She's here!

I hope you'll all forgive me for my lack of speed in updating the last three months. A lot has happened! I'm here now to catch up, starting with this. It's a long one, so grab a snack.

Our Birth Story

Our daughter, Eloise Lucille Shindel, was born on Saturday, April 11, at 11:03 pm. Here is her birth story.

On Friday, April 10 (my due date), I went to my doctor's office early for a membrane sweep - something that can kickstart labor but is not guaranteed. As soon as we left the office I began to feel cramps and contractions, but I knew since a membrane sweep is a cervical irritant, it could have been nothing, so I didn't get my hopes up. We went back to the coffee shop - Elliott had to work and I didn't want to be too far from him - where I began to have intense contractions. I breathed through them for a few hours, then went out to walk on the trail by the shop to see if movement would help with the pain. It was unwise of me to go alone, because about half a mile in, the pain worsened and I had to turn around and go back. The return trip took me twice as long as the trip out, with several stops to lean on a tree and breathe through a contraction. Once I got back to the car, I drove to pick my brother up from school and drove us both to my parents' house, where I laid down and tried to rest, but was woken up frequently by the intensity of the contractions.

Elliott and I headed home once he was off work, where I sat on the labor ball and we began timing my contractions. I tried to sleep, but by midnight the contractions were close enough together and intense enough that we decided to go to the hospital. Once there, I was checked for progress and we discovered I was dilated to 3 centimeters - double what I had been at my appointment that morning, but still not enough to be admitted. The triage nurse advised us to walk around the unit for an hour to try and make progress, and after that I had progressed to a 4. Another hour of walking later, though, and I hadn't gotten any further, so we were sent home with a confirmation that yes, I was in early labor. The nurse gave me a shot of morphine to allow me to sleep through the contractions for awhile.

I got about three hours of sleep when we got home, then Elliott's mom came over and made us breakfast. She and Elliott went to the grocery store for a little while, and my mom came over to help us get things ready. Around 1:30 I laid down to try and nap, and managed to get a couple hours of sleep. When I woke up at 3:30, my water had broken and then we knew it was go time. We loaded up the car, made some calls, and headed back to the hospital. The triage nurse confirmed that my water had broken and we were admitted. I had not progressed past a 4, so the delivery doctor recommended we start pitocin. This wasn't exactly part of our birth plan - but neither was the back labor. I wasn't sure I could handle another several hours of painful back labor, so I was considering getting an epidural anyway. We agreed to the pitocin and a little later, the epidural.

From about 7:30 p.m., I continued to labor with the epidural, except when we had a problem with the pump/drip and I didn't have pain meds from 9 to 9:45. At 9:55 my labor nurse called the doctor in and I pushed from 10 p.m. until Ellie was born at 11:03. It was incredible. Pushing was the most empowering experience of my life; it was terrifying and exhilarating and the hardest work I've ever done.

Elliott was the best labor partner I could have asked for. He walked me through everything and was right next to me the whole time - except when he was going out between contractions to get me ice and water and whatever else I asked for. In my moments of insecurity and doubt, my few seconds of "I'm not sure I can do this," he encouraged me and reminded me of why we were there - why I was working so hard and what we had to look forward to.

When the doctor laid Ellie on my chest, my whole world cracked wide open. They say that giving birth changes you and they say it's a kind of mind-altering experience that you can never really recover from, but in the best way. It's beyond what I can describe, and I know it must be a completely different experience for each mother. I couldn't stop crying, and I was a totally new kind of content. It was wave after wave of gratitude and peace and relief and responsibility and if you had asked me to then, I would have lived in that moment for the rest of my life. She's incredible. She's a miracle. And over the last two and a half months, my love for her has, impossibly, grown.

First Impressions of Motherhood

In the days following Ellie's birth I wrote down a few of my first impressions. I'll share a few of them here.

My center of gravity has shifted completely. The weight of the world has simultaneously been lifted and placed on my shoulders.

Every ache, every pain, every whirlwind of emotion during the last nine months proved to be entirely worth it, a thousand times over. I would have endured much worse for her sake.

Over the first two weeks of her life, when we were home getting to know each other and learning how to be a family, the whole world was contained in our little house and I never wanted it to change. I would stay in that miraculous little cocoon forever.

38 Weeks

We are nearly there, friends! Today I am 38 weeks and 3 days. This photo was taken on Friday, and I'm convinced I've dropped another inch since then. No signs of imminent labor, but according to my doctor, it could happen any time. As she said on Thursday: "Your water could break when you walk out of this office, it could happen three weeks from now. You never know!"

I'm straying from my usual update format and will be freewheeling this post. Hope you don't mind!

As we get closer and closer to our due date (It's less than two weeks away!), I am happy to report that we have completed the entire pre-baby to-do list. A big thank you to my parents and brother for coming over to help me finish up all of my organizing and cleaning - and yard work, which would have been a spectacle had I attempted it.

So now we're just waiting on baby. I am enjoying some peace and calm before things get rolling, and we've been lucky to have some really beautiful weather that allows me to spend a lot of time outside. I (usually) don't feel impatient for labor, and if I do it's when I've stayed up too late and am too tired to manage my emotions. I've been good about reminding myself that a lot of women, especially first-time moms, go over their due dates and that it's okay if I do, too. I would be induced if I went to 42 weeks, so I put my mind on April 24: if I do go past my due date, at the latest we'll meet the baby on April 24. It helps keep me patient and reminds me that this baby will come at exactly the right time.

We did end up in the labor and delivery unit again on Tuesday evening. We were in Denver for an event related to Elliott's conference, and I had been having intense contractions since Friday. Finally on Tuesday they got very intense and very close together, to where I couldn't walk or talk through them and I had to breathe and focus - I don't like to jump the gun, but since we were so far from our hospital, I didn't want to take the chance. So I called triage, she advised us to come in, and we left the event with our friend Randy, who had ridden up with us, and drove down to the hospital. It turned out to be a false alarm, which was both a relief and sort of a disappointment - that feeling did surprise me. But I had a lot of encouragement from friends who reminded me that even though the contractions weren't necessarily the beginning of labor, they were doing something - moving the baby into position, getting my body ready for when the real thing does happen. And the triage nurse made a good point - I don't have much of a layer of fat between the muscles of my uterus and my skin, so I'm going to feel contractions more easily and possibly more intensely than a woman with a layer of fat will. So even though most women are having contractions at this point in their pregnancies, most don't feel them or feel them very mildly, whereas with no insulation, I feel them much more easily. So I think they're going to have to be very, very intense before I consider going back into L&D. Or my water will have to break.

So this is where we are, and where we will be until the baby comes. It's hard to believe we're already here, that when I see regulars in the coffee shop it's in the back of my mind that the next time I see them, I may not be pregnant anymore. It's both exciting and at the same time, a little sad. I love being pregnant and while I know that the baby is the ultimate prize at the end, I know there are pieces of this that I will miss. I read an article about how in English, there isn't a word for this feeling women get at the end of pregnancies - a sort of bated-breath nostalgic feeling, with something else thrown in that I can't quite name - other languages have words for it, and the author of the article compared it to the feeling of being between asleep and awake. I think I agree with that. The feeling of being not in two places, but in two states of being, at once. Knowing that our hard deadline is April 24, but that it could happen anytime between right now and then; both anticipating the baby's arrival and already missing the feeling of being the only one in the world that this little wonder is depending on right now.

As far as my feelings about labor, I feel as prepared for it as I can be. As someone who has never done this before, I know that if I try to imagine it I won't imagine it right - I'll either assume it's a lot more difficult and excruciating than it is, or I'll imagine it'll be a breeze and then be shocked and horrified when it hurts. So I'm trying not to picture or imagine the sensations as much as I visualize what I know will happen. And we practice labor positions and breathing techniques and all the other things that veteran moms either swear by or scoff at, there's no in between - and I sit on the yoga ball and wonder how I'm going to "breathe in deeply through the nose" when my seasonal allergies have me all stuffy.

All in all, the end of my pregnancy is occurring the way it has occurred for billions of women and I am experiencing it with eyes and ears as open as possible. There are days I feel beautiful and radiant, and there are days I feel like this:

and both kinds of days are equally valuable. Although I might not admit that on the cartoonishly-huge-pregnant-woman days.

Happy Monday, friends! Have a wonderful week, and unless I have a baby in my arms, the 39-week update will be forthcoming.

36 Weeks

Well friends, I have been seriously slacking in the update department of late. I get more and more tired every day, and this baby is getting really heavy. I haven't taken any blog-worthy bump photos, either - this post gets a sad Facebook selfie I took the other day. So basically, this update is going to be a bare-bones update and I'll promise a better one on Friday.

Symptoms
I'll be honest - most of my symptoms are things no civilized reader is interested in hearing about. So I'll skip the nitty gritty and just say that I'm experiencing a lot of pressure and dull pain all the time. BUT! I know that this all comes with the territory and I'll take it if it means I get to hold my baby at the end.

How big is baby?
At our appointment on Friday, baby was weighing in at about 6 1/2 pounds. My doctor said baby has long legs (according to the ultrasound), and that my belly is measuring right on track but baby is a little ahead. Our fruit this week is a papaya. I have another appointment today and we'll see how things are looking!

Movement
All the time, every day. It never slows down. We definitely have a very active baby on our hands. That's not to say that how baby acts now is any indication of how it'll be on the outside - I've actually heard that the most active in-the-womb babies are the calmest out-of-the-womb babies. Here's hoping? I'm still enjoying feeling the movement but I do sometimes wish that the baby would dance somewhere other than on top of my bladder. And sometimes I get punched or kicked really hard and I can feel it in uncomfortable places. So that's... interesting.

Highlights of the week
Well, we had an ultrasound at our appointment on Friday so I got to see our little wiggle worm again - unfortunately Elliott had to work so he didn't get to see. We've got a thumb-sucker! So far, anyway. And baby had a hand dramatically draped across his or her forehead, so we didn't get any good face photos. But baby is head down and in a good position, and is sitting nice and low, so we're just crossing our fingers that everything stays the same!

We also completed our Prepared Childbirth class at the hospital - it was a 2-week course that we signed up for just to get some general preparation under our belts before go time. I didn't expect to get a whole lot of new information out of it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Our instructor was really great and gave us a lot of hands-on practice with labor and pushing positions, as well as good information as far as avoiding medical interventions. This was good for us since we're hoping to go medication-free.

Now, maybe this wouldn't be a highlight for you, but I also finished writing up our big pre-baby to-do list. I say big, but the list is actually a lot smaller than I thought it would be (which is both exciting and scary). It's mostly organization and deep cleaning projects that need to be finished, and I'll have help next week while my mom is on spring break. So, once our second shower is over, we'll finish buying up whatever we need, I'll get the house in order, Elliott will get the rest of his vaccinations, and ostensibly we could be totally ready before April even starts! (Physically ready, that is. Mentally and emotionally is a whole other story.)

Low moments of the week
The end of pregnancy is turning out to be an emotional roller coaster. I get tired of the constant, dull, aching pain - call me naive but I think I'd rather be having contractions and knowing that the pain was actually getting me somewhere! - and every now and again I feel sad that it's almost over. I'm so excited to meet the baby, but we moved the Pack 'N Play into our bedroom the other day, and it made me realize how close we are to the end. I really love being pregnant and even though I know what's coming is so much better, I think in some ways I'll miss it. So my low moments consisted of mainly mood swings this week.

What I'm looking forward to
We've got another appointment today, Thursday is my last day of work, Friday we're officially considered full term, and Saturday I'm being given another baby shower by the ladies at my church! So I've got a lot to look forward to. Mostly, of course, I'm looking forward to meeting this baby, but between now and Saturday we've got a lot going on!

After Saturday we don't have a ton of big plans, so it'll be mostly final preparations for baby and then just taking it easy until it's go time.

Happy Wednesday, friends! I do promise a bigger, better update on Friday.

33 Weeks

Here we are at 33 weeks, friends! It's been a pretty uneventful week, aside from all the Snowpocalypse talk and then the storm itself. We hunkered down with the animals at Elliott's parents' house this weekend so that Elliott could have a shorter drive in to work - I get weird about snowy/icy roads - so I've been enjoying not cooking and hanging out with the family and the zoo (3 dogs, a cat, a bird, and a lizard!) and the unlimited supply of crushed ice that comes right out of the door of the freezer! You guys, it's an anemic pregnant lady's dream come true. It's the perfect texture, too. Nice, soft ice. I should start an ice review of all the restaurants in town.

Anyway, on with the update!

Symptoms
Foot in the ribs, peeing all the time, belly growing at an alarming rate (my brain can't keep up, I keep running into stuff with my belly), and I become physically exhausted very quickly.

How big is baby?
Our fruit comparison this week depends on who you ask - Ovia says cauliflower blossom (which I thought we already had), other places say Durian, which is that weird spiky looking fruit. There's a Portlandia episode about it.
Either way, baby is about 17 or 18 inches long, and weighs around 4 or 5 pounds.

Baby is practicing breathing, sucking, and swallowing, and starting to keep eyes open while awake! Baby's eyes can detect light, and pupils dilate and constrict. Some major brain development is happening this week (and will continue to happen), and baby's bones are hardening. Baby's hands this week:

Movement

This week, we're learning to tango, apparently. But for real, I'm starting to get a sense of growth rhythms and patterns. We usually have a day or two of wild, crazy movement, then a quieter day with more rolling and stretching movements rather than just kicks and punches. I think those quieter days are baby's big growing days. Then I get to be extremely uncomfortable for a day or two, feeling very stretched and maxed out, then I wake up one morning and BAM! My belly is way bigger than it was when I went to bed. Even Elliott notices. Then the cycle starts again, because there's finally enough room for all that crazy movement!

Highlights of the week

We had our hospital tour on Saturday! It was great to get a closer look at the rooms and to have the chance to ask questions and feel prepared. Next week is our pre-registration appointment, where we meet with the L&D nurse and talk about our birth plan and get all of the paperwork out of the way. It gets more and more real every day!

And as annoying and irritating and dangerous as it is, I have enjoyed the snowstorm we've had over the last couple of days. We've had a very warm winter since Christmas, so it's nice to get some precipitation - and it looks like it will be cold enough over the next week for it to actually stick around! We need that around here.

Our appointment this week was with the midwife. I really liked meeting with her! She's a valuable resource - I wish I had taken advantage of her being there earlier in this pregnancy. That said, I do love our OB and am very happy with her as well. 

Low moments of the week

I'm now enjoying my fourth cold of this pregnancy. I'm totally over being sick and I'm ready to be healthy again, but I'm not sure how to stop getting these colds. I feel like I'm doing everything I can to prevent them but I still catch whatever goes around.

What I'm looking forward to

Our friends & family baby shower is this Sunday! I'm so excited to celebrate with everyone and I know my mom and in-laws have been working hard to put this party together. Here's hoping the weather cooperates!

Aside from that, I'm looking forward to our pre-registration appointment and our next OB check-in. Labor and delivery will be here before we know it - I'm looking forward to having a baby to hold!

Happy Monday, friends!

32 Weeks

32 weeks!! My, how time flies. If I give birth on my due date (which apparently only 2% or something of women do), we are t-minus 8 weeks until we get to meet Baby Shindel. I get more excited, anxious, and terrified every day. In the above picture, rather than a flattering side profile, I'm showing off my newfound ability to use my belly as a shelf. Not long after that photo was taken, I was balancing my water cup and nearly lost it to a hard kick from the baby kangaroo I'm apparently growing.

Symptoms
Mostly feeling extremely stretched. I also always - always - have a tiny foot jammed into my ribs. Otherwise, just the normal, fun, third-trimester stuff: frustratingly frequent trips to the bathroom, none of my clothes fit, I have weird eating habits, and my patience with overly-opinionated strangers is dwindling.

How big is baby?
Baby's weighing in at about 3.5 pounds this week and is around 16 inches long. From what I can tell, we've moved or are moving into a good head-down position, which is a great thing!
Fruit comparison: Florida pomelo. Do you know what that is? I don't. Let's Google:

This is the best picture that actually shows how big it is in comparison to other fruits. The Florida pomelo is the one in the upper right-hand corner. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Citrus maxima (or Citrus grandis), (Common names: shaddock, pomelo, pummelo, pommelo, pamplemousse or shaddok) is an original citrus fruit, with the look of a big grapefruit, native to South and Southeast Asia.

So there you go. My baby is as big as this weird fruit, or a "big grapefruit." It's all relative.

I found this neat pregnancy app this week called Ovia. It has a feature where it shows you how big your baby's hand currently is in comparison to how big it will be at 40 weeks. I love looking at it. Here's this week's - the pink hand is 32 weeks' size, the gray outline is 40 weeks.

Movement
YES. Tons of it. All day, every day. I swear this child is coming equipped with a swing set, and is getting a lot of use out of it in utero.

Highlights of the week
A big Target box showed up on our doorstep this week, and it turned out to be gifts from some of Elliott's family! The box included some of the crib and changing linens we had registered for, so I washed and folded them and put them away - the baby's room is starting to look more and more prepared! I love going in there and just sitting and imagining what it will be like when the baby comes. I still have to finish the canopy and rocking chair, but otherwise it's really coming together.

Low moments of the week
We ended up in labor and delivery on Monday night after I spent all day having contractions. It wasn't bad - I debated whether this update belonged in the "low moments" category - and everything is fine, but it was a better-safe-than-sorry moment and when I called the L&D nurse, she did say I needed to come in. The contractions came consistently, about every 10 minutes, and registered fairly high on the monitor. But after they checked everything out, the nurse concluded that my uterus was simply "throwing a temper tantrum" and instructed me to keep an eye on it.

Dreams
My dreams have been really sporadic and weird lately - nothing really happens, it's just a series of seemingly random appearances of people I've met once or twice, where we don't talk, I just see them, and then it's over. Possibly it's hard to have a long or coherent dream when I'm waking up every half hour to adjust my position to try to get comfortable, or to go pee.

What I'm looking forward to
This week, instead of my regular OB (who is out of town), I'm meeting with the certified nurse midwife at my practice! I'm excited to meet with her and see how what she does is different from my regular doctor. My practice has six OBs plus the CNM on staff, and they rotate as the on-call delivery doctors at my hospital, so chances are I won't get my regular doctor for delivery. I figure the more of them that I meet, the more comfortable I'll be once it's actually go time.
I'm also looking forward to meeting this baby. I know we still have a few weeks to go, but it's getting more and more real every day, and it seems like time is just flying by and it'll be here before we know it. I have this weird habit of counting down to a certain week - like I'll say to Elliott: "Four weeks to go until we have four weeks left!" to try to make it seem longer, but I'm not sure it works. Oh well.
Perhaps I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but I'm hoping that soon we can settle on names. We've narrowed our lists down enough that it's down to the ones we really like - meaning we're each sort of nudging for our favorites and it seems like we're having trouble just choosing.

Pretty soon we start having weekly appointments, and then it's time to pack the hospital bag! Very exciting.

Happy Friday friends!

Nursery Remodel Part 3

It's almost done! It's coming together! I'm so excited!

First of all, forgive my recent lack of updates. I can't seem to shake this bug. I've had it, on and off, for nearly a month, and I'm finally starting to feel like I'm coming out of it. Earlier this week I was afraid it had finally morphed into a sinus infection, but I'm thinking that it was the dark before the dawn and I'm actually getting better now.

So while I've been holed up at home, I've also been hard at work putting the baby's room together. We reached 31 weeks yesterday, so we are nearing the finish line, and I have been anxious to complete my projects and finally have a real, ready nursery for our little wiggle worm to come home to.

And after today, I am nearly there! On Sunday we did go to IKEA, and picked up our crib, dresser, nightstand, rolling cart, rug, and a couple of other small items. Elliott and I were so excited when we got home Sunday night that we spent a couple of hours assembling all the furniture and setting the crib up. Then I went out on Monday and bought Old Fashioned Milk Paint, but then felt too sick for the next few days to actually do any work. Last night I felt well enough to paint, and now we have finished furniture!

Elliott put up the wall shelves today after my doomed attempt last week (I forgot to find studs. Oops.) I haven't gotten a decent shot of the crib just yet, but once I get the canopy up I will get more. I'm hoping that my next remodel update will be "We're done!" with final photos, but who knows.

The first three photos are the "before" shots of the dresser, drawers, and nightstand. The next three are the "after" shots of the furniture set up in the room!

  

  

In other news, I washed the crib sheets. They are so tiny.

Happy Saturday, friends! Enjoy your weekends!

Nursery Remodel Part 2

We painted!!
But first, we moved everything out but the bed. My brother was gracious enough to come and give me a hand moving things out (don't be fooled - we paid him with Elliott's old TV!). Here are the photos, from "moving day" to this morning.

Please ignore the giant mess that is the rest of the bedroom. This has since been cleaned up! This picture was taken after the second coat of gray paint had been applied. Elliott and I went to Home Depot and checked out paint colors. Elliott picked out this gray, which I thought might be too dark, but once it was on the wall, I totally loved it.

After painting two walls a fresh gray, the white on the remaining walls looked really dingy in comparison. So I trekked back to Home Depot and picked up a bright flat white and spruced up the other two.

This is the base for the Aspen trees I painted on the north and west wall of the room. I used the white we used for the other walls, but since I wanted a sort of unfinished/distressed look, I left the edges rough and only used one coat with a mini roller, so some gray peeks through in places. I also did not go all the way to the floor and ceiling trim - I left about a half an inch of gray on the top and bottom of the trees.

Oh, and after I took this picture, I went to rinse my brushes and tray in the bathtub, and came out to find Eddie with a white nose. One of the corner trees was missing about the bottom eighteen inches of paint - yep, he had licked it off the wall. I was not a happy camper, and spent the rest of my night watching him closely to make sure he was okay, and making sure he drank tons of water!

Once the white was dry, I added detail with the same gray as the wall. I used a simple foam paintbrush to create the lines and accents.

The final step was adding small branches to the tops of the trees. I didn't want to do anything too intricate - no criss-crossing branches or anything, so I made them small and kept them high on the trunks. This is the corner where the rocking chair will go.

I'm planning to do a sort of "accent tree" on one of the white walls, right next to the door. It will look the same as these trees, but the colors will be opposite.














Other things that I accomplished this week:

• Started working on the mobile/canopy - pictures to come!
• Made a trip to IKEA to pick up floating wall shelves, a mug rail and hooks, doormat, curtains, and rods
• Destroyed the east wall of the baby's room by not attaching the shelves properly
• Cried about the shelves and the wall
• Scrubbed the floors and baseboards in the baby's room

All in all, a pretty productive week!

Up next: 

• Paint ceiling trim
• Another IKEA run to get the big furniture pieces - crib and mattress, dresser, nightstand, hopefully lamp & patio lights
• Paint crib, dresser, nightstand with Annie Sloan Olive chalk paint
• Sand, refinish, and reupholster the rocking chair
• Stain the cedar chest
• I'm thinking about sanding and re-staining the floor trim; it looks pretty rough, especially next to the fresh paint on the walls. That totally depends on my energy levels though!