Finally here

Isabella is finally here, and we are all so excited. She is adorable, healthy and sweet as can be. Born Tuesday morning 3/24/09 at 8:58 am, weighing 8lbs, 20 1/4 inches long.
I went into labor Monday night with contractions every 7 minutes starting just before midnight. The kept getting closer and stronger but since Todd and Anthony were sleeping I decided to hold out as long as I could at home. Finally around 2:30 I decided I couldn't wait much longer, the pain was getting much worse with each contraction, and since it was the middle of the night I was very worried that if I showed up too late I might not get an epidural.
Todd has said many times since Anthony was born that he felt he missed out on the excitement of "rushing to the hospital" because I got induced with Anthony. Although when I woke him up at 2:30 in the morning he didn't seem super excited. In fact I think he said something along the lines of "are you serious? I am really tired and I've only been asleep for a couple hours." You can imagine my response was not very sympathetic since I had yet to go to sleep and was in quite a bit of pain. None the less he finally got up, got ready and as soon as his mom arrived to take care of Anthony we were on our way to the hospital. I think we got there shortly after 3am.
Usual procedure at the hospital is to check in at ER and they phone up to L&D that you are here, and then they take you up there. Since I work in ER I didn't really want everyone to know I was there so I snuck in the back way with my badge and walked up to L&D. I had my sister Rachael (who happened to be the OB doctor on call) call up there and tell them I was coming. When I got to the hospital the nurse said I was having contractions every 2.5 minutes and was 5-6 cm dilated. This made me panic slightly because I really wanted an epidural and I know there is a point where they say it's too late. I don't know what that point is, but I knew the nurse still had a lot to do (start an iv and get blood work from me) before she would even call in the anesthesiologist to put it in. Thankfully everything worked out in my favor and I got my epidural (which worked like a dream) in plenty of time. They gave me a little Stadol to hold me over until then, which by the way is a wonderful drug. Even though it didn't really take the pain away all that much, I loved the way it made me so sleepy and not care that I was in pain. Meanwhile my sisters Rachael and Francie and my friend Michelle showed up, so despite my sleepiness I stayed awake. I didn't think I could actually sleep much anyway.
I think it was around 8 or so when my nurse said I was complete and ready to push. We still had to wait for my cousin DeAnn to show up, who had agreed to come in and do my delivery for me, even though she wasn't on call. The rest of the details are kind of blurry to me, but what I do remember is that it all went really fast, I hardly felt any pain, and Isabella was born in about 20 minutes. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of my first labor experience with Tony. They say the second time is easier, but my two experiences were like night and day different. After I had Tony I told Todd to be thankful he got his son, cause I wasn't going through this again. (Obviously I had changed my mind, but that was for sure my initial thoughts after labor.) After I had Isabella I thought to myself, that wasn't so bad, I could do it again. (Of course just because I can, doesn't mean I will, that has yet to be decided.)
Anyway, here I am the next day sitting in the hospital and feeling like I could go home now. The pediatrician is checking out Isabella now in the nursery and I'm hoping she gives us the okay to leave later today. They aren't really doing anything for me or her that I can't do myself, so why not do it in the comfort of my own home. Plus the food here is terrible, I haven't ordered one thing that I'd consider good yet. Thankfully my sisters have been bringing me food so I'm not stuck eating the gross hospital food.
Anyway, considering I just had a baby yesterday and I was awake for about 36 hours straight, and didn't get much sleep last night either, I am a little tired, but otherwise I feel really quite good. Isabella is doing wonderful, she if finally getting the hang of nursing after a rough first day. She sleeps well, but seems to sleep better when being held than in the bassinet. This could be a slight problem once I get home, since Anthony likes to be held a lot too, especially if I am holding another baby. I don't think he really gets what is happening yet with the whole getting a sister thing. It will be interesting to see how things go once we are all home together. Meanwhile he has been with Grandma and Grandpa having a grand time I'm sure. Todd is supposed to bring him up to visit me later today. Hopefully I can get some good pictures of the two of them together. I actually have a lot of good pictures already from yesterday that I want to share, but I think I will wait till I get home and make a little slide show to put on the blog, rather than list each one individually. I know my free time will be very limited once I do get home, but my mom is on her way here now from NY to spend a week and a half with us to help out. Hopefully that will allow me to give some extra attention to Tony so he doesn't get too jealous of his new baby sister who will also be needing a lot of my attention.

P.S. if you want to see more pictures now, you can go visit my mom and sisters Rachael and Francie's blogs, they have all posted pictures and stories of their own about the newest member of the family.

The baby room

The nursery is as ready as it's going to be for now. Anthony and Isabella will be sharing a room. I'm not sure how well this is going to work out, but since I don't have another bedroom upstairs and I'm not ready to let one of them be all alone downstairs, we're going to try it. I also was not wanting to have to repaint the room to make it more girly, so I had to work with the blue walls. My sister Rachael found some really cute fabric on ETSY and made me a very cute baby blanket. The baby blanket has enough blue in it to go with the room, but is still mainly pink. It's really perfect. (you can click on the picture to enlarge it and see the blanket better.) When my mom comes next week she is going to make a matching bumper and skirt to complete the crib bedding. This weekend my sisters Natalie and Rachael (the artistic one's in the family) made these very cute pictures to hang on the wall. They are made with pastel chalk, paper, ribbon, silk flowers, glass beads, modge podge and glaze. I love how they turned out, and they look so cute in the room. It's a shame the walls are so short in the bedroom, I'd like to hang them closer to the crib, but there isn't any wall space there.







Here is Anthony's side of the room. He got the new crib because it will turn into a toddler bed eventually when he is older. The pictures on the wall were painted by my sister Natalie.
And now for a couple cute pictures of my sweet boy...

On second thought...

Maybe the milk in my fridge will spoil before Isabella is born.
I went to the doctor today and things did not sound hopeful for me going into labor this weekend. So I guess it's off to work tonight for me. I wonder what kind of crazy comments I will get tonight. Maybe I will keep track. Last week I covered for a friend at work for 2 hours and got a ton of comments that made me really glad I was only there for 2 hours. I know I look ready to pop any day people... there is no need to tell me, if anyone knows it's me.

I didn't want to do this, but because someone (Sarah) asked so nicely, and because I may want to look back and remember some day, here is a photo of my belly as of today at 39 weeks.

What's on my mind.

Eat, Sleep & Play. That is pretty much my routine these days. Wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, play for a couple hours, then nap time. Then we do it all over again starting with lunch, more play, nap time, dinner, play some more and then it's bed time. I must say it's a pretty nice routine we've gotten into. As much as I am ready for little Isabella to be born, I'm not ready to give up my nice little routine. With only 8 more days to go, it is more likely that I will have her before the milk in my fridge spoils, so I guess I better get ready and enjoy the way things are for another 8 days +/-.

If going to Babies R Us and spending a large amount of money is considered nesting... well then I'm nesting. I went to buy a mattress for the crib. That was all I needed, but somehow the cart got really full and I found all kinds of things I felt were very necessary at the time. It wasn't until the checker gave me the grand total that I realized I probably didn't need all that stuff. I charged everything today, and by the time the bill comes, I will be on unpaid maternity leave which means Todd will have to pay it, so even though Todd thinks I bought the mattress, little does he know, he bought the mattress, along with all the other unnecessary essentials I purchased.

Now what about a middle name for our baby girl? We are having some trouble here. Isabella _________ C*******

Go ahead and leave me a comment if you have a middle name suggestion. We are running out of time here so we really need to hurry up and come up with something.
P.S. If you leave a comment anonymously please sign your name.

I still have 3 more shifts to go at work, this Friday and next Tuesday and Wednesday 12 hour night shifts. Surprisingly I actually feel pretty good these days, considering all the problems I had a few weeks ago. My fibroid doesn't hurt anymore, I'm not having contractions, and the heartburn seems to have improved too. Maybe that means she is dropping and relieved some pressure on my stomach. Who knows, but really I think I will be fine working, the hardest part will be staying awake when I'm already so tired all the time. Of course if I go into labor this weekend and miss out on work, I definitely wont be complaining. My doctors appt is tomorrow, so I will get a better idea of how likely it is that she will come early. Keep your fingers crossed, cause I'm really hoping for this weekend.

Search Party Over

My sister Rachael and her family are in FL for Spring break, supposed to be having a great time. Thanks to me their trip has not started off great. I agreed to watch their sweet little Stella, a Chiwawa/poodle mix they got last summer, who apparently is so spoiled she has to stay with someone who is home a lot because that is what she is used to. Since I don't work much these days, and am home a lot I volunteered to watch her. Plus I totally understand, cause my dog is the same way. The only small problem (which turned out to be a really big problem) we thought we might have is that she would run off because I don't have a fenced in yard. So I got a long tie out that I had for my dog, tied it to my porch and when I let her out during the day for potty breaks I put her on it. Worked fine all day Friday.
Friday evening we went to dinner and left Stella home alone with my dog Brewster for the first time. They seemed to ignore each other most of the day so I figured they'd just keep doing the same and be fine while we were gone. When we got back around 9pm Todd was opening the door and I was slowly coming too with the baby and the diaper bag. When he opened the door Stella jumped off the couch and made a bee line for the door, I grabbed the tie out and tried to grab her to hook it on her collar but she was too fast. I handed off the baby to Todd and took off after her (as fast as my 38 week pregnant self could go in the dark). She ran across the field at lightening speed and I lost track of her.

***This is the point where you scroll to the end to see the pictures if you don't want to read all the dramatic details.***

We got grandma to come and stay at the house with Anthony and I called my friend Kim who'd gone to dinner with us to come back and help. She brought a spot light with her and Todd, Kim and I drove around for 2 hours looking for Stella. Meanwhile my sister Rachael, who'd I'd already called and given the news to, was pleading that we do everything we could to find her and not to give up. While I understood her feelings and knew I would expect the same of her, I was beginning to think it was a lost cause, at least in the dark, so we called off the search party for the night. (And Rach, just so you know, they even call of search parties for lost humans after dark.)
About midnight I finally was getting to bed and of course I couldn't sleep I was so worried, and I was supposed to work in the morning at 7am. I was planning to call in so I could continue the dog search, but wanted to wait til morning to do so in case she showed up during the night barking. I also happened to be on call for any sexual assaults that came in to the ER during the night. It's a new program at our hospital to provide one on one care for these patients 24/7. I have been taking tons of call time and have yet to get called in. Last night of all nights the pager went off at 12:15am and I had to go. I was at the hospital till 5:30 am, then came home drove around again in the dark for a while looking for Stella to no avail. The only good thing about getting called in was that they let me have today off, which was a huge relief. I took a short nap from 6am till 9am and then my sister Francie came over and we continued the search.
We had pictures developed and drove them around to all the neighbors with our number on the back, walked all over as far as we thought necessary on foot. Mind you we are out in the country and there are acres and acres of farm land all around us, she could have been anywhere. Neighbors were out helping us, I had picked up Betty, Rachael's housekeeper to come and help since Stella loves her and might come to her if she heard her voice, Rachael's in laws came over with Rachael's other dog to see if they could find her too. We all wandered around the area on foot looking and calling for Stella.
Around 12:30 the neighbors came yelling for us saying the spotted the dog in the field below our house. We all took off running but by the time we got down there she was gone again. No sight of Stella. The neighbors were very certain it was a little white dog though, so at least now we all had a little hope. I called Rachael and Derrick with the news that she was spotted alive, but ran off again and we were still looking. They sounded a little relieved but not completely. We searched the area for quite a while on foot, then I called Todd to come down in his truck and drive around the huge 100 acre plus field they farm that goes down a hill to the river. So Todd, Anthony and Francie drove down around in the truck while the rest of us walked back up to the house to try to figure out what to do next.
A few minutes later Todd calls and says they spotted Stella down by the river bottom in a muddy area before the river, but behind a big flooded area where it was going to be difficult to get to her. Francie got out on foot to get her, slipped and fell in the mud herself, but eventually her and Stella met in the middle and Francie was able to grab her.
We all breathed a huge sigh of relief, called off the search party, then called Rachael and Derrick in FL and offered to Fed Ex their little baby down to them. Unfortunately for them, they still don't have many options at this point, so they are still going to trust me with their dog for the remainder of the week, so everyone keep your fingers crossed that she stays safe and sound for the next 5 days. Francie took her home for the afternoon to give her a bath, get her some food, water and a nap which she badly needed all of. I did the same for myself, food, shower and a nap.
The only thing that could have made for a better ending to this story would be if all that walking around had put me into labor. No such luck.

Okay, now for the pictures:

The happy reunion

Francie's shoes.

P.S. I think I'm officially off the hook for ever having to dog sit again for anyone!
But just to cheer me up one of my friends asked me to watch her kids next time she goes out of town.

Picture Time

My sister Natalie recently posted a picture of her and her husband from way back when they first started dating. A whole 3 years ago! She couldn't believe how young and skinny she looked. Well, she still looks young and skinny but then again, we are all our own worst critics. She tagged me to do the same. Unfortunately I don't have any digital pictures from back in 2003 when Todd and I first started dating, so I had to take a picture of a picture to get it on the blog, so it isn't the best quality, but you get the idea.
This was our first vacation together in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Sadly I have a similar opinion of myself as my sister did when she found her picture. Younger and definitely skinnier back then (but I have a really good excuse for not being skinny). I especially think Todd looks younger, and maybe even a little skinnier. Oh well, of course your going to be skinnier when your in your 20's than in your very early 30's.

So I tag all my readers to do the same. Let's see how you looked when you first started dating your husband!

Now for some pictures of my favorite little boy...
I think he has the cutest profile.
He loves mandarin oranges, I have been giving him the canned ones for a while now, and today at the store I bought the fresh ones and he ate 4.
Walking on his wobbly legs.
Making dog soup out of dog food. One of his favorite things to do.

Here is some video of Tony walking, after a couple weeks he's gotten much better. The first video shows more but for some reason he is crying, so the second video is just so you don't think he always cries when he walks.

35, 36, 37 and 15

My lack of blogging is not because I've had the baby, it's because I'm still very pregnant. Every day I get more and more tired, I find myself waking up and counting the hours til nap time. Sometimes I think I need the nap more out of habit than anything else, I don't always feel tired, but I fear if I don't take it when I have the chance, I will regret it later. This is why I have been slacking with the blog lately. But today I am sacrificing my precious nap to give everyone an update on what's going on.

At 35 Weeks I had the fibroid that decided to degenerate and start causing all kinds of pain.
At 36 weeks I had a day of contractions that lasted all day long, making me think I was in labor. I had seen my doctor that day and she said I was 1.5 cm dilated and 50% effaced so with the frequent contractions I was having, she strongly advised us to cancel our weekend getaway plans. I wouldn't have minded canceling the plans had we ended up having a baby that weekend, but the contractions only lasted another 10 hours and then stopped sometime during the night. Luckily I never went in to the hospital, I kept waiting till it was really really bad before I went in, not wanting to be sent home later if it turned out to be false labor.
The 37th week has so far been uneventful for the most part, no contractions, and no more fibroid pain. I still think this pregnancy is harder, or else I just forget how bad it is in the end. My stomach must be smashed by the baby because I can't eat much without really bad heartburn. I guess the good in that is that I lost 4 pounds instead of gaining 4 pounds the past 2 weeks. Which I look at as 4 less pounds to have to lose after the baby is born! So now I am 8 pounds lighter and my stomach is 1 inch smaller than the day I had Anthony. Of course I still have 2 1/2 more weeks to go, so a lot can happen.
I cut a few of my 12 hour shifts at the busier ER down to 8 hour shifts which helps a lot, but I still have to do 12 hour night shifts at the other easier ER. I have 6 more shifts scheduled before the baby is due.
My mom plans to come up right away this time when I have the baby to help out, and it isn't convenient for her until my due date, and my sister Rachael and her family are going to FL for spring break next week and the doctor who is supposed to deliver Isabella will also be out for spring break, so everyone would like this baby to wait until she is due to be born. I must say it was really nice having my sister with me in the hospital room when I had Anthony. Anytime I needed something I got it, I didn't have to wait for the nurse to call the doctor, my sister pretty much gave all the orders. Plus I'm pretty sure it got me a little extra attention from my nurse and the best l&d room and post partum room too. But, if Isabella wants to be born when everyone is gone, I wont complain, cause I am so tired of being pregnant!!

And now for something about my other baby...
Tony had his 15 month check up today, weighing in at 20 pounds 8 ounces (he only gained 10 ounces in the past 3 months) he has fallen to the 5th percentile, but still 50th percentile for height. The doctor isn't worried, says he looks and acts healthy, so I guess I'm not worried either. He got another round of shots today, and I think Tony has finally figured out that going to the doctor is not a fun thing despite the really fun toys in the waiting room.
He is walking a lot more these days, later today I will try to capture it on video and post it. He is still a bit wobbly and it's pretty cute to see. As far as talking, he says 3 words that we can understand, and maybe a few more than we don't. I suppose if we took the pacifier away from him he'd talk more, but really I'm not ready for that.

Okay, I must cut this short cause I'm starting to panic about missing out on my nap. Later today I will put some pictures up of Anthony and a video of him walking.