I would like to finish all three of these, though I’m not sure what a realistic goal is. I can finish a spread in one session of working if I get a good chunk of time, but that doesn’t happen a lot. A full double spread a week is probably realistic, which means over a year to finish what’s left on all three of them. Anyway, here are some of the ones I’ve been working on recently for Fiona’s (click for bigger images).

I might change some of the backgrounds and/or paper still, but I’m just glad to be getting something done! I am using this “My Sweet Baby” collection to do the book and bought a cute scrapbook I’ll eventually put the pages into.

Related posts:

1. Baby Scrapbook
2. Hi baby
3. Baby Moon

I spent most of today editing a video. Originally it was supposed to be a pregnancy, birth, and beyond video, set to music with no dialogue. But it got long and I liked a lot of the dialogue, so this is just a birth video. I might change the first dialogue box eventually. The midwives didn’t actually show up until about 10:20, and the first clip of the video is only about 25 minutes before the baby comes, just to give an idea of how quickly it went. I’m going to work on another one that would be more along my original idea too, and will be a little more censored. This particular one has nudity, yelling, etc. Watch at your own risk.

(You need a browser that supports html5 to see this. So basically not Internet Explorer.)

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1. There’s really something there!
2. Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey
3. She’s here!

We went to try and lay down, but though the contractions stayed quite far apart, they were suddenly quite intense again after my water breaking and so we didn’t actually sleep, but we dozed for an hour or so until Meredith woke up at 9 (she had slept the whole time until this point, straight through the night except for stirring once and was settled easily back to sleep by Kris!). We got up and the contractions started again almost immediately. Kris called the midwife to ask her if it was okay to use the same water that had been in the pool all night now that my water was broken, and she said it was fine. I was having a contraction while he was on the phone and she asked if she should come. I said something along the lines of “I don’t care, whatever you want” lol. Kris emptied the pool a bit so he could reheat the water, and meanwhile my contractions were quickly becoming more and more intense. I’m not sure when they started coming right on top of the other but it wasn’t long afterwards. I couldn’t believe how fast it went from every 8 minutes to transition. And it was very intense/painful. Meredith’s labour had been painful, but in a different way. Lots of back labour, but not nearly so intense. Probably because it was longer. I was very loud, way louder than with Meredith. I’m sure the neighbours heard lol.

Through this Meredith was standing by the pool feeding me frozen grapes (thanks to Paxye for this idea, they were the perfect labour food), stroking and kissing my head, and doing her own thing quietly. She apparently asked Kris to watch a movie at one point and he told her I didn’t want the TV on and she said “oh ok Daddy” and went and found something else to do.

I’m not sure what time it was when the midwife and her student showed up, but I was very close to pushing. The time was actually kind of perfect as Kris and I had had all night to do our own thing together, but when it got really intense and difficult for me (and just when he was wondering how he was going to do things like reheat the pool when I refused to let go of his hand), they showed up. The midwife listened to a few contractions and commented that it sounded like there was a little lip of cervix blocking the baby. I have no idea how she would know that from listening to me! Anyway, she asked if I wanted her to check and potentially hold it out of the way a bit. She did mention that she certainly didn’t have to and it would get out of the way on it’s own if she left it. I had originally told her I didn’t want to be checked at all, but at this point I was feeling like I wasn’t coping very well and I remembered how much I enjoyed pushing with Meredith. I asked her if she did that if it meant I would push sooner and she said yes, probably, and I was like “do it, I want to push!” (I also made her reassure me that she’d stop immediately if it hurt or I wanted her to, which of course she did.) It ended up making the next contraction better and there was a lip, that the head managed to slip past.

The contractions really slowed down at this point, but when they came they were intense. I was yelling very loudly with each one and saying things like “I don’t want to do this anymore”. I had made clear how much I was looking forward to pushing, but when the pushing started I hated it this time for some reason. I really enjoyed pushing with Meredith. Anyway, once I started feeling pushy there was no stopping me lol. I wanted her out of there. I only pushed for 9 minutes and then she burst into the world and Kris caught her and put her on my chest. Meredith came over to check her out and then climbed into the pool with us. We sat and rested for a few minutes and then checked and saw that Meredith had a little sister.

My only real regret about the whole thing is that the water had got cool in that last little bit and I’d been too out of it to remember to mention it and they hadn’t noticed. Her cord was a little short. It wouldn’t have been a problem if the water was nice and warm but because it was so cold I was having a hard time keeping her out of the water enough that we could wrap her. I also couldn’t easily have gotten out with the cord still attached. She was nice and pink and noisy when she first popped out but after about 10 minutes in the tub she had gotten quite quiet and was turning a bit blue. We tried to wrap her up on my chest but I just couldn’t keep her out of the cool water and agreed to cut the cord. I had wanted to wait until the placenta came out to cut it but it had been 15 minutes at this point so I agreed that I was okay cutting it a little sooner. Meredith ended up being the one to cut it, and we tied it off with a braided tie I had made (I had actually made two just in case and am wearing the other around my wrist now ).

They took her while I got out and decided to give her a little puff of room air, which worried me a bit seeing them put the little mask on her, but the midwife assured me it was mostly precaution and that she was just fine. She pinked up really quickly with the air and started squalling. Because I hadn’t pushed for long she was still a tad gurgly but nothing that concerned the midwives at all. I didn’t want the oxytocin shot, and at about a half hour after she was born my placenta hadn’t come out. I was lying on my back with Meredith nursing and holding the baby on the other arm, so she asked if I was willing to squat or change position to see if gravity would help the placenta out at all. I don’t think she was worried about it yet but wanted to be proactive. The placenta came out pretty quickly after I changed positions. Kris passed her back to me and she started rooting and latched on and nursed like a pro. I actually am amazed at how well she nurses; her latch is pretty much perfect already and she’s got a powerful little suck. I’m kind of glad I’m used to a toddler nursing already lol.

Meredith was fascinated by the placenta and the midwife showed her how it worked and how the cord attached to the baby (and where). About an hour after she was born they weighed and measured her. We all guessed how much she would weigh and everyone else was guessing under 7 pounds. I guessed 7lb 6oz. She ended up being 7lb 8oz so I was pretty close. (Maybe even right on if we had weighed her before she nursed. )The midwives left soon after that and Kris and I talked about names and settled on Fiona Siobhan pretty easily. We made our phone calls and have pretty much relaxed and just enjoyed our baby the rest of the day. Unlike Meredith’s labour, where I hadn’t slept in about 27 hours and so slept that whole day, I was feeling pretty good and only had a short nap in the afternoon when Kris and Meredith went out for some food.

We will be EC-ing with her as well, and we’ve already caught one pee and one of her meconium poops today, which is kind of neat.

I’ll post more pictures when I get a chance, but here’s one of Fiona. I was right when I had checked myself, she has tons of hair! It’s so strange to not be pregnant and that I have another little baby. Very surreal, but I’m loving it again. Meredith adores her right now and wants to hold her and touch her constantly. They were both nursing and looking in each other’s eyes while doing so, with Meredith’s hand stroking her head. I wish Kris had been around to get a picture. I hope Meredith continues to enjoy her so much as she realizes how much time and attention she will take up for a while.

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1. Meredith's Birth Story
2. Still Pregnant…
3. There’s really something there!

Pregnancy is still going so smoothly, I often forget I’m pregnant. I can’t believe I’m in the third trimester already. It’s night and day from last time, when I spent most of the pregnancy nauseous, puking, or with terrible heartburn. I have gotten a little bit of heartburn, but so far nothing major. I also spent a lot more time thinking about being pregnant last time, whereas this time I have a two year old to distract me and life goes on as normal. The baby does move a lot now though, and I definitely love that part. Meredith loves when the baby kicks her while she’s nursing, and will often pop off and talk about how the baby is going to nurse too on whichever breast she’s not on. (I find this really cute, because I’d never mentioned that the baby would need to nurse too. She figured it out on her own.) She’s also started bringing me little bits of food and putting it on my belly and telling me it’s for the baby. I’m really curious how much she’s really internalizing about me being pregnant. Obviously she at least partly gets it, if she’s figuring out things like that the baby will need to nurse. She loves to look at and hold other people’s babies and nurses/potties her own dolls. I guess we’ll see in a few months!

Her room is mostly finished now. She chose blue, and was pretty insistent from the first day I asked her what colour she wanted that it would be blue. Occasionally she would mention purple, but that was rare. I got some blue paint and some purple paint to try out in the room, and was doing the purple paint first and she said “No Mama! No purple. Blue room.” So, blue it was. I’m quite happy with the colours. There’s a little more that needs to be done in there, but it’s coming along. I want to either paint all the trim white, or replace the baseboards with white ones, but the white paint I have is oil-based which isn’t recommended for pregnancy. I have a good friend who’s offered to paint them as a Christmas present, but she’s really busy too so not sure if it will end up happening.

Meredith adores the room. She talks about it all the time and likes to go in and touch the walls. A couple of weeks ago she wanted to nurse in her bed and I wondered if she was going to fall asleep there. She didn’t, but I wonder what I would have done if she had. Likely brought her back into our bed with me. She still rarely sleeps through the night so I prefer her to be with me where it’s easy to just nurse or cuddle her back to sleep. Plus she still wakes up and looks for me, even if it’s just to wake up briefly to put her hand on me. If I’m not there she will wake up the whole way and call for me. I think I may start putting her down in her room for naps though if she seems interested.

Speaking of sleep, I’m pretty comfortable where we are at as far as night nursing. In the beginning of the pregnancy she always had to nurse back to sleep; sometimes it would take her 45 minutes or longer each time. I worried that with a newborn who would likely wake her up each time he/she woke up, both would want to be nursed back to sleep every single time. I really didn’t want to night wean her though. I opted to try for plain old honesty. When she is settling in for a long nursing session in the night and I am really tired or the nursing is uncomfortable or painful (which luckily for me hasn’t happened often), I will ask her to please keep it short this time and then we can cuddle instead. Most of the time, she’s quite happy to just have a quick nurse and then roll over and we’ll cuddle until she’s asleep. The times she nurses longer there’s almost always a reason, such as illness. Prior to pregnancy, she really had never fallen asleep on her own without nursing, now she does quite often. In fact there were a couple of nights where she didn’t ask to nurse at all, and just cuddled into me when she woke up. I think that was the few days my milk dried up and she wasn’t nursing much during the day either. Then my colostrum came in and she’s loving that lol. Back to nursing frequently during the day and usually at least two to three times overnight too.

Anyway, so much for this being a short update post. I do have more to post in the next little while, if I get a chance. I’m still reading lots of blogs. They’re in my RSS feed on my e-mail though and I haven’t commented much lately. But I’m really enjoying reading all the posts and seeing the Christmas baking and crafts being done, and hope to share some of our own holiday activities too.

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1. Sleeping through the night
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Things are still moving right along. I occasionally get mild heart burn, but other than that this has still been an extremely uneventful pregnancy. I’m not complaining at all lol. A few more weeks to the third trimester. We’ve pretty much decided on two girl’s names, though we won’t decide which one for sure until the baby’s born probably. Funnily, neither of them were on our list before I got pregnant this time. Boy’s names are once again harder. We have about ten on the “short” list still. That’s better than with Meredith’s pregnancy though, where we could barely get a short list at all that we were both happy with.

I guess I’m nesting. I’m still doing some major decluttering and reorganizing, especially upstairs though over the weekend we reorganized our living room too. It feels much more spacious the way we have it and Meredith’s toys don’t feel so cramped. Her room is starting to actually look fairly empty. I have the change table set up so I can start putting some baby stuff away on it. I need to sand and paint her bed and finish getting rid of the stuff that’s left, but compared to how it looked when I started it’s looking great. I’m not going to post any pictures until it’s done though, the before pictures will be too embarrassing without seeing that I really did get it done. I’m excited about it. We plan to use it as a space where Meredith can keep things she doesn’t want the baby to get into. She can nap/sleep there if she wants but I don’t plan to push her into that at all, I just want her to have the option because she’s such a light sleeper and I’ve read some kids actually prefer their own room with a cosleeping new baby. I may set our crib up there too and if this baby will actually sleep out of arms I have a feeling he/she may end up being put down more often for naps, so that I can spend some one-on-one time with Meredith and won’t have to be constantly asking her to keep her voice down. I haven’t decided about that though, as it would mean when the baby is sleeping she wouldn’t be able to go up there, and I also really loved having Meredith nap in the mei tei on us and didn’t find it too disruptive. But I didn’t have a two year old at the time either. I’m not really a fan of cribs though (we only have it because my mom bought it for us after I told her we didn’t want one), so more likely if baby goes down for naps it will be in our bed like Meredith does now.

I’ll end with a picture from Halloween. My talented friend Kyre made the shirt and it turned out perfectly. (Check out her site to see the gorgeous cake she recently made for a birthday party.) I got a lot of comments on it when we were trick-or-treating and I’m sad I only get to wear it once. Meredith was Nemo, which was perfect for her as she loves the colour orange and she adores fish (it’s her favorite part of the zoo when we go). She loved Halloween and still talks about the candy and balloon she got that day, even though she really doesn’t eat much candy besides Smarties. Kris and I ended up eating most of hers while she chose to eat healthy things like eggs, bananas, and avocadoes, even though we left the candy bucket out. She would open a bag, sometimes have one or two, and then give the rest of it to one of us. I think just the excitement of everything was really neat to her though.

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I did a bunch of organizing, decluttering, and moving  of stuff last week and felt fine afterwards. Then suddenly the next afternoon my back started hurting, and it still hasn’t gotten any better. I’m not sure what I would have done, as I was careful about what I moved and how I picked things up and have never had problems with my back like this before. I don’t think it’s pregnancy-related at all yet, but being pregnant probably doesn’t help. I have a chiro appointment set for tomorrow and I can’t wait. I’ve been trying to take it really easy but if anything my back is worse today than it was yesterday. Maybe because yesterday it was feeling a lot better so I probably didn’t take it as easy as I had been. I’m really hoping the chiro helps. It usually does. I can barely walk today without pain, whereas up until now it’s mostly been just bending over and getting up from a sit or from lying down that’s been painful.

The worst part is, because I had started the decluttering, the rooms I was working in had boxes and stuff pulled out. But I haven’t had a chance to go back and finish, so some of them look worse than before. Oh well, hopefully the chiro will help and I’ll be able to finish up sooner rather than later, though I’ll take it even easier just in case. My dishes have been piling up too, even though I’m trying to get at least a load a day done. Anyone want to come do my dishes?

Here are some belly shots from last night. Excuse the funny cropping on some of them, Meredith wasn’t wearing pants as usual and I don’t want to post nude shots on the internet or on Facebook.

Notice my belly button sticking out already? lol It didn’t do that until much closer to the end last time.

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The appointment went really well. We pretty much declined all prenatal testing, including ultrasound, which she didn’t even blink at. I told her I want a hands-off birth this time. She’ll be there for support and probably to entertain Meredith, but I don’t want to be checked or anything. She thinks that’s great and doesn’t foresee any issues whatsoever. She says if I can push a posterior, sunny-side-up baby out in 44 minutes, I can push an anterior baby out no problem. The good news is, she thinks the placenta is positioned better this time, so less chance of a posterior baby. One of the reasons I really liked her the first time was because of how upbeat and positive she is. She really believes that women are made to give birth and has a real positive vibe surrounding her. I’m really looking forward to having her at my labour this time, because I think just her presence there will be really calming and positive. She’s the type of person I would want there for support and as a friend anyway. She actually was at Meredith’s birth, but only for the last twenty minutes or so. She was the back up midwife (all home births here must have two midwives, or at least one midwife and a trained “baby catcher”). There was nothing really “wrong” with my last birth, and I view it as a very positive experience, but I’m more educated and knowledgeable now, and I’m really looking forward to this one. We got my third choice midwife for Meredith’s birth, so it’s nice to know exactly who will be there this time.

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5 weeks and 6 days

6 weeks and 4 days – what a difference in just 5 days! This is in the morning when we just got up and hadn’t eaten yet, so not bloat. I thought maybe it was twins (but I’m measuring right on so I doubt it). I just woke up one morning and thought, wow, a belly! And it never went away.

9 weeks and 1 day – obviously not actually a belly shot but you can see my belly peeking out there

14 weeks and 5 days – I think I’m definitely at that stage where people start to wonder if I’m putting on weight or pregnant lol

Still 14 weeks and 5 days, but my hands are covering it a little bit in the one above so thought I’d include this one too.

Meredith wanted to be included in the pictures, and when I squatted down to be on her level for one, she thought she should squat down too.

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1. Update: Good-bye First Trimester
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Last pregnancy, at six weeks when many of the moms in the due date club I was posting in were already complaining about fatigue and morning sickness, I was still feeling great. I remember saying to Kris that it seemed like I would be one of those lucky women who wouldn’t get symptoms, but that to get a little bit so the pregnancy would feel more real. Then seven weeks came and the morning sickness hit and I was throwing up every day until I was twenty-two weeks along. When I started feeling nauseous at six weeks this time, I thought “uh oh, it’s going to be even worse this time”. There were a few really bad days where I felt terrible, but I’ve only puked the one time (in the car, so it was as much the fault of motion sickness), and otherwise have had many days of feeling mostly normal. Weird! I’ve been tired, but not the passing out on the couch every night exhaustion that I had last time. Last time I had a little bit of spotting, but again, nothing this time.

I did crave fast-food burgers a couple of times right in the beginning, which is really weird. I don’t eat fast-food burgers ever, so the fact that I wanted one so badly was strange to me. And last time, I never had any cravings to speak of. In the first half, I mostly ate carbs, but that wasn’t because I was craving them. It was because I couldn’t keep anything else down. This time, I’ve been craving apples and other fruits, and eating lots of veggies and good whole foods. Much more like how I wanted to eat last time.

I think perhaps I’ve felt movement already a couple of times, but I’m not sure and it’s still really early. I felt a little swipe and then a tap a few nights ago, but later in the night I had some gas so it could have been that. I’ve felt tiny flutters a few other times too. We went swimming and I was crouched down walking through the water (you know how you do in shallow water if you want to keep your upper body still under), and I could feel a little hard lump where my uterus is, so that was kind of neat.

For the most part this pregnancy has been a non-event so far. For some reason though, it feels more real than last time. Maybe because I’ve done it once and I know that there really is something in there. Or maybe because I’ve been feeling well enough to actually enjoy the fact that I’m pregnant and get used to the idea, instead of spending most of my time trying not to throw up or pass out.

I really can’t wait until my first appointment though. I didn’t schedule it until I’m already 16 or 17 weeks along, I can’t remember exactly. I know about prenatals, eating a good diet, exercise, etc. I don’t really have any questions or concerns. The only thing I’d love is to be able to hear the heartbeat, but I’m just trusting that everything is okay.

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We were a bit surprised it happened so quickly this time, since it took quite a bit longer with Meredith, but thrilled too.  I’ve always wanted an early spring baby. The only problem with the timing is that my first-choice midwife is off in March. But I really love my second-choice one too (and in fact, until my first-choice one helped a friend recently with her birth, it was very close about which I actually preferred) and she is available. My first appointment isn’t until mid-September.

My only symptoms so far are some minor cramps and hunger. I’m hungry earlier than last time, but that’s not surprising considering I’m nursing too this time. I read on one site that I should be getting about 3300 calories a day. I’m going to try and follow the Brewer’s Diet pretty closely right from the beginning, since I had blood pressure problems last time that the diet really helped. I bet I’ll be really tired of eggs and chicken by the end of this pregnancy. The only problem is we’re thinking of going dairy-free for a while because Kris is definitely allergic, and we’re wondering if Meredith is too. I don’t like soy as a substitute for milk. I may just not worry about going dairy-free myself until the baby is born, and limit the amount of dairy Meredith gets for now.

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