing off emails before 7am he wrote me back to ask if I was OK. "Yep! Totally fine, I'm just paranoid that this baby is coming any second and trying to knock a few things off this morning."
Haha.
At about 8am I shut down my laptop and Ben and I drove the clinic for my 39 week appointment with my OB. I'd been having mild contractions again, on and off throughout the night. They had sort of calmed down as we got ready to leave, but were still coming occasionally. When we got to my appointment, I told the nurse and my doctor that I'd lost my plug and was having mild contractions - all totally normal for 39 weeks btw. I was about 2 cm dialated at my checkup, and even my OB said baby was *very* low but thought it would be at least another week before anything happened. I was skeptical...I didn't exactly thing he was coming that day, but I definitely didn't think it would be another week. On our way home, Ben and I stopped at Target to buy M&M's (because why not) and talked about where we should go for one last date night.
When we got home I logged back into my computer and started catching up on email and Ben left for work. Further evidence that the universe was looking out for us that day: on his way out the door, Ben stopped and said "Oh - by the way! Nicole (his principal) insisted that I give you the office number at school. Reception in my classroom is not great, so if anything happens and you can't reach me on my cell you can call the office number." So he gave me the number and I entered it into my phone.
About 30 minutes later (around 10:30) I decided to start getting lunch ready. I put a pot of rice on the stove, went over to the freezer and bent down to grab something - and as I stood up I felt a gush. Not a huge one, like stereotypical water breaking, but definitely different than anything else that had been going on for the past few days. My first thought was that I was leaking amniotic fluid (aka my waters had broken but not dramatically). I knew this wouldn't be great, because I was Strep B positive and they would want me on antibiotics as soon as my membranes ruptured to avoid infecting baby. My second thought was, did I pee myself? I called my clinic immediately, and when I described what was going on they agreed it might be amniotic fluid and that I should head into the Mother Baby Center to get it checked out. Thinking that it was nothing and that I'd probably be back in a couple of hours, I moved some meetings to later in the day, grabbed my purse and a book and called a Lyft.
Oh but hey, remember that pot of rice I put on the stove? Yeah, it was still cooking. In my panicked rush to get out of the house I had completely forgotten about it. Freaking out, I called my mom who happened to be volunteering about 3 minutes from hour house and has a key. Crisis of burning our home down averted!
When I got to the Mother Baby Center they checked me in and a nurse took me to one of the triage rooms where I put on a gown and sat down on the exam table. The nurse took one look at me and said "...Yeah. I'll do the test but I can pretty much tell you right now that's amniotic fluid. You're sitting in a puddle basically."
"So, I'm not going home today am I?"
"Nope!"
I tried calling Ben's cell but, as I mentioned earlier, he sometimes doesn't get service in his classroom and my call didn't go through. So about one hour after he gave me the office line for his school, I ended up calling it. Poor guy had literally just gotten to school and was about to start his first class of the day when the office manager came in to say "hey, your wife's on the phone, you should probably take this"... Sorry babe! :) Because I really thought I was coming home, I hadn't even grabbed the hospital bag or made arrangements for the pets. Ben stopped by home to get the bag and my mom offered to take the dog and feed the cat. Another crisis averted!
I won't go into too much detail about the labor/delivery process but all told I was in labor for about 16 hours from the time I arrived at the Mother Baby Center until Alexander was born, at about 4:18 AM on November 30th. Aside from the fact that I'd planned on laboring at home for several hours before going in to the hospital (which was shot to hell when my water broke), the delivery went pretty much according to plan! The only thing that really threw me for a loop was back labor, which was pretty awful and almost made me abandon my plan to go drug free. My doula and I thought he might be posterior (when the baby's spine is against your spine) which is often the cause of back labor. We did a ton of Spinning Babies exercises to try to get him to turn, none of which alleviated my back pain at all... so we finally came to the conclusion that this might just be how things were going to go. If you haven't experienced back labor, you really don't want to. Basically by the time I got to late active labor and transition, I felt like my back was going to break in half during every contraction, and following each contraction my low back spasmed with pain to the point where I almost dreaded the end of the contraction more than the contraction itself. Plus the back pain was continuous so there really was no break from the pain between contractions. Honestly I'm not sure how I got through it, except for the constant encouragement from Ben, the nurses, my doula, and the OB on call.
When we got to the pushing stage, I found that the best position to relieve pressure on my back and let gravity help was on my knees with the back of the bed elevated to almost 90 degrees, draping my upper body over the back of the bed. We were all nervous that the OB wouldn't let me deliver in this position and that she would make me continue pushing on my back. Luckily, she was totally on board and even made a diving catch to grab Alex as he came out! Just looking at him during those first few hours was the most amazing thing I'd ever experienced - realizing that this little being was the same one who had been living and growing inside me for the past 9 months just blew my mind. When we first locked eyes, my heart melted. I never, ever want to forget that moment.
The next couple of days were a whirlwind of activity, trying to figure out how to breastfeed, visits from friends and family and deliveries of delicious food. Thank you to everyone who came to see us and brought us meals during those first few days - we are so grateful!
For now, we are just hanging out at home, snuggling Alexander, drinking a lot of tea, watching some great shows on Netflix and gearing up for the holidays. Hope you're all having an amazing holiday season! Back soon with more :)
(^^ I started this post a few weeks ago - I thought about editing it but decided to leave it as-is and just post it now! Given how long it take me to get this post up, I'm obviously not doing so hot at writing more often o_O)
