Similarities

People are always looking at my kids and wondering who they look like. They don't really look like Jeromy or me, but I am really seeing how similar they looked as babies. I really see some similarities between Emma and Bennett and mostly Emma Rachel, not so much of Ellie, except the picture of her swaddled. Ellie has a pouty bottom lip that the others don't have. Bennett was super chubby, but I can see a similarity to Emma if I look past the chub. What do you think?

Bennett






Rachel





Ellie

I know I haven't been very diligent with my blogging lately, but man, what happened to my background wallpaper while I was away?!

New Pics

Hi all! We are still alive, but getting back into the swing of things which means we are BUSY! My back is starting to give me trouble again because of the increased activity level, so I need to pace myself for sure! We bought one of those 15 foot wide by 42 inch deep pools last weekend, and the kids are having a blast! I was hoping to teach them to swim this summer so we wouldn't have to do swimming lessons, but Bennett can touch the bottom so isn't forced to use his life jacket to float. Emma is still growing really well. I am not taking her to weigh in anymore, but last Thursday we were at the doctors, so I could pick up some digestive enzymes, and she weighed in at 9 pounds 7 ounces which was another pound in 9 days. She is looking so chubby and cute now. She is smiling which is so much fun. She is a good sleeper as long as she is swaddled and is sleeping in the bassinet now, as opposed to with me! Enjoy the new pictures!

Weigh In

I forgot to post yesterday about Emma's latest weigh in. She went from 7 pounds 9 1/2 ounces last Tuesday to 8 pounds 7 ounces this Tuesday. That is 14 ounces! Hooray! We are officially in the clear now. My midwife kept assuring me that we would reach critical mass, and once she was bigger, nursing would be easier and better. Thankfully she was right, and I will no longer be worried. I can tell she is getting longer, not necessarily chubbier. She is starting to smile. I love it!

My Great Kids!

These are my three musketeers. Rachel does whatever Bennett does and Ellie does whatever the big kids are doing, and they are always together. It is really cute. Bennett still loves his Ellie Bellie. Those two have always had a strong connection, and Bennett still likes to have her around and is really good with her (unless she is knocking down his legos and blocks!) Rachel is still getting over pink eye and caught Bennett's cold along the way. She looks pretty awful with goopy eyes, a constantly dripping nose, and really dark circles. Poor girl!



I finally got around to downloading my pictures off the camera. I think these pictures were taken last week. My mom says that Emma changes so much every week. I can't tell as much because I see her every day, but I know she is getting longer. She is still a skinny minny and will probably just be little like Ellie. Emma has really long arms though as you can see in these pictures. Her outfit fits her fine but the arms are too short. She is so tiny around, like Ellie, and everything looks like you could fit another baby in there with her. Enjoy my sweet little baby!

Conjunctivitis

Rachel woke up from her nap yesterday with a slightly goopy eye, not so big of a deal that I thought anything of it. She woke up this morning with two red, goopy eyes. I couldn't ignore the inevitable. Pink eye. Highly contagious pink eye. Cancel your dinner plans with friends pink eye. Bummer. My eyes are feeling itchy just thinking about it, but I hope that it is just the power of suggestion. At least the house is clean because I thought we were going to have company tonight. Sometimes IT seems never ending!

Voice Activated Typing

I know that they do already have voice activated typing available, but I wish I had it and then maybe I would be able to blog once in a while. I am still stuck with the two handed nursing for about 40 minutes with about an hour in between ending one session and starting another. That makes it impossible to type! Emma is gaining weight much better now, but it sure has taken up alot of time. She weighed in at 7 pounds 9 ounces on Tuesday, so she has gained all the weight back that she lost and gained 6 1/2 ounces in the last week which is totally "normal." I am still treating thrush, but the pain has gotten better with the nursing, so I can nurse her alot longer than I could before. She takes a good few hour nap during the day along with some shorter ones. She goes to bed at about 7:30 or 8 and then I get her up and nurse her before I go to bed. She wakes up at 2 or 3 to nurse and then again at 6 or 7. She is such a sweet baby and is already starting to smile a little bit. The older kids are enjoying our spring weather and are so bummed when they wake up to rain, which has been quite often lately. Jeromy has started reading Swiss Family Robinson to them at night, and I think they will really enjoy it once they get into it. Rachel finally learned how to ride her bike with training wheels. She has been to scared up until now to ride it because of how it teeters back and forth on the training wheels. Jeromy and I went to a fundraising dinner while my mom babysat the 3 oldest, and she said she took the kids on a walk while they rode their bikes. I asked her if she meant Rachel rode her scooter, and she said that she rode her pink two wheeler. I was so surprised, so now she is a bike rider. Pretty exciting stuff. Ellie is chattering up a storm. She is our biggest babbler we have ever had. She is always singing in some unknown language. My mom said she sounds like she is speaking in tongues. The words she does say are mostly backwards which is kind of strange. Doof for food, oosh for shoe. I don't know if you can be a dyslexic speaker? That's it for the updates. Sorry no pictures although I did take some, I just haven't downloaded them off the camera yet.

Funny quote I read today: There is nothing right in my left brain and nothing left in my right brain.

Yep, that about sums it up!

Emma's Birth Story

I thought maybe a month of time would lessen the traumaticness of Emma's birth, but nope, it was pretty traumatic. At 8 days overdue, I went and had a chiropractic adjustment thinking that maybe I was out of alignment and that Emma couldn't descend because of it. It turns out that I was right and that the adjustment either worked and I went back out or it didn't work at all. The night after the adjustment I started having contractions which was pretty exciting because usually that means a baby is going to come pretty quickly after that. I continued to contract all through the night, but was able to sleep for a few hours because by baby #4 I knew to get sleep if at all possible. I woke up the next morning and the labor stopped. Jeromy decided to stay home though because we were still thinking that something was going to happen, and I was pretty tired. That night, the same thing happened. I labored all night long, but this time the contractions were too strong to sleep through. They were really strong when I was lying down, but would stop when I stood up. I woke Jeromy up at around 3 am just to let him know I thought I was "really in labor this time." I didn't feel like any company, so I just worked through the contractions all night. I finally fell asleep around 5 am because the contractions were slowing down and slept for an hour or so. When I woke up, no more contractions. I called my midwife that morning, and she told me that "real labor" wouldn't change no matter which position I was in. Lying down or standing up shouldn't affect the labor. Jeromy stayed home again that day so I could get some rest after the long night I had. Wednesday night, same thing. The contractions started about 9 pm every 5 minutes or so. That night, for the next 8 hours, the labor was REALLY hard! The contraction were strange too. I had back labor as well as the normal contractions, but there was a weird really painful, sharp pinching feeling with the contractions. When daybreak came, the contractions stopped again. That morning, I had had enough. I was so tired and worn out from laboring all night, for the past 3 nights, and I was done. I called my midwife who informed me she was attending a birth 90 minutes away. She heard my desperation and called the back up midwife to come and check me. She agreed that breaking my water would be okay. It was either that or I was going to go to the hospital to get some pitocin and an epidural. If only I would have known what the day was going to hold, I would have gone with the hospital. They have strong drugs there. Sometimes that is a good thing.

The new midwife, Shannon, arrived an hour later and started calling assistants to get someone there before she broke my water. She checked my dilation and to my surprise, I was at a 6. The 3 nights of labor had at least done something. I was feeling rather optimistic that I would get my water broken and things would progress fairly quickly. Shannon wanted to get my contractions going again before she broke my water and that meant some painful sort of thing stretching out the cervix. Ouch. The contractions did start again and Shannon realized that with each contraction my cervix was being pinched by the position of Emma's head and that was the pain I was feeling. My cervix was swollen from the pinching which is the opposite of what you want to happen with effacement. She could also tell she was posterior (face up instead of face down) and that is why my labor kept starting and stopping and had been going for so long. Shannon then tried to break my water with no success. She tried all day long and could never get to them. She said Emma's head was kind of acting like a cork and we couldn't get it out of the way no matter what we tried, and believe me we tried EVERYTHING. I was even inverted at one point. As the day wore on and the contractions were getting worse, I got more and more tired, worn out and pretty hostile. Shannon kept giving me homeopathics to calm me down every time I would start yelling and screaming. It was not pretty. I was having such bad back labor and Shannon attached a muscle stimulator that helped alot. I would have Jeromy crank it way up each time the contractions started, and that provided a little relief for a while. When I was at 8 cm we kept thinking that things were going to progress quickly, but I stayed there for a VERY long time. This was my second labor with never ending transition. Transition is supposed to be fairly quick, at least in my other two experiences and it is torture when it goes on for hours. At around 3 pm I started talking about going to the hospital. I didn't want to be in pain anymore, and I was at the point that if someone would have offered me a C-section, I would have gladly taken it. None of us really knew what to do. Shannon told us that in her experience, we would get to the hospital and by the time I would get the epidural, I would be ready to push. None of us could predict though how much longer it was going to take. I couldn't last any longer but also didn't want to go to the hospital if I was almost done. As another hour would pass, I wanted to go even more but the chances of almost being done grew too. Jeromy didn't know what to do either. He couldn't comfort me at all or even say that I was almost done when we just didn't know.

I decided that I would use the bathroom one more time and then get ready to go to the hospital. The thought of a car ride was also unbearable, so I was really wanting to not have to go. I thought that maybe I could start pushing to just see if I could make something happen on my own. I pushed as hard as I could even though I didn't have the urge at all, and she was right there. I called for Shannon, and they moved me to my bed. A couple of pushes later and there she was. We knew the reason Shannon couldn't find the bag of waters. It was empty. I don't really think that my water could have broke without me knowing, so it was probably just gone by that point. She was born healthy and crying, which I love because my other kids didn't cry right away which makes me worried. She was so tiny and had the smallest little head. She never turned the right way either. Often the baby will turn the right way when they come out, but she was born face up, the stubborn little girl.

I was so relieved and happy when she was born. I think I said, "Oh, thank you Lord," about a hundred times after she came out. She nursed right away and for a long time. My other kids didn't want to nurse right away. It was so nice to be at home after the birth. Shannon and her assistant, Brandy, were so wonderful. They took such good care of me and Emma. They did the laundry and the dishes before they left. It was so neat having women caring for women. It was like it was more than a job, that they just had to check off boxes that they had done, like in the hospital. It was truly care. That part of it was awesome.

I would definitely have a run of the mill, normal birth at home again. I would definitely NOT have a posterior, induced, or breech baby at home. Sign me up for the hospital and epidural at the first sign of contractions. It is not something I need to go through again. 4 natural childbirths is all I have in me. I have paid my natural dues, I think. We'll see how I feel if and when there is a next time, but at this point, I don't feel like I could do it again. I think taking advantage of drugs in a difficult birth scenario will be my next birth plan.

That's the whole story. Emma is beautiful and perfect, and I wasn't even mad at her after she was born like I was with Ellie. ( I was really mad at Ellie for a good few hours for putting me through her hard birth! ) Yes, she was totally worth it, but I do have the regret of not going to the hospital that last morning. God works it all out in the end though, and it happened the way it was supposed to. Emma is still gaining weight rather slowly. Nursing is getting easier though, and I think the thrush is clearing up because it isn't AS painful to nurse her as it was. She is a pretty lazy nurser which I have never had before. My other kids would eat in 15 or 20 minutes, and it takes her 40 minutes to an hour. It has made it hard to nurse all day long with the other children to care for, but we are adjusting, and I know as Emma gets bigger and more awake, she'll start nursing faster. It is still so astounding to me how different each child is, even within the same family. She seems like a mixture of Bennett and Rachel when they were babies. She is very serious like Bennett and studies faces and things around her, and she is very mellow and relaxed like Rachel was. She doesn't cry very much and is easily appeased when she does. All the kids adore her and there was no adjustment problem at all. We are truly blessed and so thankful to have Emma entrusted to us. I love you Emma!