Category Archives: Elise

Home at Last

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Peter picked Lydia and me up from the hospital and brought us home this afternoon.  Alethea (who was being watched by Gramma and Aunt Leah) was thrilled to see me walk in the door and seemed a little surprised, but pleased that I’d brought the baby with me.

Just a few other observations from the day:

I found out Lydia has dimples!  She ‘smiled’ in her sleep and I saw one on each cheek.  I’m glad, dimples are so cute!

Alethea has been very sweet to her sister today, giving hugs and kisses and saying ‘gentle’ every time she goes to touch Lydia.  I can see though that she is struggling a little bit with all the change, since she’s been testing the boundaries more than normal.  She also screamed a few times, which is a new thing for her.  It wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it was definitely a sound of frustration.  We also had some tears when I left the room at bedtime, which isn’t entirely unheard of, but certainly not the norm.  Over all though, I am extremely pleased with how well she is handling everything.

I mentioned to one of the nurses this morning that I had been scheduled to be induced, but that I had gone into labor on my own.  She said it was probably a good thing because Wednesday night the ward was completely full, which means, it is quite likely they would have had to reschedule my induction.  I know I would have been completely depressed if that had happened!  Whew!

After having a bit of a rough night last night, Lydia has slept nearly all day long.  I am wondering if that means we are in for another rough night, or if she’ll just keep sleeping.  We’re about to find out because we’re all off to bed!  Goodnight!

An Update from the Hospital

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Elise here.  Lydia Grace is sleeping right now and amazingly there aren’t any nurses in my room, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to write a post about our newest family member and her arrival into the world.

First off, I’d like to say thanks for all the prayers and words of encouragement.  It was fun to read your comments on the blog while we were waiting for labor to progress yesterday.  Speaking of labor, can I just say how much easier it was the second time around?!!?!  I thought maybe I would try to do this one without drugs, but then after experiencing real contractions without an epidural for the first time, I decided that it was better for everyone involved if I just got the epidural after all.  It did slow things down, which I was afraid it might, but then with a little pitocin things got moving again.  At 1:08 they told me I could start pushing.  They said they thought she’d come quickly.  I said, “The last one took me three hours to push out.  I’ll believe it when I see it.”  At 1:15 our baby girl arrived in the world.  Amazing!

For how much I was dreading labor, I have to say, it really wasn’t that bad the second time.  And now I feel great!  I’m actually more comfortable and mobile than I was at the end of my pregnancy!  If it weren’t for the room service and free night time babysitting, I think I’d just check out of the hospital now.

But I know none of you stopped by today to hear about the delicious (or not) hospital food.  You want to see baby pictures.  Here’s one I took this morning:

Lydia has been a real champ.  She’s feeding like a pro and sleeping great too.  Our night did start out a little rough because she kept spitting up amniotic fluid and then choking.  I was so afraid to fall asleep because I knew that after having been up for 40 hours straight, I was going to really be out once I did.  After the fourth or fifth time getting up to help Lydia spit out the fluid, I sent her to the nursery so that she would be safe and I could get some rest.  The nurses brought her back in the middle of the night so I could wake her up to feed her (which I didn’t do).  Then we both slept until 5:30am when I did finally decide to wake her up so that I could to get some food into her stomach.

We had a relaxing morning together and then Peter and Alethea came by so we could spend some time as a family getting to know each other.  Alethea likes ‘the baby’ and only seemed to get jealous of her when I was feeding Lydia.  However, even wanting to be near her little sister hasn’t cured Alethea of her dislike of getting her picture taken:

Well, my lunch is here, so I’m going to eat, but I’ll write again (and post more pictures!) when I get a chance.  If Lydia keeps sleeping so well, it might even be tonight!

Baby update

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We are at the hospital – arrived at 4am this morning. Everything is going smoothly so far. Elise got an epidural around 6am and is taking a nap. It took us 3 days to get to this point when Alethea was born so we are feeling good.

-Peter

On My Mind Tonight

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So the plan for tomorrow is to call the hospital at 6am and they will tell us what to do.  Apparently there are three possibilities from there: 1) They say “Come on in right away” 2) They say “Come in at X o’clock” or 3) They say “Sorry, we had a sudden influx of women whose bodies actually go into labor on their own and so we can’t accommodate you today.”

Either of the first options is fine with me.  The third one would feel like the universe playing some sort of cosmic joke… and it really wouldn’t be funny.

At least I feel ready though.  Not that I don’t have things I could still do (there’s always something!), but I’m pretty sure I’ve done everything that is truly necessary to prepare for tomorrow.  My bag is packed, Peter’s sister Leah is staying over tonight so that we can leave early in the morning if we need to, there are a few meals ready to go in the freezer for after I get home, we have diapers and supplies waiting in the nursery and the house as a whole has probably never been cleaner than it is at this very moment.

So here are the last things weighing on my mind tonight and if anyone wants to say a prayer about these, I’d sure appreciate it:

1) Alethea – I really don’t know how she’ll do with me being away for a few days or with the baby’s arrival.  I hope she likes her and isn’t too mad at me!

2) My Cold – I’ve had a persistent cold for the past few days and I’m a little nervous because it feels like it is turning into a sinus infection, which is definitely possible, since I’m prone to those.

3) A Long Delivery – I’m beginning to realize how much I had my heart set on the ‘it will be easier the second time around’ theory.  Of course, even with a scheduled induction, things can still be far simpler than they were with Alethea, but now that induction day is almost here, I’m getting anxious.  Let’s face it, I’m sort of a wuss when it comes to pain.

Despite these worries, I want to let you all know how much I’ve appreciated all the phone calls, texts, e-mails and blog comments I’ve gotten over the past few days.  I feel very loved and supported and that makes a world of difference!

Either Peter or I will be posting from the hospital tomorrow (assuming we don’t get turned away), so come back for more updates!

1 Hour Until Due Date

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I’m feeling a little guilty here.  It is only one hour until Baby B’s due date and only 25 hours until her scheduled induction date.  Did I jump the gun?  Should I have given her a little more time to come on her own?  Honestly, I’d much rather go into labor naturally, but the fear of going way overdue and having to push out another 10lb child is overruling every other feeling at the moment.  I’m trying to tell myself that it will all work out in the end either way, but somehow pushing my child into something she’s not ready for seems like a terribly mean way to start out her little life.

In any case, I am sort of glad she didn’t come early.  Sure the tax deduction would have been nice, but I’ve gotten so much done in the last week and a half: laundry, house cleaning, Christmas cards, receipt sorting for taxes, Christmas decorations put away, more house cleaning and lots more laundry!  I even got the load of baby woolens washed.  (We have a ‘wool’ setting on our washer, which makes me feel like I ought to do the wool things by themselves, but when do I ever have a whole load of wool clothes to wash?)  Which brings me to Alethea’s funny moment of the day…

I kept telling Alethea that the little hand-knit wool hats, mittens and sweaters on the drying rack were ‘for the baby’, but apparently she didn’t quite get the message.  I was in my closet hanging up some clean clothes when around the corner comes Alethea in a yarmulke, or at least that’s what I thought it was until I took a second to realize she had adorned herself with one of the baby hats and it didn’t come anywhere close to covering her cute bobble head.  I got quite a good laugh from that one, but unfortunately she took it off before I could get a picture to share the moment with you all!

Well, I suppose I should get to bed here.  I have an early morning appointment with the midwives.  Who knows though, maybe I’ll go into labor in the middle of the night and then I won’t have to worry about going to the appointment or feeling guilty about scheduling an induction at 40 weeks.  One can always hope, right?

A Very Clean House

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My goal for this week was to have a baby.  Thus far, I have not accomplished my goal.

However, my secondary goal was that for every day I didn’t have a baby, I would get lots done around the house so that A) I would stay on my feet and hopefully accomplish my primary goal, and B) even if I wasn’t successful in inducing labor, I would at least have less to do once the baby does arrive.

So, no baby here, but I do have a pretty clean house, my hospital bag is packed, Christmas cards are almost ready to be mailed, I shoveled a wide path from our back patio door across the deck out to the grill, and I recruited Peter to help me with a variety of small projects around the house.  Yesterday, we hung up the candle holders he gave me for Christmas.  They look fantastic in the dining room above the buffet:

Eventually I’d like to get a mirror to go between them, but for the time being, we went with what we had, which was the School of Athens print that Peter brought me from the Vatican Museum during his trip there when we were in college.

It really feels good to have gotten so much done and also nice to to know that there is a deadline for everything.  My midwife called and let me know that they were able to schedule my inducement for next Wednesday, January 5th.  Of course, the baby could still come on her own before then, but one way or another, the end is in sight!

Busy, Not Giving Birth

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It’s been four days since I last posted.  Things around here have been a little crazy, but I haven’t gone into labor, so I thought I’d better post before people started wondering.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

1) Monday & Tuesday – Making Christmas Treats

We managed to crank out some sugar cookies, cyclops cookies (aka peanut butter blossoms), cupcakes (from a box), caramel corn, puppy chow, as well as coated pretzels, which Alethea particularly enjoyed helping mommy make:

Taste testing counts as helping, right?

2) Tuesday – Party Prep

Tuesday night was my annual piano student Christmas party and mini-recital.  Basically I have all my students over to our house and they play Christmas songs for each other and then we eat junk food and play music themed games.  This year I tried something new – a build your own favor station:

It was a big hit with the kids, even with a strictly enforced limit on the number of pieces of candy they could take.

3) Wednesday – Errands, Check-Up and Lessons

I was fortunate to have lots of help from Alethea’s grandmothers on Wednesday, and thus was able to get to Target, go to my 38 week check-up, buy some more of Peter’s Christmas presents, and still make it home in time to teach several piano lessons.

Bad news is that my midwife said I’m dilated “one to two” centimeters.  Basically, I think she just wanted to make me feel better that I’m not any further along, despite having so many contractions on Saturday that I briefly debated whether I ought to head to the hospital.

Good news though is that the lessons I taught were my last for December, so I am officially free to have this baby without having to do any make-up lessons or refunds.  Woo hoo!

4) Today – Mommy and Alethea’s Fun Day

I’ve been feeling guilty that I’ve been so busy this week that Alethea has been forced to do a whole lot of self-entertaining, so today I planned to spend the whole morning doing Alethea’s favorite activities.  We didn’t get as much time together as I anticipated though, because Alethea slept in ’till 10am (hope she’s not getting sick).  However, Alethea did have fun taking a long bath with her tub toys and we also squeezed in some ‘art’ time.  Our project – decorating paper gift bags with markers:

So that’s our week thus far.

On the docket for tomorrow: a little more shopping, then cleaning the house, followed by the Christmas Eve service at church, then hosting Peter’s family’s traditional Chinese take-out Christmas Eve dinner, and rounded off with a bit of gift wrapping and stocking stuffing before bed.  Should be a delightful day!

A Trip to the Mall

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Tonight Peter and I took the plunge and made our one and only trip to a shopping mall during the month of December.  Given the nature of our errands, not just any mall would do, we needed one with stores no other mall has.  Thus, after dropping Alethea off with Grandma and Grandpa, we headed to the Mall of America.

Neither one of us had been inside the MOA for years, so we were pleasantly surprised to be able to get a parking spot right near one of Bloomingdale’s front doors and find that the inside of the mall wasn’t too crowded.

After a trip to the LEGO store, we hit up a few other shops and then headed to the American Girl Store:

We walked in…

My reaction: “Oh wow, I would have loved this when I was a kid!  They have everything here!  It’s so different to see this stuff in person rather than just in the well-worn pages of the American girl catalogs we used to have at our house.  I’d spend hours drooling over all the doll accessories!”

Peter’s reaction: “Every surface in here is pink.”

Fortunately Peter was able to hold the bright yellow bag with the big LEGO logo in front of himself like a shield to ward off all of the estrogen and we made it out of the store with only our intended purchase, a Bitty Baby doll for Alethea’s Christmas present:

Someday I’ll have to go back with Alethea.  It’d be nice to spend a little time browsing through the displays with someone who has a little appreciation for the magic of it all!

A Lovely Gift

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Tonight one of my piano students brought me a Christmas present…

A half-pound box of Godiva Belgian chocolates!

Now I never turn down chocolate, but there is chocolate and then there is CHOCOLATE!

I like chocolate, but I really love CHOCOLATE.

However, in this case, what was even better than the CHOCOLATE, was the note inside the card:

“Hope you have a faboulouse Christmas and New Year!”

Followed by:

“P.S Hope your baby will be smart, good and sweet!”

“Enjoy your holidays!”