And then came baby #2

Baby #2 has been around for a while now, but I have been on hiatus from this blog - I keep thinking about it and keep thinking that I need to do an update, but time and life seems to get in the way.  The good news is that on my brother's birthday in February, we were blessed with our 2nd daughter.  If I were to share names on this blog, you would love her name, it's a good one.  One that we discovered at Christmas time while visiting with my aunt and uncle about baby names.

My baby story isn't too exciting, although a memory that I'll always have.  We had been in the process since late December of finishing our basement, and earlier that week, everything in our basement had been wrapped up and it was time to do our part.  We opted to do all the finishing work ourselves, meaning caulking and filling baseboard nails, doing all the painting, and getting the carpet installed.  We decided that day to get to work on it, and spent most of the day in the basement caulking baseboards.  Around 8pm that night I had a moment where I thought that maybe my water broke, although it wasn't the splash down like everyone says it is so I disregarded it.  Matt and I were going to watch Breaking Dawn (!!!) that night, so we sat down to watch the movie at around 8:30.  Within 10 minutes of sitting down I had my first contraction.  I think I finally told Matt I was having contractions around 9 pm after I had a couple more.  We finished the movie and decided to go pack a bag in case this was the real thing and I called my cousin to let her know that this might be it - she was going to come over and watch the 2 year old while we went to the hospital.

I downloaded an app on the iPod to start keeping track of contractions.  The evening progressed and this is what I did until 1 am:

My contraction history is below :

StartTime	EndTime	Duration (mm:ss)	Freq. (mm:ss)	Intensity
Feb 11, 2012 11:17 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:18 PM	00:42	00:00	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:19 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:20 PM	00:35	02:00	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:22 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:23 PM	00:56	02:50	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:26 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:27 PM	01:03	03:48	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:29 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:30 PM	00:44	03:13	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:31 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:32 PM	01:00	02:14	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:37 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:38 PM	00:58	05:22	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:38 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:39 PM	00:35	01:34	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:40 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:40 PM	00:36	01:12	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:42 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:42 PM	00:40	02:02	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:43 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:44 PM	00:26	01:52	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:45 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:46 PM	00:32	01:32	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:47 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:48 PM	00:42	01:50	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:49 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:49 PM	00:30	01:41	-
Feb 11, 2012 11:55 PM	Feb 11, 2012 11:57 PM	01:13	06:53	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:01 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:02 AM	01:05	05:53	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:06 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:06 AM	00:50	04:11	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:09 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:10 AM	01:03	03:39	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:14 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:15 AM	01:04	04:22	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:16 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:17 AM	00:54	02:29	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:19 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:20 AM	01:00	02:39	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:23 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:25 AM	01:19	04:33	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:28 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:29 AM	00:51	04:41	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:30 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:30 AM	00:35	01:51	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:33 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:34 AM	01:03	03:26	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:38 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:39 AM	01:00	04:38	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:40 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:40 AM	00:36	01:37	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:44 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:45 AM	01:13	04:36	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:49 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:50 AM	01:00	04:54	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:53 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:54 AM	01:00	03:30	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:54 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:55 AM	00:42	01:32	-
Feb 12, 2012 12:56 AM	Feb 12, 2012 12:57 AM	00:53	01:35	-
Feb 12, 2012 1:02 AM	Feb 12, 2012 1:03 AM	01:08	06:37	-

Exciting yes?

At 1 am I decided to get up and call the doctor.  She called me back and assessed the situation and we decided that it was time to go to the hospital.  We called my cousin and she came over and headed to Boulder.  

When we got into Boulder around 2, I measured 4 cm (yay!), and they asked me what my pain was at, I decided that I wanted to keep going but around 3:00 I decided that I had had enough and wanted the epidural.  Around 3:30 I had the epidural, was feeling better and was at 7 cm, and the doctor broke my water which put me to 8 cm.  And then the waiting game started.  I was 9 cm around 4:30, but it took FOREVER to get to 10.  Around 7:00 there was a shift change, and I got a new nurse.  Around 8:15-8:30 she decided that I should go ahead and push a little to take the edge off some of the contractions I was having.  And that did the trick, I was finally at 10 cm.  At that point she said "don't push till I get back" and she went and got the doctor, Matt came back from inhaling some breakfast, and we were ready to go.  4 pushes later, I had my teeny purple baby girl on me.  She weighed 6lbs 13 oz, and was 19 inches long.  

She's 5 months old now, and so sweet.  She started smiling around 5 weeks, which we could hardly believe, and now can roll from back to front, and sometimes she remembers that she can roll from front to back, although she forgets that and just puts her head down and cries when she's tired of being on her tummy.  Big sister has adjusted very well, and gives her lots of kisses and wants to always say hello to her in the morning and kiss her before she goes to bed at night.  We certainly are blessed to have 2 beautiful healthy daughters!

And a baby makes...4

It doesn't appear that I've actually mentioned this yet...we've decided to have another baby.  This one is due in February.  So for me, that just means a little less than 5 months to go.

This pregnancy has been very different from my pregnancy with Miss Muffit.  It seems from the MOMENT I took that pregnancy test the nausea set in and I started in with the deep breathing - through the mouth - cause whatever it was that I smelled had the potential of making my toss my cookies at any moment.  I'm lucky that nothing ever came up, however, my 'morning/all day sickness' lasted clear until I was about 15 weeks along.  Since then I've been feeling great....tired...but anything beats that gross motion sick feeling.

Since announcing to our world that we're having another baby, we've actually gotten word that few of our family and friends are expecting now too!  Remember that wedding that I wrote of a few months ago?  Well they announced that they are expecting, along with a cousin of Matt's in MN, as well as an old friend of mine back in my home town - and they are expecting within a week of us!  It was my mom who said the nicest thing to me with this pregnancy - she said "That's really nice, I think we have room for one more".

Currently the question is: to find out, or not to find out; as far as the gender goes.  Ultrasound is in two weeks.  I have to admit, that I'm really torn with this.  Matt and I have different ideas on how many children we want.  I've always said 3, he used to say 3, but when we had Miss Muffet, his number changed to 1.5.  So, deciding to have another to him was necessary, since he didn't want Little Miss to be an only child, but still going to be a big challenge.  I kinda feel like if this is going to be my last baby, maybe I want to experience what's it's like to go the entire 9 months without knowing - having to wait until that little one decides to come out.  On the other hand, we LOVED knowing with baby-girl; it was awesome knowing a little more about that little person growing in there.  Matt would like to know - I know there's a place in him that would love to have one of each, although be perfectly happy with 2 of the same - and he's also mentioned that he doesn't want to take away from my experience of not knowing by finding out.  And he said there's no way he could keep it a secret from me (I've given him the option of knowing and not telling me!).  So we will see what we come up with.

We've also let our little girl know about the pregnancy - and although I'm sure she doesn't fully understand what it means, she's very cute and tells us that she has a baby in her tummy too.  Then she pretends to take the baby out and hand it to us.  Often the baby turns into a dragon, and then she roars.  Side note, we were driving down the road one day and she saw a school bus (which is VERY exciting), and she roared at it, "Rawwr!", I asked why she roared and she responded "Scawre kids".