Has it been almost a year??

Um, yes it has.  Yikes.  Was alerted to this fact yesterday as Henry is still trying to put Ginny's baby book together and was looking for pregnant pictures of me.  I said I thought there was some on the website.  Oh yeah... the website...

So what has a year done to us?  Well, we're San Diegans now.  Which in essence means we get to see family and the outdoors much more often.  Henry is working as a family law attorney and I'm home with Ginny.  I finished my MFA, was just sent my degree last week, and am spending a few precious hours a day writing.  Ginny is doing all kinds of things from walking to speaking (she says Mama, Dada, Datta (for Dante and apparently all other animals), Boomboom (for milk) and Byebye).  She's got (1,2,3,4...) 10 teeth and is cutting two more.  She is fast becoming the smartest little person I know.  And she's super super cute, but I'm biased.  We've recently discovered the zoo and Elmo which are now her current obsessions.

Let's play picture catch-up!

March - 4 months old
Learning how to babywear!  Ginny actually liked it, despite her face in this photo.

April - 5 months old
Loving the warm weather and celebrating by wearing short sleeves finally!

April - 5 months
Easter!  She hates me a little for making her wear this hat, but grudgingly agrees it's better than the flower headband she was wearing previous.

May - 6 months
We have such a happy baby!  She learned to roll over in Hawaii and from there it was only a matter of time before she started scooting around.

May - 6 months
First trip to Disneyland!  This is It's a Small World.  I was freaked about holding on to her, she was just freaked.  No, I'm kidding.  Was was unimpressed though.  Next time will be better, her older cousin Savannah loved it.

April-May - 5-6 months

Working on crawling!

Solid food!!  The mess begins!  Now she eats table food, meaning pretty much whatever we're eating.  Her new molars are making a big difference on what she can actually chew.



Having a serious discussion with Isis.  Dante loves her to death, he's always hanging around and letting her pet him.  Isis is a little more wary, but is a big fan of nap time. 

Fourth of July!  Our little firework.

8 month photo shoot.  We got some awesome pictures!

So that's a small catch-up because it's all the pictures I have loaded on my computer right now.  I will try to get to September through today at a later time.  I will obviously include first birthday photos.  I can't believe she's 13 months already!  My little baby is a walking, talking toddler.  Wow, time sure flies.   

one day shy of three months old!

Well it's been a while, and let me tell you why.  Right now I am typing standing up with Ginny wrapped on my chest rocking back and forth to keep her asleep, I've mostly finished my school work and the laundry is still in the dryer.  It's a busy household right now!  We're in the midst of packing, slowly but surely, and in just three short weeks we will officially be Californians.  But enough of my chatter, let's get to the good stuff.  Ginny is almost three months old now, and growing like a weed.  She's in the 80% percentile for height and is practically out of her 3-6 month clothes already!  It's hard for us to tell, but once in a while, like when we put on a hat that is too small but was falling down over her eyes just a few weeks ago, it really sinks in how big she's getting.  So here are some pictures of Ginny, cause I know that's what everyone wants to see :-)  No time to caption them right now, but I'll try to come back to it later tonight.  For now, just think of this as the many faces of Ginny-Bean:

In case anyone was wondering if we survived the Chicago Blizzard 2011, here are some pictures from our windows... 

 This was taken three days later, it took them almost five days to plow our street!

Here's the lake shore about a week and a half after the blizzard ( the infamous Lake Shore Drive is to the left of this path).  Pretty much all the snow is gone!

To part here's some pics of Isis, who doesn't understand that she's not the baby :-)



7 weeks video!!

Ginny-Bean is getting so good at smiling!  Here is a video for your enjoyment, please ignore my babbling but Ginny seems to love it.

I had my postpartum check-up and unfortunately I'm not quite healed yet.  I'm on some meds and doing physical therapy to correct the problems, so hopefully will be back to "normal" soon.

On a much happier note, Ginny "slept through the night" last night!!  I use quotations because the medical definition of sleeping through the night is only 5 hours, which is what she did.  However, she didn't actually fall asleep until 1am.  No rest for the wicked!

6 Weeks Old

Wow, I can't believe she's six weeks today.  Time seems to be going pretty darn fast, so fast in fact that I'm back to school, my maternity leave is a week away from being over and Henry is heading back to work too.  We had an awesome six weeks to get settled and get to know our new little girl.  Right now she's sleeping (finally!) with her dad while I attempt to get some work done.  So this will have to be a quick post.  Here's the rundown of Ginny's first six weeks, with pictures of course!

Ginny's hospital footprints.  She has monster feet -- not surprising since her Mom and Dad also have monster feet.  She never had a prayer of fitting into size sevens.

Our first few days home from the hospital.  Actually this was taken the day of Ginny's first pediatrician appointment.  My mom was staying with us for a week to help out.  Even just an extra set of hands to hold her while we acclimated to being home was fantastic.  At her first pediatrician's appointment she was down 10% of her body weight which had the doctor worried.  We had to come back two days later for a weight check and were told if she kept losing weight we would have to supplement with formula.  Up until this point I had been exclusively breastfeeding and was determined to keep at it.  It definitely wasn't easy in the early days, quite a learning process for something that supposed to be so natural.  But finally there was success!  At the weight check she had gained 5 ounces!  By her two week check-up she was back to her birth weight.  By her one month she weighed 9 pounds 3 ounces.  Obviously we're both doing great with feeding!

Our beautiful baby!  We love these socks, a present from my Uncle Rob and Aunt Terri.  They are so soft and they actually stay on!  For the first few weeks -- much to everyone's shock -- we didn't dress her at all but kept her skin to skin with a blanket.  This just made it easier on everyone since she spent most of her time eating and pooping.  Those of you who know may be asking why she is wearing a disposable diaper in this picture.  Yes we are still cloth diapering but for now we do use the disposables at night (when most of her leaks and blowouts occur) and obviously when all the cloth diapers are in the laundry.  For those of you considering cloth diapers, we think they're awesome.  Super soft, no diaper rash, seriously easier to get on, and if you don't mind doing a load of laundry every few days, massively easy to manage.  Right now we're doing a little more laundry than we planned because she's still a little small for the adjustable one-size diapers so we're having to use specialty newborn ones.  I'll take a picture of her in them because aside from being green and better for Ginny, they are also ridiculously cute :-)

Christmas Eve!  We went out and looked at the lights around Chicago.  One of our first outings.  This outfit is so adorable, but the ball on the end of the hat looks a lot like our cats' wool ball toys and so it kept mysteriously disappearing and ending up in a cat bed...

Christmas morning.  I love my little family.

Ginny's now starting to make faces at us!  We have yet to catch a smile on camera but have resolved to try and take a video next time she has a smiling episode.  It's awesome to have her interacting more.  Makes getting no sleep just a tiny bit easier to deal with.  A tiny bit.

Go Huskies!!!!  Of course Henry is already scouting some all girl colleges for her.  But until then there's no question about who she's rooting for!

This was taken at the pediatricians.  We had to take her in unexpectedly because what we originally though was a growth spurt turned out to be infant reflux.  Poor Ginny was absolutely miserable - fussy, not sleeping, nursing round the clock, spitting up, and screaming and coughing whenever we put her down.  Truly we were all miserable.  I'm currently cutting out dairy to see if that helps her, a real feat for me as I'm a huge cheese and dairy fiend.  But I will do anything to help her tummy.  The doctor put her on some reflux medication and she's doing so much better.  However, now that she's finally feeling good it looks like she actually is going through her six week growth spurt...right now.  Fun stuff for Mom and Dad! 

We haven't forgotten about our originally babies though!  The cats are doing really well with the new attention hog.  Better than expected.  Dante generally waits for Ginny to vacate Henry's lap before leaping to occupy it, but he's back to sleeping on my feet even when I'm nursing so we figure he's acclimated pretty well.  Isis has become Ginny's protector cat.  The few times she's been crying in another room, Isis checks her out then runs to find me, sitting and staring at me until I go to Ginny, at which point she follows me just to make sure everything's okay.  Isis also has no problem climbing into a lap that is still being occupied by Ginny.  She's also fascinated by Ginny's toys, sitting in Ginny's Bumbo and attempting to sleep in her swing.  Clearly from this picture she figures if she can fit herself into the Ergo, perhaps she'll be carried around the house all day too.

I'd better get back to work, I've managed to pawn Ginny off on Henry in between feedings all afternoon while they watch the playoffs.  But now we're in the fourth quarter and I've got no work done.  Oh well, I've found that new babies are just as good an excuse as pregnancy for not working ;-)  Plus Ginny's just peed through her third outfit of the day...time to go!

Welcome Genevieve Elizabeth Rau!

Here she is!

Genevieve Elizabeth (aka Ginny)
Born November 27th at 3:46pm

7 lbs 12 oz, 20"

Here's the whole story:

We made it through Thanksgiving and I got to see Harry Potter in the theater and was feeling pretty good.  At our last appointment I hadn't made much progress, only 1+ centimeters dilated and just starting to efface so we were pretty convinced we were going to make it to December.  I finished one of my classes and only had one more to go, but again was sure I had at least a week left.  Boy were we wrong! 

That Morning

Around 4:40am on Saturday, November 27th, I woke up with a contraction that actually hurt a little.  Most of the "warm up" contractions I'd been having were uncomfortable but none of them really hurt.  This one hurt enough to wake me up, but I went back to sleep pretty quick.  Ten minutes later another one woke me up again.  But I still didn't think much of it and went back to sleep.  Ten minutes after that I felt a bunch of fluid leak out and immediately jumped out of bed, exclaiming "whoa!"  This woke Henry up and he asked me what was wrong.  As I continued to drip I said "I think my water broke!" and scurried off to the bathroom.  Henry followed me in and we both tried to figure out if my water was actually breaking.  It wasn't a gush, and I hadn't had another contraction yet so we decided that I should put a pad on and we'd go watch some TV in bed (neither of us were going back to sleep).  I dripped more on the way to the bedroom and now it was pretty clear what was going on.  But since I still wasn't really contracting we decided to give it two hours, until 7am, before calling the doctor.  They had told us to wait until the contractions were 1 minute long, 5 minutes apart, for 1 hour.  When I did start contracting they only lasted about 30 seconds so we figured we had some time.  But once they started they started coming pretty close together.  And they hurt!  We did some laundry, ate a nice big breakfast, took a shower and watched TV.  We didn't time the contractions because they were so short.  But by 7am I was really ready to call the doctor.  Unfortunately because it was the weekend we weren't able to have our regular doc, but the answering service paged the on-call doctor.  Forty minutes later we hadn't heard back so I called again.  A few minutes later a nurse called me back as the on-call doc was in a delivery.  I told the nurse that I was 39 weeks pregnant and that I thought my water had broken and I was having contractions.  She asked me how close together they were, and I said we hadn't timed but we figured on average they were three minutes apart, but that they were only lasting about 30 seconds.  She said it was time for us to head to Labor and Delivery.

Off to the Hospital
We took some time to finish the laundry and pack the reminder of our hospital bag, then we grabbed the car seat and headed out.  Contractions kept coming fast and furious during the car ride to the hospital.  By the time we got close to the hospital I could no longer talk through the contractions.  I started to believe I was officially in labor.  We left the car in the loading area, which we were allowed to do while I was getting checked out.  I thought I could probably walk from the parking garage, but we decided not to take the chance.  We went to Obstetrical Triage where they check you out to make sure you're actually in labor before admitting you.  We didn't have to wait too long, but I kept having contractions and found the only way I could really deal with them was to stand up and lean on Henry.  Once in the triage room they checked to see if my water had in fact broken by doing a swab.  Nothing came back on the swab so they decided to do a slide, which would take longer but be more definitive.  At this point I thought we might actually be sent home even though I was sure my water had broken.  The nurse checked to see how dilated I was while waiting for the slide.  That's when they told us I was 6 centimeters dilated.  SIX!!!  We were expecting maybe 3 or 4 but I was almost half way there at this point, only about four hours after labor started.  We weren't going anywhere except up to Labor and Delivery.  Henry went to park the car and I sat in triage trying to breathe through the contractions that were steadily getting more and more painful.

Labor not quite Delivery
Right after Henry got back, the wheelchair arrived to take me upstairs but I asked if I could walk.  Everyone was shocked I wanted to walk at 6 centimeters, but it seriously felt better to stand than to sit.  They told me I was on my way to being the new poster child for natural childbirth.  I really thought I could do this.  As we got to our room we met our nurse, Amy, and I got all hooked up to the monitors and IVs.  The doctor came by to check me and I was still only 6 centimeters.  She said she'd be back in two hours and we were left to labor on.  However, the contractions were fast becoming unbearable.  Henry got me some ice chips because I was breathing so hard through my mouth and drying it out.  After about an hour I couldn't even chew one chip between contractions, they were so close and hard.  There was no position that was comfortable, we tried sitting, lying down, the birthing ball, nothing worked except me standing and hanging on Henry.  At one point the contractions hurt so bad I might have lightly bitten Henry, but I promise it was totally by accident.  Henry maintains there was nothing "light" about it and believes it may have actually been on purpose.  He was awesome throughout the whole experience, helping me breathe, giving me support, holding me during the contractions, encouraging me; there is no way I would have made it without him.  By the time the anesthesiologist came (I wasn't getting an epidural but they come talk to everyone anyway) I was literally screaming.  The anesthesiologist got a bit annoyed waiting to say three words between my contractions and eventually just talked over my screams.  Amy thought I might be ready to start pushing so she called the doctor before the two hours were up.  The doc came and checked me and I was still only 6!  Because the nurse in triage thought my water hadn't broken our doc decided to try and break my water but when she did it was just a lot of blood and membranes.  It was determined that my water had broken but it broke high up and when the baby moved down she stopped the flow with her head.  But at this point she wasn't moving down anymore and I wasn't progressing possibly because her position was "sunny-side up" meaning she was face up instead of face down.  My cervix was actually getting thicker on one side instead of thinning because the baby's head kept bumping it and not moving past.  I was in agony, having basically been in transition for four hours at this point.  Our doctor asked us if we would agree to get an epidural because she needed to manipulated the baby's position.  Since I still had four centimeters to go and I couldn't really handle the contractions much longer, I agreed.

Relief - for a while
The anesthesiologist came back to administer the epidural and Henry had to leave the room.  I had to stay very still while they put the needle and catheter in my spine but I had three contractions while they were placing it and it was excruciating to try and keep still, especially without Henry.  They finally got it placed and after a bit I started to feel a little relief, but mostly on the left side.  I still had some back labor on the right and could definitely still feel when the contractions came, which was great for me since I wanted to feel the urge to push.  But taking the edge off the pain at this point was huge.  They put a contraction monitor in and I labored for a while, mostly on my hands and knees, with the epidural, but at one point the baby's heart rate plummeted and Amy told me to get on my hands and knees while twenty people stormed the room.  It's true what they say, modesty goes completely out the window.  There I was on all fours with my butt in the air open to the world with twenty or so persons unknown in the room.  But I was so worried about the baby I could have cared less.  The heart rate eventually went up and everyone left.  The doctor came back soon and checked again, but alas no progress.  At this point she told me that with the bleeding I had already had, and the tumors which put me at a high risk for hemorrhage, it was time for a c-section.  They couldn't give me pitocin because my contractions were too close together and they were pretty hard so there was nothing they could do to help me progress.  I argued but the doctor was adamant that they had already let me go twice as long in transition as they normally do before going to surgery.  I argued some more but this was it, the only option.  Even waiting another hour was too risky in the doctor's eyes because of the risk of hemorrhage, riskier than the surgery.  I asked for a half hour, just to wrap my head around the fact that we were actually going to have the dreaded c-section.

Coming to terms with the C-section 
I cried for about ten minutes while Henry tried to comfort me and tell me it was okay.  In some ways I felt like a failure but it was probably mostly hormones making me so upset.  After about ten minutes I sucked it up and even started pressing the epidural button to give myself more medicine, something I hadn't wanted to do because I wanted it to wear off for pushing.  But at this point I figured, they're going to block my whole lower half, so what did it matter at that point?  Amy came back too and I lay on my right side to get more of the epidural to the right half, then had to move to the left side because the baby's heart rate dipped again.  I lay on my left, chatting with Henry and Amy and still trying not to be scared of the upcoming c-section.  While we waited for the doctor to come back and get me into surgery, I started to feel more and more pressure.  Stuff was happening down there, but we had no way of knowing what.  Amy said she was encouraged that the baby might be on the move because she had to move one of the monitors down.  I just tried to relax.  When the doctor came back, a little over an hour later (she got "held up") she checked me again and said she was going to try and manipulate the baby's head a little.  Henry and I looked at each other anxiously while we waited to find out what was going on.  When the doctor stopped, she looked up at me and said "Ok, let's push."  We were like "what?!?!"  I had gone to ten centimeters in just that hour and the doctor was able to rotate the baby enough to get her to move down, and once she did we were all systems go!

Delivery
There was all kinds of activity then.  Henry took up his place holding my left leg while the nurse held my right and once a contraction came I started pushing.  I could still kind of feel them, but I had upped my epidural so I wasn't feeling much more than pressure.  Pushing did hurt because when I had to curl up to push my tumors got shoved into my ribcage and that hurt a lot but I was so close to the end and we weren't going to surgery so I wasn't thinking about much else besides getting the baby out!  I pushed on my back and then on my side which felt so much better than on my back, but once we got towards the end I had to go on my back again so the doctor could get the baby out.  At one point I said to Henry, "It feels like there's something between my legs" and he said, "Yeah, it's a baby's head!"  He was so great again, encouraging me and telling me what was going on, since I declined the mirror.  After about a half hour of pushing, she was out!

Welcome Baby Ginny!
They put her on my chest right away and I tried to hold on this tiny, slippery, squirmy thing while they clamped the cord and Henry cut it.  Henry and I both cried a bit when she came out and it was so nice to be able to hold her for a bit.  Eventually (Henry says about 20 minutes) they had to take her away to weigh her and clean her up more, but they gave her right back to me and we tried breastfeeding.  There was so much activity but I didn't notice most of it.  I had a tear so they spent some time stitching me up and I remember shaking pretty bad, probably from tired muscles.  But other than that, most of the focus was on this tiny beautiful little girl in my arms.  Henry finally got to hold her for a while and then my mom and sister arrived from the airport, then we were moved down to post-partum recovery.

Post-Partum
We stayed in the hospital until Monday, getting the hang of feeding and getting to know our baby, then both Ginny and I were given a clean bill of health and discharged.  Recovery was not fun, but it got better with each day.

Next post I will talk more about Ginny's first couple weeks of life, but she's starting to wake up now which means it's feeding time!

We got to have a professional photographer in the hospital so I will leave you for now with some pictures of our beautiful girl when she was two days old.

38 Weeks

Today is November 15th and we are 15 days from d-day!  It's been a while.  I know.  I'm sorry.  But it's also been ridiculously busy.  The good news is that as of last week we are officially full term!!  Baby Ginny could arrive at any moment and be considered a full term baby.  We're hoping she stays in there just a little longer though, to give me time to finish up school and of course to go see the new Harry Potter movie (I really want to see it!).  We got through October, where I had front loaded a lot of school work just in case I happened to go into labor early, then my mom was in town for the first week of November, then I had work and school catch up, so now I'm doing blog catch up!  My mom was like a one-woman baby shower so we got a lot done while she was here.  We had waited to buy most of our stuff until she got here so she could go with us.  All the stuff we got, combined with the cloth diapers (yes we are cloth diapering and no we're not crazy) and clothes we are getting from Henry's parents, and some awesome hand-me-downs from my sister and some co-workers, I think we're pretty much set!  It's hard being so far away from family during this whole process, but we've never once felt like we were on our own and that's totally due to both our amazing families. 
Since it's been so long, I'll just dive right in to the good stuff.

• What's the Baby Doing?: 33-36 weeks: Baby is continuing to gain weight at a rapid rate, about a half a pound per week.  Eyes are developed enough to detect light, lanugo has disappeared, vernix becomes thicker, crowding in the uterus means less movement from baby.  37-38 weeks: Baby is full term!  Weight gain has slowed, brain and nervous system are working better every day,
• Weight Gain: I think in total I'm right in the good range of weight gain for a "normal" person.  That said, I'm definitely not giving a number, suffice it to say that I've never ever weighed this much in my entire life and it definitely feels that way.

• Showing?:  Random people are much more comfortable giving comments the last couple weeks.  It doesn't hurt that I look like I'm going to pop at any moment, however it does get annoying when every stranger on the street, UPS delivery person, randos in the ladies room, people in the checkout line, etc. wants to ask you about the contents of your uterus.  Just because you're pregnant doesn't automatically mean you should have no privacy, people!
• Symptoms: Of what?  Of pregnancy, I'm as big as a house and super uncomfortable.  I can't wear my wedding ring any more because my hands, feet and legs are swollen beyond the point of recognition.  I couldn't even get slippers on the other night!  My face is swollen too, so much so that my OB was worried about my blood pressure, but thankfully it's just fine.  It's all just so magical.  Of labor, we are definitely getting ready!!  At my last appointment I was already dilated (yay!) and the doctor could actually feel Ginny's head.  I've started having some non-painful contractions and there's a host of other, sort of icky body things going on that tell us there's probably not a lot of time left!  We finished packing the last of our hospital bag last night.
• Sleep:  No sleep.  Hips hurt too much to stay on one side for long, I'm not allowed to sleep on my back, I still have some heartburn when lying down, and I have to get up at least three times a night to pee.  I tried sleeping in a chair the other night but that was a no-go.  Last night I used pillows to prop myself up but I was having regular contractions and somehow sitting up made them worse.  Tonight we're going to try me sleeping on Henry's shoulder because I passed out that way for about an hour on Sunday afternoon.  By the amount of drool I left on Henry's shirt it looks like I was out pretty good!
• Movement: She's definitely slowing down, for the last few weeks it's been much more stretching and swiping than kicks and punches.  Her movement has gotten noticeably slower in the last couple days, in fact I did kick counts after lunch because it was worrying me.  She's still in there for sure, just in position and getting ready!
• Best Moment of the Week(s):  Getting our baby list taken care of was a huge one!  Also we got to see her again on her last growth ultrasound last week.  All you can really see anymore is a bunch of circles that is her head, abdomen, etc. but it's always fun just the same.  The next time we see her she'll be here!  Also being told we're progressing a little towards labor was fantastic.  Really help you see that there is in fact a light at the end of the tunnel.
• What I Miss:  Sleeping comfortably is a huge one right now, I'm just really really tired. 
• What I'm Looking Forward To:  Getting some semblance of my own body back. As much as I've loved being pregnant, and I have, I'm more than ready for it to be o-v-e-r!  I know that I'll be a baby feeding machine for a good while, but not having twenty-plus pounds hanging off the front of my body will be wonderful.
• Milestones:  Full term!  Dilated!  Next stop, baby!!
• Henry's Quote of the Week: In response to me worrying about my tumors hurting during labor (they hurt with the practice contractions): "Isn't that like saying I hope I don't get shit on my shit?"  I did ask him for another quote but we're both pretty brain dead from me not sleeping at night.  His offering (actually insisting) that I try sleeping on him, when he will definitely not be comfortable that way, earns him one of his many, many gold husband/father stars.  He also gets them for being my chauffeur for the last few weeks, even sitting outside my class in Evanston for 2.5 hours every Tuesday reading pregnancy books while I'm in class. 

Given that we are so close to the end now, and with the holiday and my last two weeks of school, etc., this will likely be my last pregnancy post.  Keep checking back though because I will post, with lots of pictures, when Ginny decides to make her grand entrance into the world!