Number 5

So as with all things lately, I am running behind on updating my blog. :-p My purpose for this blog was to remember the precious things the kids say/do and to update the family who doesn't live close by.  One of those precious memories I want to record is the birth of our kids.  So here goes for number 5:

Miss Alice was due Oct. 14.  My children have a habit of being early or late but never on time.  (Never mind that it is THEIR time, lol.)  She chose the 18th as her day.  I awoke a little before 7a.m. needing to use the toilet and feeling a little funny.  As has happened with each of my other labors, I went into denial and decided this wasn't really labor starting, so I went back to bed.  After a few minutes of trying to ignore things and trying to go back to sleep, I figured I had better wake Ben up and let him know that I "might" be in labor.  He had me call our midwife Paula to give her a head's up.  We started to get the bed ready and he started breakfast for the kids.  By this time, it was obvious even to me that I was really in labor, and we would be welcoming a baby soon.

Paula arrived and the kids were so overjoyed to have her visiting, lol.  Belle, who was working with Paula, came by soon after as well.  Peter loves to tease people by changing their names, and he called Belle the "other Paula" the entire time she was there.  Both midwives were fantastic, letting Ben and me hang out together while they visited with the kids.  The children LOVED it. :-)

I spent most of my time laboring sitting on the toilet as that felt most comfortable to me.  At one point I had crawled into bed but went back to the toilet soon after.  One of the most bizarre experiences was feeling the baby moving all through the labor.  I could feel her kicking and turning, and I had never felt that with any of the others.  I also never got the urge to push.  Ben was (and always has been) very good at talking me through contractions.  I felt the need to get up and lie down one more time.  As I stood up, my water broke and Alice was on her way out!  As I heard later, Paula had been waiting to catch and didn't even have time to get her other glove on it all happened so quick.  This was the first time I have ever birthed while standing!

The kids had asked if they could see their sister be born.  We didn't have a problem with that, but let it be their choice.  Samuel got a little squeamish and didn't wait around too long.  The other three stayed close by, and I could hear their play by play as they watched their new sister make her arrival.  Alice Rosalina made her entrance a little before 11:30.  She was our heaviest baby at 8lb 8oz.  From the very beginning she has had us all wrapped around her tiny, chubby little finger.

Better Late Than Never?

I keep promising myself that I will come back to the blog to journal all the things in our lives for the kids to come back and read some day. I am really terrible about that. I'm hoping to dedicate more time to this than useless internet browsing. :-D

2009 Catchup

Okay, 2009 is over, and we are settling into the second month of 2010. Where has the time gone? It seems like we are always so crazy busy. Because of Facebook, I was even worse about posting anything to this blog. :-) As a result, I can say that the info on here is years old!

We got to come back to CA December of 2009. The trip went well until we hit Flagstaff, where we ended up driving through horrendous snow. We did make it in time to celebrate Christmas Eve with my parents, and Christmas Day with the in-laws. We are all enjoying being so close to family again.

The kids have all grown so much. I am amazed just looking back at pictures. Sam's reading has taken off, for which I am eternally grateful. David started Kindergarten this past fall and is doing great. Luci wants to join "doing school" with her brothers, so she just started today, and is having fun. She is now 3 and keeping both parents on tiptoes. Peter is ever mischievous and willful. It is hard to not do all the fun things momma keeps trying to stop him from doing! He finally walked at 17months old. (He is 18 months old today.) That caused a little bit of concern, but he has taken off running.

The hardest part of this past year has been the loss of every one of our cats. Reepicheep just never came back one day and has been missing since last February. Yoda was the tragic victim of an auto accident. And Rocco, my very first cat and the one we had had the longest, took off one day in October and never came back either. The two oldest boys got to pick out new kittens at the beginning of fall, and those are the 2 kitties we are left with.

Since life with four little ones does not seem to be slowing down, I will try to balance out time to blog more often. The family I had set this up for is now close by, but I also hope to keep this as a journal for the kids' milestones. At least. :-)

And Some More

Still More

Even More Pics

More Pics

Double Trouble

Mama and Pete

Celebrating

Beautiful Baby

First Day

Minutes Old

Peter getting weighed.

Sam was so happy to finally hold his baby brother.

David Loves baby Peter.

Brothers and Sister

I have some really wonderful pictures I have taken in the past month and a half. I need to share them because my mom is getting rather impatient not seeing new pictures.

Living Too Long In The South

The other day we were sitting in the living room when I noticed something buzzing around one of the windows. It was a pretty hummingbird, and I pointed it out to the kids. Luci immediately piped up with "BUG!! Momma, kill it!" We have some weird, sci-fi looking bugs out here, so it was totally possible to have a bug that big buzzing the window. So sad when your two-year old toddler knows how yucky the bugs can get out here.

All About Labor

1. How long were your labors?

I was in labor for four hours with Samuel, five with David, four with Luci, and an hour and twenty minutes with Peter.

2. How did you know you were in labor?
With all of them I have noticed labor when I got up to use the bathroom. With Samuel it was the textbook bloody show and contractions. It was the same with David,but I couldn't feel any contractions. With Luci, I noticed the contractions, but once again couldn't feel them. With Peter I had mildly crampy contractions.

3. Where did you deliver?
Sam was going to be a homebirth, but when we got to the midwives' office to check how far into labor we were, Samuel was already crowning. David was a home/waterbirth. Luci was a homebirth. These first 3 were born in Arizona. Peter was a homebirth in Alabama.

4. Drugs?
NOOO. And not because I was trying to be all macho, but because I was concerned about the effects on the babies.

5. C-section?

NOOOO, thank GOD.

6. Who delivered?

Our wonderful midwife Paula delivered the first 3. For Samuel, she had Melody and Traci attending. Traci was there with David as well. Krista helped with Luci. Ben and my mom were there for Peter.

Birth Story

Never before have I ever wanted a baby out as badly as I did with Peter. When our due date was given as being in July, I told the midwives I felt it was wrong, and we were probably looking at the beginning of August. Boy, did I wish I was wrong. :-)

At our appointment after our due date had come and gone, we started discussing natural methods of inducing labor. We tried the pressure points (for a full week), with no noticeable effect. A week after the due date, one of my midwives agreed to strip my membranes. She was surprised to find me mostly effaced and a very "stretchy" four. That should have started contractions and labor that day, at the latest by the next morning. When I woke up the next morning, I proceeded onto the castor oil method. It was so stinking gross. And still no baby. My mom was due to leave in a couple of days, and I was really sad that she would not get to meet this little guy she had come such a long way to see. That Friday my mom informed me she was staying for an extra week, and I immediately felt relieved. We decided to drop Ben and the boys off at the theater while we went shopping with Luci. It was a very relaxed, fun evening, and we were all so pleased my mom would be staying extra with us.

I woke up on Saturday morning around 6 needing to use the restroom as usual. I started to feel mildly achy and crampy but decided to ignore it and go back to bed. It got a little worse as I lied there on my bed, so I decided to get in a hot shower to see if it would either a)stop the pain if it wasn't real labor, or b)help labor along if it was real labor. When I couldn't lift my leg to get out of the tub, I figured this was probably finally it. I woke Ben up to let him know, and he told me to call one of the midwives immediately. I did, and told her I thought I was in labor, could I please take some natural remedy to stop making it hurt? This was about 7 and she said she was heading out right away. I went to sit with Ben who completely aggravated me by saying I was almost done. How dare he say such a thing when I still had hours to go? I guess past experience gave him a different perspective and he could tell how close I was. (Sam and Luci both lasted 4 hours and David was 5, so I fully expected to be about that long again.) I told him I was feeling pressure like I maybe needed to push, so he should take a sleeping Luci to my mom. By this point, I was lifting myself off the bed trying to keep from pushing. Ben had just picked Luci up from her crib and was heading towards the door when my water broke. Hearing the commotion, my mom walked in just in time to see Peter's head and then his body slide out. Ben was just coming back into the room at this point, so he immediately jumped into action by placing the baby next to me and wrapping him up in a blanket to keep his warmth. He had called the midwives to let them know my water broke and again to let them know Peter was born. They figured he was born at 7:19am. Once he decided to come into the world, he was in a hurry to get out. :-)

Once we realized (basically I came to terms with how ludicrous it was) that we couldn't drive to AZ to deliver with our wonderful midwife again, I tried to talk Ben into an unassisted labor. The laws here in AL are screwy and we would have had to drive up to TN to deliver if we wanted to have a midwife present. He was of course, completely against the idea. Like I said, Peter had different plans of how his birth was going to work out. I am glad he did things the way he did. :-)