Hello Ryder

I've mentioned him in almost all the posts I've written recently. So let me introduce you to our newest family member.

This is Ryder:


I've learned some things this time around that I didn't learn with Claire. As far as a birth experience, Claire was induced, Ryder was not. Having your water break at home...is a huge mess. When you're 38.5 weeks pregnant and your water breaks as you lay down to go to bed, your will probably think something like, "How in the world do I get to the bathroom and then out of the house without making an even bigger mess?" Then you will have to call your husband on your cell phone (which is hopefully within reach of your bed), because leaving a trail of amniotic fluid everywhere would be gross. Towels, lots of towels, are the answer to most of your problems.

I couldn't actually remember my doctor's instructions about what to do if my water broke. To be honest, I thought I would go way over my due date and end up being induced again. So I called Justin (he was in the basement) and pretty much said, "I need you now, my water just broke". Then as he contemplated how to clean up the mess, I called my mom because she was the one taking me to the hospital. She'd been over earlier that evening, apparently she should've just stayed. Then I got a shower and my mom showed up and we went to the ER (because it was about 11:30pm at that point).

My water broke at 11:00pm...we got checked in around 11:45pm...Ryder was born at 1:53am. Let me tell you how glad I am that we didn't wait any longer to go in. I just barely got an epidural and by the time I did get an epidural, I could barely hold still for it since I was having so many contractions. Which was a bit surprising because I hadn't had a single contraction until at least 15 minutes after my water broke.

So, Ryder was born at 1:53am. He was 8lbs and almost 2 oz. I think he is the most adorable little baby boy in the whole world (but I could be a bit biased). He has reddish hair and dark blue/gray eyes (although they still could change to brown like Claire & Anaya's).

Expect to see lots of this little boy. Especially for the next 6 weeks (well, 4.5 weeks at this point) while I'm home on maternity leave.

Snippets

I'm not sure how Claire ended up as cute as she is, because Justin and I...we're not that cute. But Claire is adorable. She's other things too, like smart...and funny...and stubborn...and fearless. But she was just being particularly cute this day.

On Tuesday, we had another OB appointment and an ultrasound. The baby boy is definitely a baby BOY. I'm measure big again. I have 22 cm of amniotic fluid. The normal range is 5-25 cm, so while I'm still in the normal range, I'm in the upper normal range which means they want to keep an eye on it. I had extra amniotic fluid with Claire too, so I'm pretty sure it's just the way I am when pregnant.

In addition to the freezer cooking extravaganza that I did last weekend, I also have 3 crockpot meals, 4 dozen homemade cookie dough balls, a quart of chili, and 4 other casseroles from times where I split a casserole (frozen half, ate half for dinner) in my freezer. Perhaps I should stop freezing so much food? That's 27 main dishes that I already have frozen to eat sometime between now and March. But I still wanted to freeze a couple of soups (to have for lunches) and waffles (as an easy breakfast) and cinnamon rolls (just because they are delicious).

For reasons that I can't quite explain, I have been watching The OC again. It isn't available on Netflix which is really sad, but The WB has seasons 1 & 5 available to stream. Season 1 was the best season anyways. But their commercials are really obnoxious.

We've finally started painting the kids' rooms in preparation for moving everyone around to make room for the baby. We also ordered carpet, although we haven't set up an installation date yet. But soon, very soon, we will hopefully have all the kids in their new rooms and a nursery yet up for the baby boy. Anaya gets to have a pink & purple room the next time she is here since we painted it Claire's colors, but we're not moving furniture until after the carpet...I'm sure she'll LOVE it...

30 Weeks - Maternity Pictures

When I was looking through pictures of being pregnant with Claire, I realized that I didn't have any really GOOD pictures of me pregnant. Now, admittedly, back in 2008 I was working with a MUCH different camera - a point-and-shoot instead of my current DSLR. But I still wish that I had some better pictures of me pregnant with Claire instead of the only ones being snapshots from some other event or my occasional look how big my belly has gotten pictures. I really wanted to get some good pictures this pregnancy; I wanted some profesional-ish maternity pictures.


But since I am decent with my camera and cheap, I couldn't bring myself to PAY someone else to take maternity pictures of me. I probably could've asked my dad or my mom to help me out, they both know how to work my camera - particularly my dad since he's had his DSLR longer than I've had mine and was big into photography way back when I was little. But I would've felt silly. So I decided I would just take myself, and my camera, and my dad's tripod out to a park and set up a little photo-shot alone.

My camera has a timer, so the hardest part is getting the focus right. My portrait lens (Canon 50mm f/1.8) is a little persnickety about its focus. In fact, I attempted to take some family pictures for our Christmas cards about a week ago and the focus was all over the place. I really need something that I can focus on while I set up the shot and then move when I run into place. But I didn't plan far enough ahead which is why all my best shots ended up with me leaning on something (or near something) that I used for focus (a tree, a bridge, a bench). The one where I'm not leaning on something, I focused on a tree, changed it to manual focus to keep that setting and then counted the steps from my camera to the focus point. Then I turned my camera a different direction and counted the same number of steps to where I stood for the picture.


Now I have some good pictures of me pregnant. And I have a little bit more experience with my lens and getting it to focus where I want it to focus. And some more practice running to get in the picture, which is getting harder and harder the more pregnant I get! The only standard maternity pose that I tried and failed at getting involved sitting cross-legged in the grass...I probably could've done it once I thought of the focusing & counting and then moving the camera, but getting down into a cross-legged position was too hard. Not to mention how hard it was to get back up just to see the results and then having to repeat so that I was sure I would end up with a good one.

Fun with Glucose

Last week, on Monday, I failed my first Gestational Diabetes test - the one hour, where I drank the 50g glucose drink and then got a finger prick after an hour. My glucose level was 155, and I think it had to be below 140 or maybe 130. I forget now.


When they went to schedule the 3 hour test, I told them to go with the first available morning appointment. I didn't care about what day, I just wanted to do it in the morning since I had to fast for 12 hours. Two days later, Wednesday, I was at the lab hanging out for 3 hours while they stabbed me in the arm four times to draw my blood. It was just as exciting as that sounds. I got there about 15 minutes early and they weren't busy so they got me started a little early. First was the fasting blood draw. Then I downed the little bottle of 100 grams of orange flavored glucose in less than 2 minutes. I just wanted to get it over with.

Then I waited and waited and felt like throwing up and waited and got up and walked around (down the hall, outside, went to the bathroom, etc). I attempted to read part of a book during the first hour, but whenever I started reading, I felt even sicker. I really wanted to throw up at one point, then the lovely lab tech guy named Michael reminded me that if I threw up, we'd have to reschedule and start the whole thing over again - and then he told me that I could walk down the hall and go outside if some fresh air would help. Finally after an hour Michael took my blood again - from the other arm, to keep it fair.

After the first hour was up, I started to feel a little better. I sat around the waiting room, watched part of a movie on my phone, read some of my book (James Patterson's Gone), texted with Justin and a couple of friends, etc. Then it was time for ANOTHER blood draw - back to the first arm again.

Somewhere around now is when I got REALLY hungry, but then it went away once my body realized it wasn't getting any food. I could drink a little bit of water, so I did. I saw some interesting people come in to get blood drawn for various things since it appears all Michael does in that office is draw blood. Ended up reading about half of my book.

I had my last blood draw approximately 3 hours & 15 minutes after I got there. Then I hurried on out of there and across the street to McDonald's where I consumed a crispy chicken club and a medium french fry.

I finally got the results on Friday afternoon - no gestational diabetes for me! Woo-Whoo!

Although I'm still eating fairly low carb because I don't want to gain 50 lbs like I did when I was pregnant with Claire. I'm currently fluctuating between 20-25 lbs gained with only 10 more weeks to go! By now with Claire I had gained at least 30-35 lbs. Not that weight is the most important thing, but I'm mostly just trying to eat fewer carbs (particularly sweets) and more vegetables (salad for lunch almost every day).

My actual results were:
Fasting: 79
1 hr: 125
2 hr: 122
3 hr: 112

Snippets

Also known as, what goes on in Jenni's head...it's kind of random.

I never did decorate for Halloween. Not at all. The closest we've got are the 5 pumpkins sitting on our front step - which no one can even see because of the "mini" pine trees that are planted right in front of our front step. (I hate those "mini" pine trees). I kept seeing neat ideas on Pinterest and on Eighteen25, but I never actually got around to DOING any of them. Now Halloween is in 5 days and I'm just not going to do anything. Except carve pumpkins, but that's only because Claire REALLY REALLY wants to.

We had 6 pumpkins sitting out there this afternoon. Then I brought one in, roasted it, purée-d it and put it in the fridge because I couldn't decide what to do with the purée. But now my house smells like pumpkin...

I didn't actually intend to get 6 pumpkins this year. But Claire's class went to a pumpkin patch and she got a pumpkin. Then Claire & I went to Deanna Rose Farm's Pumpkin Hollow and we both got a pumpkin (it was included in the price to go out there). Then I bought two Jack-o'-lantern pumpkins because Claire wants to carve a silly face and a happy face. Then we went to the Enchanted Forest and I paid $3 for Claire to do all the kid's activities, one of which was paint a pumpkin. And 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 6 pumpkins on my front porch, except then I roasted one so now I have 5 pumpkins.

When Claire isn't getting her way she has taken to stomping her foot (just one foot, not a continuous stomping of both feet) and saying "I'm mad" and making a great big frowny face. It is equal parts obnoxious and cute. Obnoxious because she usually does this to me (not my mom, not Justin, only me). But really it is quite cute and at least she is expressing her feelings instead of crying or sitting down or running away. If she would just not stomp the foot I would be fine with it. She also likes to tell me that she is scared of things when she doesn't want to do something. For example, it is shower time, Claire's response, "I'm scared of pipes". It is bed time, Claire's response, "I'm scared of trains" (she can sometimes hear a train in her room at bed time). And this is the child that is truly not scared of anything at all. My favorite is when I tell her to go to the bathroom in the morning, and the bathroom is dark and she tells me she can't because "I'm scared of dark". Then she insists that I can't turn the light on either and if I do she will proceed to turn it off before going to the bathroom.

We are finally getting things done around the house for the baby. Maybe he'll actually have a bedroom before he is born...or maybe not. But the process is at least started! Now I just have to decide if we should replace the carpet in all three bedrooms before moving furniture around. But did you know that carpet is kind of expensive?!? But you know, we've got about three more months until the little guy is here. That's plenty of time...right?

Pregnancy Journal (from 2008)

Well, I stayed up way too late last night, but I finished up my Blurb book about being pregnant with Claire. Wow, what a trip down memory lane particularly since I'm pregnant again.



Here are a few screen shots of pages in my book. I put this together by going through my pictures from 2008-2009. I had already gathered up most of my belly shot pictures planning to do something with them, but I also included some pictures of baby gifts that we got and of setting up the nursery and as well as some other pictures of me while pregnant that weren't taken specifically because I was pregnant.



The only page I'm not entirely happy with is the cover. I couldn't find a good picture for the front cover. I'm not sure I want a picture of Claire and I don't have any really GOOD pregnancy pictures of me (which is something I'm definitely doing differently this time). Right now the front cover is just gray with the title of my book on it. I might make a cover in photoshop with some kind of generic cartoon-y pregnant lady silhouette. But I haven't done it yet and not sure if I am going to.



Going through my pictures made me realize that I took way fewer pictures in 2008 than I do now and my pictures are way better now than they were back then! Of course, now I'm using a DSLR and in 2008 I was using a little Nikon Coolpix Point-n-Shoot. I still have that camera...I let Claire play with it...



I also had two books, one journal and one pregnancy book, that I filled out and wrote notes in while I was pregnant with Claire. It will be nice to have all of the pictures and information in one place.

26 Weeks

I feel so huge. I look at this picture and I don't think I LOOK so huge, but I feel so huge. And pictures where I am not purposefully standing up straight, oh my goodness, there is so much of me (and the little man)! And then I realize that I still have THREE MORE MONTHS and I just want to crawl in a hole and lay down and not have to get up for 3 months.



My back hurts, my belly is all stretched and tight feeling. Sitting isn't pleasant, standing isn't fun, and laying down is only mildly better. I still have 2 weeks until my next doctor's appointment which is when I get to have the super fun glucose test for gestational diabetes. I'm wondering if that is part of why I feel so crappy today because I had eaten so many carbs between Friday and now. Hopefully I don't have GD, but if I do then I'll manage. Until this weekend I had actually been doing really well at sticking to a low-carb diet. Then I ate a ton of pizza and a hamburger and mac & cheese and more pizza and some ruffles chips and tortillas and tortilla chips - over the course of 4 days, not all in one day, if I ate all of that in one day I would explode.

Tonight, Claire & I were sitting on the couch and she was putting stickers in a book and I felt the baby kicking. I asked, "Claire, do you want to feel your little brother kick?" (she has felt it before, so she knew what I meant). She got up right next to me and put her hand on my belly and I moved it to where he'd been kicking and he kicked her hand! To which she said, "I felt baby brother!" and her eyes got all big and she leaned in real close and said, "Hi Baby!" to my belly. Later, we were sitting at the dining room table and I got couple pictures of her feeling and talking to my belly. At first he wasn't moving much, and she kept looking at the camera because she knows that what I usually want her to do, but then he did eventually do something.



I found this really fun Maternity Halloween shirt of a skeleton with a skeleton baby that goes over your belly. But I can't bring myself to spend $25 on a shirt that I will truly only wear once (or maybe twice).