little guy is here!

Jackson August
Born at 10:19 a.m. on 4/29/11
7 pounds, 1.5 ounces
20.5 inches long

We're just so smitten with this little guy :) More later, but he's just perfect!

Portrait Photo Contest :)

I found out about this photo contest from this lovely mama's blog that I stumbled upon one day and decided to enter. What the heck, right? :)

My beautiful Adelle,
after losing her first tooth:

My beautiful best friend Erin,
hanging on a trolley in San Francisco:

blessed. (a letter to my beautiful girl)

My last few posts have been all about my pregnancy, and I realized that I need to throw in a little something about other important parts of my life too even though the baby seems to be the all-consuming part of my mindset right now! Adelle continues to make me realize how blessed I am, and I think it's important to remember this time right before our son is born. This blog is more a journal for me to look back on and remember what life was like during a certain moment, so this entry is more for my daughter and for me than anyone else...but if you happen to be touched by it, so be it.

Dear Adelle,

We are about to go through a huge change, but a change that will be an amazing one for our family. I know that you're anxious to meet your little brother and that we've spent a lot of time talking about how things might be different after he comes, but I also just really want you to know how hard it is for your mama to know that you won't be my one and only baby anymore. That might sound a little strange, since I really wanted to have another baby, so let me try to explain myself. Since I found out that I was pregnant with you almost seven years ago, I knew that my life was going to completely change. I had no idea how much you would bring to my life, and I never imagined how much richer life would be with you in mine. You are such an amazing little person, and every day I find myself admiring a part of your personality or your beauty. Even on the days when I find myself being grumpy with you and not being a very patient mommy, I always come back to the realization of how much I love you and need to appreciate the things that make you who you are without getting so frustrated. I don't want to lose my perspective on how special you are to me by being distracted by my love for the baby, and I don't want you to feel any less loved when my attention is focused on caring for him.

It's hard to sum up what makes you so special to me, but I'll write down a few things that come to my mind. You are definitely one of the most creative people I have ever met, with an ingenuity that constantly surprises me! I love hearing the things that come out of your mouth and the things that you create with your hands because I never know what to expect. Going along with that thought, you have such a fantastic sense of humor. I probably think that because my sense of humor seems to be so similar to yours. :) Some of my favorite moments are the ones I've spent with you being ridiculously silly and giggling about something that probably only you and I would find hilarious. You are sensitive and caring, which can be both good and bad...good because you always notice other people's emotions and act accordingly to try to figure out the best reaction to them...and bad because sometimes you let your emotions run wild and get so upset or worried about things that you can't change. I hate when you are scared or worried or sad about something, because often there is not much that I can do to get you out of that emotion. Mama is the same way.

I guess a lot of what I have said in this letter to you is that you are a lot like me, and I love that we have so much in common. I want you to know that even though I'm going to love this new baby so much and will be figuring out how to love both of you, you will always be just as special to me as you are right now before he comes into our lives. I love you so much, sweetie. It's going to take some time to balance everything out again as our lives change, but I know that we'll work through the changes together. This is going to be quite an adventure. :)

Love,
Mommy

...still waiting...

The current status: 40 weeks, 4 days...yes, it's getting old and I'd really like to be done with this whole pregnancy thing. And yet, I'm choosing to wait a little longer to see if our little guy starts to make his appearance without interventions at the hospital. Why?

Well, yesterday at my appointment Dr. B (who is my least favorite in that practice...for good reason) told me that I had to have an ultrasound "since I'm past the due date" to check the amniotic fluid level and the position of the baby. He also sent me up to labor and delivery for a nonstress test. The ultrasound tech said things look perfect, that my amniotic fluid level is good...and he's still a boy :) haha The nonstress test went fine, and the heart rate was good for the baby.

Dr. B said some things to me during the exam that upset me (about not dilating and my cervix not being ripe, that I was "nothing" as far as dilation/effacement/etc...I mean, the guy works with pregnant women for a living and needs to learn a little more tact or at least to be more sensitive in his word choice), but what really got me upset was that the doc told me that we would discuss my options for induction and/or waiting a few days after I went through those tests (which I honestly felt were pretty unnecessary and took up 2 1/2 hours of my time when I was hoping to take Adelle to do something way more fun than hang out at the hospital)...but then he called up to labor and delivery while I was still hooked up doing the nonstress test and told them that he was scheduling an induction for me tonight without talking with me about it first as we had planned. Dr. B would be the doc on call and be the one to do the Cervidil and then break my water and start me on Pitocin in the morning...so I called and declined the induction after I left the hospital. It was stressing me out that he decided what to do with my body and my baby without giving me a choice and with no medical emergency even before he saw the results of the tests (which showed that things are just fine in there with our little guy). I told the medical assistant that I was upset that he decided for me without discussing it as we had talked about during my appointment. Dr. B told me that I could go ahead with the induction or make an appointment with another doc in the practice in a couple of days.

Trust me, I want this kid out of me but I didn't like the way that he handled the situation and it really upset me that he would probably be delivering my baby. I also just feel like I don't want to push my body to do something if it's not ready yet, so I got myself a couple more days to possibly go into labor on my own. My biggest wish for this pregnancy was that I would have the experience of being able to labor at home for the majority of my labor instead of being hooked up to an IV and monitor at the hospital for a ridiculous amount of time like I was with Adelle. Though I feel like I will probably go in for an induction later this week, at least I have a small victory...I didn't let that doctor step all over me and make the decision for me, I will have a different doc to deal with from now on, and hopefully my body will be that much more ready to go when/if I am induced.

Thankfully, my husband was wonderfully supportive of this decision and he made me feel so loved in telling me so...even though I know that he is just as anxious to meet our baby as I am! <3

9 days.

So here we are...9 days until my due date...3 days into maternity leave from work...and who knows how many days until we actually meet this baby...

Yes, we've entered that frustrating time of just WAITING and hoping that the baby comes soon. I'm not overly impatient yet, but I keep thinking how nice it would be just to be able to meet him and spend as much time with him as possible before I have to go back to work next school year. Truthfully, it's kind of nice to be able to stay home by myself and have some "me" time before this little guy makes his arrival...because that's been pretty rare in my life ever since Adelle was born and especially since I started teaching full time...yet at the same time I feel guilty about it. I have been feeling "guilty" that I stopped working even though I could still probably be working with no issues except being exhausted and feeling large. But the thing is that the baby could hypothetically come at any time so I didn't want to risk trying to work too late into the pregnancy. I hit 38 weeks last Friday, and so here I am on leave.

At 38 weeks, 5 days...I'm still feeling reasonably good. My biggest complaint is the lack of sleep, which I remember all too clearly from my pregnancy with Adelle and so...not too surprising. I'm definitely looking bigger in the past couple of weeks, and my fingers and feet have started to look swollen. And while I'm listing pregnancy gripes, my back aches a lot of the time. I feel like I'm almost there though!

I'm wondering if I'll have to be induced with this baby as I was with Adelle...a huge part of me was hoping that this time my body would go into labor naturally sometime conveniently just before my due date, but I guess at this point I'm pretty much resigned to feeling like that's looking less and less likely. We can still hope, but I'm choosing to be realistic so I don't get too disappointed if I'm sitting here pregnant a week from now writing another blog entry about how I'm still pregnant. ;) I guess only time will tell.

whoa. where does time go???

I know I mentioned a countdown the last time I posted...admittedly eons ago, in November. Cut that number roughly in half...80...and that's how many days there are until my due date. Holy crap! Though I've been through this once before, I don't think you're ever really prepared for how fast time will actually go. I don't know if it ever actually feels real until the baby comes, because I remember feeling the same way when I was waiting for Adelle to come. Though you know in your head and even more definitely with your body (haha...with all the crazy changes that happen physically throughout 40 short weeks!), I think that there are always those feelings of, "Am I ready for this?" and "How is it possible for time to have passed so quickly when it felt like it was going slowly at the time?" Or maybe that's just the way I've experienced it.

I'm eager to meet this little guy, but at the same time it's overwhelming to think of how life will change once he's here...

Adelle will have the adjustment of becoming a big sister and no longer being the one-and-only in our lives after being the center of attention for six straight years. I know that she's super excited to be a big sister, and she's always talking about how much she's looking forward to doing things with her little brother, like teaching him how to walk and reading to him and playing with him. :) She's done well with adjusting to all-day kindergarten and spending time with Mommy and Daddy in the evenings though it was a little rough the first week, so I just hope she transitions well once the baby gets here and she has school all day and has to share the attention in the evening.

Jesse will experience being a daddy to a baby for the first time; I can't wait to see him interact with our son and it makes me tear up to think about that, but at the same time I don't know how he'll be with the constant attention the baby will need from both of us, especially in the beginning. I'm not super nervous about it, but a little worried because for most of the time we've been together, we've been able to have a lot of "us time" and get away once in a while for a date night just because Adelle's been old enough to be left overnight with my parents or aunt. Once breastfeeding starts, it's going to be a while until we can get away for a night ;).

And truthfully, it's hard for me to imagine how I'll adjust. I worry about stretching myself too thin once the baby gets here. How do you love two equally? How do you give two precious babes enough attention plus your husband plus get everything accomplished that you need to? I already try to do probably too much around the house at this point and need to ask for help more than I do, so I will definitely have to ask J to pitch in more with laundry and dishes and errands and other household stuff even though my instinct is to try to take care of everything around the house since that's the way it was when I was growing up. I'll be off for the rest of the school year and over the summer, so the baby will be about four months old once I have to go back to work. Then, I know it'll be SO hard to go back and leave the baby because I'll be quite used to being a stay-at-home mommy. I know I'm lucky with the timing of when we were able to aim to have this baby ;) (haha), combined with having enough sick days to be paid while I'm on maternity leave...so I guess I just need to be content that I get to be there for the first four months of his life. I'll have to deal with having to go back when that time comes.

156 days.

According to a countdown on Jesse's phone, that's how many days until our baby will be born. I still have moments where it's easy to forget that this is really happening...it's still a bit surreal, and my guess is that probably always feels this way until the baby is actually here because I remember feeling the same way when I was pregnant with Adelle. Not to mention life is very full, what with both of us working full-time, somehow keeping the fridge stocked and making dinner, entertaining Delle at night, getting her wrangled into bed each night, and trying not to make the weekends so jampacked that we never get to relax on our days off. It's easy to go about my busyness. And at the same time, it's on my mind all the time...I get swept up in daydreams about the baby, about how we'll all interact and grow together as a family, about how it will feel to see Jesse holding the baby and to watch him be a daddy from the very beginning, about how I'll cope being a mommy of two, about what next school year will be like...