After 13 hours total of labor, boy#3 was born at 5:58 this morning at home. He weighs 8lbs 4oz and is 19inches long. He doesn't have a name yet. It was my easiest birth yet. More to come later.
ETA, we decided to name him Solomon Russell. Russell is my grandfather's name.
First I just want to mention that there is still no baby. Which is fine b/c I had great weekend visiting with my dad. By this far along I had had both Canaan and Asher, so it really could be any day now. And now that that visit is out of the way and we're getting closer to my due date (the 13th) I'm starting to feel more like this baby will be coming, but I'm not sure it'll be soon. Who knows, maybe I'll go over this time!
As for my visit, it was great! My dad's new wife is just lovely. They actually won't be married until May, I think they said, but they're both wearing wedding rings already and they're going on a honeymoon cruise at the end of the month, so they might as well be! On the first night they got here she offered to cook dinner, though DH helped, then she cleaned up everything afterwards, did the dishes and everything and wouldn't let me help. The next morning, we were invited to join them for bfast at the hotel and she completely doted on the children. She put more food in front of them then they could possibly eat, but they just picked what they wanted and left alone the rest and she was okay with that. After bfast we went swimming in the hotel's pool. The kids had a great time. We went back to their room to change into our dry clothes and I was asked if there were any museums or anything around and I said I was sure there were some in Cincinnati, but I had no idea what. So she looked it up and decided we would go to the Children's Museum and off we went. Before I knew it, we were eating lunch at the museum with tickets for the Children's museum, the natural history and science museum and the omnimax theater (all in one building). It was afternoon by the time we got started and they close at 6 (on holidays) so we didn't get to see everything, unfortunately. But I mentioned in passing to DH that we might want to consider a family membership at some point, since they were only $115 and it included the two museums we visited and the history museum (also some museum) and before we left she took it upon herself to buy us a premium membership, which includes not only our family, but also a guest!
We stopped for dinner on the way home and of course the kids were all asleep before we got home. This morning we got up, I took DH to work, and we headed back to the hotel for more bfast and swimming. Then while Asher watched cartoons, Canaan and Genesis fell asleep for much needed naps. By the time they woke up, we went to DH's work, had lunch and when dh was off we headed out. We looked at a few houses that were for sale. The first night they were here I mentioned I saw a house on realtor. com for $25,000 on 10 acres and Liz (my Dad's wife) wanted to check it out. Turns out it's under contract, but there were a few others that we checked out, one looked promising and there's another that might be even more so, but we couldn't find it. Apparently, she is interested in co-owning a house with us. I'm not sure exactly how it would work out, especially with our credit, maybe we'd do a land contract type thing with her, I'm not sure, but that would be so cool! We didn't talk any specifics, and she really didn't even come out and say she wanted to buy a house with us or anything, but it was implied and my dad said she was interested when she was out of the room. So that's exciting. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but it's hard.
After that we went back to the hotel, the kids swam a little more, then had pillow fights while the grown-ups talked. She is really planning on coming out again as soon as the baby is born, even if it's this week! My dad may come if it's a weekend, but we'll see about that. I have no worries about her coming and being a burden either. I'm sure she would be a wonderful help, especially since DH will only be able to get a few days off of work and that even depends on when the baby is born. But it was said, if I call her at 5am and say baby is here, then she'll be here by noon. So I'm actually looking forward to that bit of help.
Anyways, that's my update. We had a great weekend. I'm very happy with my Dad's wife and think she'll be wonderful for my dad and a wonderful step-grandma to my kids.
Well, I don't know that I'll have much time to keep you all updated this weekend. My dad should be getting in sometime today with his new wife. Actually, I don't think they're married yet, but she'll be his wife soon enough I suppose. I can't wait to get to know her. From what I've read in her e-mails I think she'll be really good for my dad and will really get him involved in our lives. She doesn't have any grandchildren of her own and she's always wanted some, so marrying my dad gives her an instant, huge family (my baby is grandchild #17 for my parents). She's already talking about coming down after the baby is born to see it and she's invited our family to join them at her timeshare in Virginia for week this summer.
But thinking about my dad's new wife brings me to thinking about my parents and thier marriage. I was 12 when they got divorced. My dad wasn't really around much when I was growing up. He was in the house, but he wasn't mentally present. He was always in his workshop or reading a book. As I've gotten older and learned more about marriage and how it should be, I understand why. My mom walked all over my dad. She didn't respect him and she certainly did not submit to him. She did what she wanted. 3 of my siblings are adopted and my dad will tell you, if it had been his choice, they probably never would have adopted. He did it for her. There is one thing that speaks the most to me though. The last time my dad visited he started talking about our old house. Now I don't remember this house, we moved around my 3rd birthday. It was obvious in hearing my dad talk about it that he loved that house. But alas, my mom was not happy with it. So they ended up moving. You can hear the sadness in my dad's voice. He would have been happy in that house for his whole life. He'll tell you himself, something broke in him when they moved and their marriage was never the same again. I'm sure to my mom it was no big deal. It was just a house and she wanted something bigger/better for all the children they had. To my dad, it was obviously more than a house. I sometimes wonder if I do things like that, without even knowing. Is there some issue that is no big deal to me but big to my husband? Am I tearing down our marriage without even knowing it? Just something to think about at the beginning of this new year.
And in case you're wondering, I don't feel any closer to having this baby then I did last time I blogged. Ask me again after my dad leaves ;)
Did I tell you our water adventure this week? First some background. Our landlord is about one step above a slum lord. He has 10 properties in the area, he charges rock bottom rent prices and the places aren't all that great. He does what needs to be done, but no more and has a tendency to half-do things. For example, all the wooden frames in this house were rotted out, so before we moved in he replaced all the frames. However, he failed to fix the leaky windows, so almost a year later the new wood frames are showing water damage.
Earlier in the week we noticed a very small leak under the bathroom sink. This bathroom we don't really use because the toilet runs, so we just keep the water turned off to the toilet and use the other bathroom except in emergencies. Unfortunately there are no turn-off valves to the sink, because of our landlord's tendency to only half-do things. DH kept meaning to get to it to fix it, but things came up or he forgot etc, so it just kept leaking. The only way to stop the water would be turn it off to the whole house.
On Saturday I had a huge mountain of laundry from not doing it Wed, Thur and Fri, DH's long holiday weekend, so I went to start that and my washer wouldn't start. After much trial and error, the problem was the breaker had flipped. So I turned it back on, no problem. Then I had a light bulb. The washer and dryer are across the hall from the leaky bathroom. The wetness from the leak had caused the breaker to flip. In case you're worried about water damage under the sink, don't be. There was already a significant amount. Half way into my third load of laundry, the breaker flipped again and would not stay unflipped. Fun.
Of course DH did not get to fixing the sink that day. Sunday he went to fix it and what was a small leak quickly turned into a gush when the whole pipe busted. It was actually already busted, just in a position where it only leaked. As soon as DH moved it, it fell apart. So water to the whole house got turned off. And it was late Sunday so no trip to the store to get parts to fix the pipes.
So early this morning DH ran to the store to get turn-off valves, installed those and just turned the water off under that sink. The pipes don't even go all the way to the faucet. Definitely a bathroom only for emergencies now! Oh, and to make things fun, my breaker still won't stay on. I managed to finish the load that was in the washer, but that's it. We're praying once things dry out it'll work okay. We're also praying that happens before this baby is born! Can you imagine a home birth without a working washer? Icky birthing stuff all over towels and whatnot and not being able to wash them. Blech.
Did I tell you that Genesis is just about weaned? Not by my doing! She asks to nurse maybe once a week, if that. I'm thinking there's a chance though that once the baby is born and she sees it nursing that she may start asking again. But I'm okay with that. I think it would be weird she hadn't nursed for months, but she does still nurse occasionally so that's okay. I should have known she'd wean this early though. By the time the boys were this age they only nursed before nap and bed out of habit and I didn't let Genesis form that habit. So yeah, I should have figured she'd wean sooner. I'm really kind of hoping she picks it back up after the baby born. I'm not ready for her to grow up yet! As it is, she's pretty much completely potty-trained. Which also means, for the first time in 6 years, other than at night, we're diaper free. And really, I think we could go without the nighttime diaper, but I"m not ready for that leap. Canaan still wets the bed at least once a week so I don't want to deal with two doing that, yk? But Genesis wakes up with a dry diaper more of than not.
Speaking of baby coming. Had a visit with the midwife today. She doesn't think we'll be having this baby soon, nor do I. I just don't feel like it's coming soon. With all the others, by now I would wake up saying "today could be the day" and I don't feel that way at all this time. And the midwife says I haven't hit my plateau yet, I'm still growing. So this baby may need a while to cook yet, which is okay. So that's my update!
I'm officially completely full term! Now I get to wake up every day and think "Today could be the day I have a baby." So what do you think? Is this an 08 or 09 baby? Boy or girl?
Yesterday was our home visit with the midwife. We went through what she'll do if something is wrong with the baby, the tools she has, etc. Everything is looking good. My hemoglobin is down still, but I'm clotting fine, and she says if she has to choose between one or the other, she'll take good clotting. So while it's something we wish were different, it's not really something to worry about. I'm supposed to continue taking my probiotic iron supplement, but if it doens't work, that's okay. She wasn't concerned about my bh contractions. She said that as I have more children I'll probably find that they get stronger. Fun for me! Every visit with her just confirms in my mind that she is the right midwife for us. She's just perfect.
And one of the best parts is that the house was all nice and clean for her visit, and by the time she left it was time to get kids in bed, so we have no chores this morning while DH is at work. We were done with school by 10am, so we've got all day to just take it easy. I'll probably make that lasagna I've been wanting to make. I always double the recipe, so we'll have one in the freezer for after baby. And of course we'll have to do a toy pick-up before Daddy gets home.
I'm 36 weeks! My midwife is officially on call and I'm finishing getting everything set up and ready for baby. I'm really going to be having a baby soon! I'm so excited. I finally feel like we have a real family now. I know this sounds odd, but before I always felt like we were just getting started, and now, while I don't feel like we're complete, we're at least "there" now, we're not getting started anymore. We've arrived in a way. Maybe it's because since Canaan was born I've been a member of a message board where you're not a full member until you have 4 in 8 yrs. I don't know. But DH has said the same thing, about feeling like we were just getting started before. And now we enter into the land of rude comments regarding family size. Bring 'em on!
I was supposed to have a midwife appt yesterday, but we ended up canceling b/c we still have pink eye floating around the house and the midwife didn't want it in her office. Can't say I blame her! Right now Canaan and Genesis have it in BOTH eyes. They look horrible. The garlic is doing the trick, but as soon as I get one completely over it somebody else starts to get it. We were planning on having the midwife do a home visit next week for our next appt anyways, so we may just go right to that. That way I don't have to cancel again if it's still floating around and I don't think she'll mind coming here to pink eye as much as us taking it there. She doesn't want it getting on all the toys at her office.
I need to call her today about setting that up and also ask her about these contractions I keep getting and how easy I should be taking it. DH is doing the best he can, but he needs to step up a bit, imo. He did great yesterday though. We went grocery shopping and when my cart started getting too heavy and was giving me BH he made the boys get out and walk and let me push the almost empty cart. And he's always great about unloading the carts unto the belts (which is really hard on a pg belly!) and he loads up the car. Then he let me come inside and sit while he unloaded the car and had the kids put the groceries away. I'm sure if I had done all my normal stuff I would have been having horrible contractions by the time I was done, but instead, I only the normal few. It was great.
I think I've decided though that when I take my 2 week "baby vacation" I'm going to stay in the bedroom so I don't have to see the state of the house, lol. Hopefully that will make it easier to stay down!
Carseats are all in, except the infant carrier base, which we'll probably put in next week. It actually looks more spacious in our car now. Before the kids were all scrunched into one row, but now they're all spread out. Asher ended up getting put on the end of the back row, instead of in the middle b/c his new carseat is too big too fit in the middle. So the boys have about a foot of space between their seats. We're a little worried about when we need to fit 5 carseats, but the front row is slightly wider than the back, so it may fit better there when it gets to be time for that. We also decided to put Genesis rear-facing. I explained the dilemma to DH to get his opinion and at first he was all for putting her forward-facing, but then the next day he said he wanted to leave her rear-facing so she could see the boys. Fine with me!
I'm taking it easy today, I've actually been taking it easy for several days now. At first I just had no motivation, but now I think my body was telling me to stay down. After several days of just getting the bare minimum done, I want to do more, but I'm getting a ton of strong braxton hicks contractions. So I'm just doing hte basics again today. The kids got the house all picked up and are now watching a movie. The only thing I plan on still doing tonight is the dishes and finishing up some laundry. As long as I spread them out, I should be okay. I have a feeling it may be this way the rest of the pregnancy, though I'm hoping not, b/c weeks of doing just the basics, then having DH in charge for two weeks is going to make it really hard to do just the basics for 4 more weeks, which is my plan for optimal recovery after baby. Maybe over DH's two weeks of being in charge I can convince him to do a few of the extra things I try and get done every week. That's about it for now!
eta: I just realized that even if I do need to slow down for these BH, I won't have to until the baby is born. Once I hit 37wks, I can completely ignore them, or hope the work will turn them into real contractions!
I now have a 2yo, a 4yo and 6yo. Asher's birthday is today and it's the last of our "birthday season" (though we still need to have their bday party with cake and stuff). I'm actually looking forward to this baby having a slightly later bday so that it's not quite so all at once, yk? Two weeks ago I had a 1yo, a 3yo and a 5yo. That's a lot of growing up in two weeks!
In other news, I cured pink eye!! Two days ago, Asher was asking in the late morning/early afternoon if you could have eye snot instead of just eye boogers, b/c he had a lot of snotty stuff in his eye. A few hours later he was complaining his eye hurt. By bed time, it was red and swollen half shut. I woke up the next morning with lots of "eye snot." I did my research and was happy when I found a home remedy that we could actually do. It doesn't do me any good to know a tincture of eyebright and a bunch of other stuff will do it, I don't have any of htat stuff. So here is what we did. In a rag, put a minced clove of garlic. soaked it in hot water for about 5 seconds, then squeezed out the extra juice. Placed the compress on the eye for 60 seconds or until it started burning, whichever happened first. Rinsed off the eye to be sure juices didn't get in. We did that 3 times yesterday. By the end of hte day, I had no symptoms and all of Asher's redness and itchiness was gone, though he still had some residual swelling. We're doing it again today just to be sure we kill the infection. I am so proud of myself for curing this at home and not having to take him to the Dr (or the ER since it's a weekend). I think garlic is a gift from God. It kills almost every bad, but none of the good, like antibiotics do. You can eat it, or just put it in a compress. It's wonderful stuff. Thank you God for garlic!!
For most of this pregnancy, DH and I have felt we're having another girl. Every body we see says we're having a girl. The biggest thing for us is the names. Near the beginning of each pregnancy we've had a girl's and boy's name picked out. By the end of the pregnancy, one of those names just doesnt' feel right and the other feels perfect. Since the end of the 1st trimester we've both been unsure about our boy name, but love the girl name we have picked out. I was starting to think maybe we should be looking for a different boy's name, just in case. But now I'm pretty sure we're just having a girl. We got baby clothes from storage today, a tub of girl clothes and a tub of boy clothes. I have almost no desire to go through the boy clothes. The girl clothes are calling to me. The only other time the girl clothes called like that was with Genesis. When I was pg with Canaan, we were only 75% sure we were having a boy, from what I thought I saw during the u/s (we had asked not to find out). I had no girl clothes (though my sister was coming to visit near the due date and could have brought girl clothes with her if need be), but I never found it necassary to buy girl clothes. When I was pg with Genesis and only had instinct to go on, I had a whole box of newborn girl clothes, but I still went out and bought girl clothes. Not a lot, but a few things here and there. It's the only time I've been drawn to girl clothes. Until now. I want to wash all the girl clothes and put them in the drawers, which is silly. This baby could easily be a boy. So I'll still pull out a few boy clothes, and I won't go crazy with the girl clothes, but I can gurantee I'll have more girl clothes washed and ready then boy clothes. And just to confirm things, I've had symptoms I only had with Genesis; insomnia and constant stuffy nose are the main ones.
So what do you think? A little sister for Genesis? Or another boy?
