We were stuck in the house again, as it just wasn’t warm enough to take the baby out. So sitting at my laptop with my 2 year old running wild, I thought I’d look up some activities to do with him while we waited for lunch time. He’d already colored (or broke all the crayons he needed to for the day), he’d also played with his Play-doh, we needed something else.

So that’s when I came across a virtual zoo. This is kind of a cool concept, it’s just peoples posted videos of farm animals (or they have a virtual aquarium to) that you can watch with your child. My son hasn’t seen any zoo animals, as he was to little to care last summer. I’m quite excited to see his reaction to the real thing, but in the meantime, this virtual farm kept his attention for a while. Check it out.

Sometimes I end up doing posts here on Mommies Home.net that come from me researching questions this Mommie has. This is one of those posts, as I ended up with one heck of a headache yesterday. I was in more pain than labor:-) That being said, what can those headaches be caused by after child birth? Read the rest of this entry »

So with a 22 month old in the house, you always have to be diligent. Our son is very, how can I say it wisely, rambunctuious. Now with a newborn added to our family dynamic, we have to be especially careful. So what have we dealt with in the first week we’ve been home…

First of all, our son didn’t think he was real. He would just point and say baby. But when he decided to start grabbing the baby, we knew we had to work with him on his gentle nature. Our son has no gentle nature so we have been working with him constantly on being gentle and not trying to rip his toes off.

In addition, we think our son has become somewhat protective of his brother. He is very worried about where his baby is, and always trys to share. This has led to numerous attempts to throw cars at his brother while he snoozes in his bassinnet. We’ve definiely had to become more diligent on that front.

The kicker came today when the kids and I returned home from breakfast. We came in the door, my seven year old went and sat down at the kitchen table, arguing as usual with me. The 22 month old started playing with his cars and my sleeping newborn was happily in dreamland, still strapped in his car seat on the floor. As I argued with my daughter I walked over to the couch to pick up some laundry that had to be washed for the baby. When I walked back, my toddler was pointing at the baby’s car seat, saying baby. He had flipped the baby’s carseat upside down, the poor sleeping baby was upside down, dangling from his secure harness. No harm was done to the baby, just my heart as I almost had a heart attack.

The lesson? Never turn your back, even for one second. From that point on, the newborn was in a sling on my side or the toddler was no where to be found. Ugh!

I must apologize to all of my readers for my lack of posting these last few weeks. The more pregnant I became, the less able I was to concentrate on anything but pain and the anticipation of the arrival of our son.

Well, we had thought he was coming last Tuesday, only to hear it was just bad Braxton Hicks. We then canceled our next prenatal appointment in anticipation of an induction on Monday. The doctor had originally said she would induce me on Friday, but I was one day shy of the required 39 weeks so she moved it to the following Monday.

That wasn’t the news we wanted to hear! I was quite saddened by this, as I kept thinking I was in labor and the wait was over. I wanted to go into labor at a certain time so my doctor could deliver me, but the closer it got to the end of the week the more my hopes for that were fading.

On Friday morning I woke up about two am to go to the bathroom and even thought to myself “Wow, I feel pretty good. All my pain is pretty much gone, there’’s no way this baby is coming soon.”

At 4:30 that same morning I was awoken by a POP and knowing by the results that my water had broken. I was very excited, as was my husband. The day had arrived. After taking a quick shower and getting Grandpa over to our house to watch our other two children, my mother, husband and I took off for the hospital. Actually, we stopped at McDonalds to grab a quick bite, as I knew they wouldn’t get me anything at the hospital.

After waddling into the hospital at 6am, we were on our way. I was having some contractions, but nothing impressive at all. They started Pitocin right away and the contractions started coming more frequently. We all expected the baby to be born fast, as my son was born very quickly after I was admitted. Your second is supposed to be faster, so we all had bets around noon or so, even my nurse.

At around 9am, the nurse came in and let me know that if I wanted an Epidural, I had better get it now. The anesthesiologist would be in a scheduled C-section from 10-11, so if my contractions picked up there would be no relief for a while. I wasn’t keen on getting it so early, so I told her I’d let her know. The second she walked out I started having some harder contractions and had my husband go hunt her down and let her know that we’d get the epidural as soon as they could administer it.

I’m not scared of needles, so I wasn’t to worried about the epidural. My last one, the only thing I remember is that I had the mother of all contractions when they were putting it in, horrible pain. This time was a little different. I could handle the contractions, but the medicine going in was another story. That was horrible this time. I wish I could sugar coat it so someone who finds this page through a google search on epidurals wouldn’t freak out, but I really can’t. It hurt like hell. I was mad at the anesthesiologist, that is, until the medicine kicked in.

Once the medicine kicked in, I couldn’t feel any pain. I could feel the pressure of the contraction but there was no pain associated with it. I was very happy with the results. That was about 9:45am.

From that point forward, it was a waiting game. By noon I was 5cm and 80% effaced. It was moving much slower than anyone expected. They turned the pitocin up constantly it seemed until we hit about 16 out of 20. That’s when things started turning south. The baby wasn’t handling the contractions well, his heartbeat kept dipping pretty low. At 7 cm and 90%, they decided to give me a shot and stop my contractions.

The second they gave me the shot, the contractions stopped. My son was no longer in any distress,
his heart rate was now normal and steady.

I was happy he was ok again, but my labor had been brought to a stand still. After about an hour, tthe doctor gave the ok to start labor back up. The pitocin was cranked up every 15 minutes or so, starting at the lowest setting.

Slowly, labor progressed again. I was waiting for the “pressure”, the need to push. I kept thinking it was coming so the nurse kept checking. 8cm, 90%, it was stuck there. A little while later she checked me again and I was at 9cm. Finally we were close. She went to go call the doctor when an alarm went off in the room. My husband rushed to go get the nurse, turns out my epidural was out of medicine!! Are you kidding me!!! I’ve been in labor all day, no one thought to check the epidural?
So the nurse told my husband there was 2 hours left on the medicine and not to worry…

That’s when they hit…the medicine didn’t have 2 hours left, it was out and I could tell by the contractions that were coming. That baby was sure as hell coming out. The nurse quickly checked me again and I was ready to push, the doctor wasn’t there yet. Medicine gone, me yelling in pain, baby coming, no doctor. Then the anesthesiologist came in quickly and gave me some medicine. Thank god! The medicine worked quickly and the crazy labor pain went away as my lower body was numbed.

In came the doctor, she set up and I began to push. About 5 pushes and my baby boy was born. I heard his cry and cried. He was perfect. 7 lbs, 7oz, 20 inches. It seemed like eternity until they gave him to me to hold. He was just perfect.

More updates later, but I thought I’d get this posted so people know where I’ve been. I’m blogging as he sleeps soundly (as soundly as you can with a 2 yr old screaming).

We are coming down to the wire now, I’m getting more than anxious.

I had another prenatal today. 70% effaced and 1 1/2 cm, not what I was hoping for. She stripped my membranes to see if that would get things moving, but as of this morning it was a no go. She also talked about scheduling an induction. Honestly, I’ve never even thought about it, I just figured he’d come whenever. So we have some thinking to do on that subject. I better think fast, as she could do it ass early as Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Is peanut butter a staple in your home? For us it is usually just around for the school ager and her lunches for school. But in both my pregnancies I’ve delved into a peanut butter frenzy. With my first pregnancy I ate peanut butter every single day, on a whole wheat bagel. I loved it! This time it’s more peanut butter with honey on toast or rolled up in a tortilla. But honestly I’ve been eating a ton of peanut butter.

Then the peanut world exploded when salmonella was found as the culprit in making hundreds sick and killing some people that ate peanut butter… Read the rest of this entry »

Valentines Day is just around the corner. I remember being a kid and loving that day. We had school parties where we got candy, cupcakes, tons of cards, it was almost like Halloween. As I got older, I either loved or hated the day, depending on if I had a boyfriend at the time or not. Even sometimes when I had a boyfriend I hated the day! Now, as a married Mommie, I view the day as much different than I used to… Read the rest of this entry »

Maureen over at Professional SAHM tagged me with the 4th Picture, 4th Folder meme. The rules are:

1. Go to the 4th picture folder on your computer.
2. Post the 4th picture in that folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag 4 more bloggers.

So I was all excited to see what kind of great pic I’d find. Turned out to not be so exciting!

This was my belly at 15 weeks for this pregnancy. I’m looking forward to seeing it shrink to smaller than that!

Enjoy…

When I had my first baby, I didn’t want to be away from him, not for a second. In the hospital I wouldn’t let them take him out of the room, even when I was so exhausted I couldn’t see straight. I get home from the hospital and was taken aback by having to breastfeed him every hour and a half, and then I wouldn’t go to sleep when he did. I would try to clean, or cook, or eat. At night, I slept with my hand on him in his bassinet so I could make sure he was breathing.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I had a case of the baby blues that was rather intense, I’m still impressed that it was as bad as it was. It never occurred to me that not getting enough sleep would have anything to do with the baby blues. I just never put the two together. So what can you do? Read the rest of this entry »

I finally decided to take off some of my Mommies Home.net videos from YouTube. I had put up two different videos on the “Grocery Game”, or should I say the independents version of the grocery game. I thought it would help people who didn’t want to pay for the actual “Grocery Game” and instead had the time and energy to do it themselves.

Honestly, people need to get a life. I’ve gotten more hate comments on those than anything… Read the rest of this entry »