Clark Riley's Grand Adventure!

Our much anticipated son has finally made his entrance into the world!  He was born 8 days late, on September 26th, at 9:27pm in a whirlwind of a birth at home!  He weighed 8 lbs 5 oz, and was 22 1/4 inch long, with a 14.5 inch head!  We are so glad to have him earthside and with our little family, and we are all settling into our new life as a family of 4!


His arrival came much much later than I had expected.  Even though I tried really hard not to have expectations for his birth, I couldn't really help it!  I thought for sure he was going to come early, it just seemed like there was no way he would be late!  Well, September began, and wore on and on and on, and he remained firmly entrenched in my body.  He was due on September 18th, and that came and went with little fanfare.  I began having some good Braxton Hicks contractions that week, but he was EXTREMELY high, so then I began to think he was never ever going to arrive!  :)

We had a midwife appointment the week of his due date, and when I was checked, I was not dilated at all.  That was pretty disappointing, but we started going for good hilly walks, and thinking open thoughts.  Another appointment, and no change.  Then, on Monday, since I was overdue we had a non stress test to monitor his heart rate to make sure he was still doing well inside, and also measure the amniotic fluid.  Everything checked out great, and I was measuring at 3 centimeters dilated! Hooray, progress!  We figured we should go for another big walk, and then take a nap as I was pretty worn out.

We ended up walking about 6.5 miles that day.  When we got home around 4, I laid on the couch to try to snooze a bit, but kept waking up with contractions, which felt a bit more real than previous days, but still not horrible.  Kevin was supposed to tutor that evening at the library, and Talia was due home a little after 5pm from daycare.  I didn't think I was actually in labor yet, so sent Kevin off to the library.  Talia arrived home, and suddenly I realized this was real!!!! I couldn't really function, trying to get dinner ready for Talia took all my focus and I realized that it was time to call Kevin home and get things swinging!

Kevin arrived home around 5:30, and we called my sister in law Kate to head over as well as Kevin's parents to head to the ferry to pick Talia up for the evening.  Kate arrived around 6, and helped distract Talia while I labored a bit on the yoga ball and Kevin got the birth tub set up.  We'd called the midwife as well, and she called back around 6:30 and done with Kate about coming around 8pm.  Kevin's parents arrived about 7:15, and whisked Talia away.  This whole time, I was trying not to let my pain show to Talia and I was having a hard time relaxing.  Once she was out the door (with one of the best kisses good bye of my life!) I was ready to get things moving! I think I got in the tub almost immediately, which felt so much better than the yoga ball.  The contractions were getting stronger, but I figured we still had hours to go based on my experience with Talia.

Our midwife Elise arrived at 8pm.  She got herself set up a bit, then check to see how far is progressed.  I was surprised to learn I was 8 centimeters! He was still stationed really high though, so again I figured we were in for a long haul.  I started giggling to myself at this point, because I got The price Is Right "Come on dooooooown!" in my head!   With Talia I was still several hours out when I hit 8 cm.

I switched to kneeling in the tub with my arms draped outside and holding Kevin's hands while Kate applied pressure to my lower back during contractions.  I very quickly started feeling the urge to push.  It was a very different feeling this time, with my whole body bearing down hard with each contraction.  With the very first pushing feeling, I looked at Kevin and said "snip snip snip snip snip!"Apparently I am very done having children!!!

 Around 8:30 the assistant Carly arrived, and I was pushing pretty hard.  At some point here my water broke.  It was bizarre!  I was pushing and all of a sudden it was like a water balloon popped inside me and I felt the gush!  Apparently there was meconium in it, just like with Talia, and Elise checked his heart rate, which was slowing down.  She was encouraging me to try new positions, which I really didn't want to do.  I felt like every time I moved I had to learn how to manage the contractions all over again!  She wanted me to try to pee to make some room for him, but I couldn't do it in the tub.  Despite the fact that I was mostly naked and had been pushing out a fair amount of stool, I'm a fairly private pee-er!  So they wanted me to go to the toilet, on the other side of the house.  This did not please me one bit.  I very begrudgingly got out of the tub, and scurried to the toilet before another contraction started.  The moment I sat on the toilet, I felt him clunk down and felt the ring of fire!  I panicked that he was going to come out into the toilet!  Very quickly, they laid towels and pads down in the hallway outside the bathroom and helped my get onto all fours right on the rug!  With 2 more giant pushes, he came out and into the world!!!  At 9:27pm, we heard his cries and his first breaths!  Elise passed him between my legs to Kevin and then into my arms! I was shaking so hard and couldn't believe he was finally finally here!  He was slick with meconium and oh so perfect!  They let his cord stop pulsing and then Kevin got to cut it, and they helped us all into bed back on the other side of the house.  I sure didn't expect to have him on the floor in the hallway, but when he decided he was ready to arrive, he sure came fast!

All in all, it was about 4.5 hours of labor, which was crazy fast!  It didn't give me a lot of time to transition myself each step, but also meant I couldn't dwell on anything too long and want to give up! I'm ever so glad we were able to have our home birth experience!  It was so nice to just be there and not have to get in a car or have doctors breathing down my neck about anything!

Clark is a lovely little man! He's very relaxed, and spends most of his time sleeping, quite the contrast to his big sister who has always beetn wide awake!  He's got tremendous dimples in both cheeks and his chin!  We've had a rocky start to breastfeeding, but are hopeful that we can get things in the right direction and have a long and successful nursing relationship.  He's had his tongue tie clipped which helped my pain a ton and he seems to be getting more milk now.  He's slowly but surely gaining weight now, though we are keeping a very close eye on it to make sure he doesn't slip like his sister did.  It's been harder for me in a lot of ways, not least of which because I was just praying that things would magically be awesome this time around.  It has also been hard for me not to be available to Talia like I'd like to be.  She's been an amazing big sister though, and mostly is great with Clark being here!

Clark is now 16 days old!  He's waking up to the world more and more each day.  He is a champion sleeper at night. We have to set alarms to make sure he gets fed every few hours, otherwise he'd probably sleep through the night!  I'm looking forward to his personality showing more in the coming weeks, seeing those first real smiles and him recognizing his family, and to nursing not being the main thing I do!  Haha.

Here some photos of his first couple weeks!

Clark Riley's Grand Adventure!

Our much anticipated son has finally made his entrance into the world!  He was born 8 days late, on September 26th, at 9:27pm in a whirlwind of a birth at home!  He weighed 8 lbs 5 oz, and was 22 1/4 inch long, with a 14.5 inch head!  We are so glad to have him earthside and with our little family, and we are all settling into our new life as a family of 4!


His arrival came much much later than I had expected.  Even though I tried really hard not to have expectations for his birth, I couldn't really help it!  I thought for sure he was going to come early, it just seemed like there was no way he would be late!  Well, September began, and wore on and on and on, and he remained firmly entrenched in my body.  He was due on September 18th, and that came and went with little fanfare.  I began having some good Braxton Hicks contractions that week, but he was EXTREMELY high, so then I began to think he was never ever going to arrive!  :)

We had a midwife appointment the week of his due date, and when I was checked, I was not dilated at all.  That was pretty disappointing, but we started going for good hilly walks, and thinking open thoughts.  Another appointment, and no change.  Then, on Monday, since I was overdue we had a non stress test to monitor his heart rate to make sure he was still doing well inside, and also measure the amniotic fluid.  Everything checked out great, and I was measuring at 3 centimeters dilated! Hooray, progress!  We figured we should go for another big walk, and then take a nap as I was pretty worn out.

We ended up walking about 6.5 miles that day.  When we got home around 4, I laid on the couch to try to snooze a bit, but kept waking up with contractions, which felt a bit more real than previous days, but still not horrible.  Kevin was supposed to tutor that evening at the library, and Talia was due home a little after 5pm from daycare.  I didn't think I was actually in labor yet, so sent Kevin off to the library.  Talia arrived home, and suddenly I realized this was real!!!! I couldn't really function, trying to get dinner ready for Talia took all my focus and I realized that it was time to call Kevin home and get things swinging!

Kevin arrived home around 5:30, and we called my sister in law Kate to head over as well as Kevin's parents to head to the ferry to pick Talia up for the evening.  Kate arrived around 6, and helped distract Talia while I labored a bit on the yoga ball and Kevin got the birth tub set up.  We'd called the midwife as well, and she called back around 6:30 and done with Kate about coming around 8pm.  Kevin's parents arrived about 7:15, and whisked Talia away.  This whole time, I was trying not to let my pain show to Talia and I was having a hard time relaxing.  Once she was out the door (with one of the best kisses good bye of my life!) I was ready to get things moving! I think I got in the tub almost immediately, which felt so much better than the yoga ball.  The contractions were getting stronger, but I figured we still had hours to go based on my experience with Talia.

Our midwife Elise arrived at 8pm.  She got herself set up a bit, then check to see how far is progressed.  I was surprised to learn I was 8 centimeters! He was still stationed really high though, so again I figured we were in for a long haul.  I started giggling to myself at this point, because I got The price Is Right "Come on dooooooown!" in my head!   With Talia I was still several hours out when I hit 8 cm.

I switched to kneeling in the tub with my arms draped outside and holding Kevin's hands while Kate applied pressure to my lower back during contractions.  I very quickly started feeling the urge to push.  It was a very different feeling this time, with my whole body bearing down hard with each contraction.  With the very first pushing feeling, I looked at Kevin and said "snip snip snip snip snip!"Apparently I am very done having children!!!

 Around 8:30 the assistant Carly arrived, and I was pushing pretty hard.  At some point here my water broke.  It was bizarre!  I was pushing and all of a sudden it was like a water balloon popped inside me and I felt the gush!  Apparently there was meconium in it, just like with Talia, and Elise checked his heart rate, which was slowing down.  She was encouraging me to try new positions, which I really didn't want to do.  I felt like every time I moved I had to learn how to manage the contractions all over again!  She wanted me to try to pee to make some room for him, but I couldn't do it in the tub.  Despite the fact that I was mostly naked and had been pushing out a fair amount of stool, I'm a fairly private pee-er!  So they wanted me to go to the toilet, on the other side of the house.  This did not please me one bit.  I very begrudgingly got out of the tub, and scurried to the toilet before another contraction started.  The moment I sat on the toilet, I felt him clunk down and felt the ring of fire!  I panicked that he was going to come out into the toilet!  Very quickly, they laid towels and pads down in the hallway outside the bathroom and helped my get onto all fours right on the rug!  With 2 more giant pushes, he came out and into the world!!!  At 9:27pm, we heard his cries and his first breaths!  Elise passed him between my legs to Kevin and then into my arms! I was shaking so hard and couldn't believe he was finally finally here!  He was slick with meconium and oh so perfect!  They let his cord stop pulsing and then Kevin got to cut it, and they helped us all into bed back on the other side of the house.  I sure didn't expect to have him on the floor in the hallway, but when he decided he was ready to arrive, he sure came fast!

All in all, it was about 4.5 hours of labor, which was crazy fast!  It didn't give me a lot of time to transition myself each step, but also meant I couldn't dwell on anything too long and want to give up! I'm ever so glad we were able to have our home birth experience!  It was so nice to just be there and not have to get in a car or have doctors breathing down my neck about anything!

Clark is a lovely little man! He's very relaxed, and spends most of his time sleeping, quite the contrast to his big sister who has always beetn wide awake!  He's got tremendous dimples in both cheeks and his chin!  We've had a rocky start to breastfeeding, but are hopeful that we can get things in the right direction and have a long and successful nursing relationship.  He's had his tongue tie clipped which helped my pain a ton and he seems to be getting more milk now.  He's slowly but surely gaining weight now, though we are keeping a very close eye on it to make sure he doesn't slip like his sister did.  It's been harder for me in a lot of ways, not least of which because I was just praying that things would magically be awesome this time around.  It has also been hard for me not to be available to Talia like I'd like to be.  She's been an amazing big sister though, and mostly is great with Clark being here!

Clark is now 16 days old!  He's waking up to the world more and more each day.  He is a champion sleeper at night. We have to set alarms to make sure he gets fed every few hours, otherwise he'd probably sleep through the night!  I'm looking forward to his personality showing more in the coming weeks, seeing those first real smiles and him recognizing his family, and to nursing not being the main thing I do!  Haha.

Here some photos of his first couple weeks!

37 weeks

Here we are! Within a few weeks of meeting our son! He is due on September 18, but we have idea when he will really show up, of course!

This pregnancy has been harder in a lot of ways.  My body has been more tired, I have had a lot more aches and pains, I've been lazier and eaten worse! Despite all that, I still have gained essentially the same amount of weight that I did with Talia, so I can feel good about that! :)

We are deep in the throes of getting the house in shape for his arrival.  We are trying for a home birth again, and crossing our fingers it works out this time.  This last weekend, our entire house was chaos, cleaning and painting and organizing. We are getting close.  The nursery needs a LOT of work still, but Kevin got the dresser painted and I did all the tiny baby laundry, so we just need to put it all back together now, and get a few last things.

         Eeeeek! This needs some help!

Talia seems pretty excited to meet her brother.  She gives him snuggles, and has started singing songs to him a lot.  She also says that when he cries, she will hold him and make him not sad! So sweet!!!! 

We haven't settled completely on a name, though I think we are close.  We will wait until we meet him to be sure though!

I'm a lot more nervous for labor and delivery this time.  I know I will do fine, but every time I think about how it went with Talia, I get pretty nervous for the pain and the amount of time it took!  Even though I had a great labor and delivery, it's all still really nerve wracking to think about doing it again, so I've been kind of avoiding thinking about it! Which means that I feel even less prepared.  Oh the vicious cycle!!!

I'm also nervous about where Talia is going to end up and if she is here while I'm in labor if it will freak her out.  We are nailing down our contingency plans with all our friends and family, but the unknown of when it's all going to happen doesn't jive well with my "make all the plans" self!!! Haha!  I've got a bag packed for her to go off to her grandparents for the day/night depending on how long not all takes, and lots of offers of help from friends, so I know it will be fine.  I'm just nervous about waking her up or her seeing me in pain.  She doesn't deal well with that at all!!!

I've been trying to relish my last few weeks with her as my only child.  We get so busy sometimes, and working full time means I don't get to spend as much time with her as I'd like.  This weekend was good though, she and I spent all day Saturday just playing, doing crafts, going to the park, reading, and snuggling!  She's the best kid, I love spending time with her so much!!!

So now we just wait!!! Hoping he stays in another couple weeks, I think we all need a little more time to prepare for his arrival!  But we are so very excited to meet him, and have our family become a family of 4!!!!

Baby boy Shaffer!

I'm a bit behind in blogging.  And laundry.  And exercise.  And a million other things. But we have exciting things coming our way, namely a baby boy arriving sometime in mid September!!!! Hooray!!!

We decided that since Talia is turning out exceptionally well, we should probably take the plunge for a second baby before we got too comfortable with life and felt like we have a handle on this whole parenting thing!  

My pregnancy is going well so far!  I will be 26 weeks tomorrow!  The first trimester was more difficult this time, as I had near constant nausea and threw up quite a lot more.  And I was waaaaay more exhausted! Like we would put Talia to bed at 7pm and I'd be out cold within  15 minutes.  Luckily that all ended around 13-14 weeks, and I've felt great since then!

Feeling so much different this time made me feel certain we were having a boy this time, and lo and behold, a boy it is!

He's growing well! In fact, measuring about a week ahead of time! He was in the 95th percentile for height, weight, and head circumference at our 20 week scan!  Not sure I'll be so lucky to have an under 8 pounder this time!! 

We are planning a home birth, and hoping it works out this time!  We really like our new midwives, who are both Certified Nurse Midwives, which means they have a lot more tools in their arsenal should things go less than ideally.  Kate has accepted her fate as my doula once again, for which we are truly grateful! She was so incredible during the whole process with Talia, I can't really imagine doing this without her!!

Talia is taking it all in stride so far!  She of course has no idea how much her world is going to change, but we talk about it all the time.  She knows baby brother is in my tummy, and that he's growing and will be coming soon! She gives him hugs and kisses and talks to him sometimes.  She also has been saying she has a baby in her tummy too, which is so cute!!!  We have been talking to her a lot about how she's a big girl, and all the things she can do that baby won't be able to do.  I'm a little (okay, a lot!) nervous about the transition for her to being a sister and not the absolute center of my attention at all times, but she's such an incredible kid, I know it will all get there eventually!

My weight gain has been good, just about even with my last pregnancy, which is incredible considering how sloth like I've been!  I take my gestational diabetes test next week. I'm just going straight for a 2 hour test this time, which will be diagnostic and save me the headache of having to do 2 tests this time!  Crossing my fingers that I don't have it, but I know this time that it isn't a huge deal and we will cross that bridge if needed.  And that it's NOT ANYTHING I DID if I do have GD.  

As for our little lady, she will be 2 years old in 2 weeks! My baby is decidedly not a baby any longer, but a full fledged toddler.  She is totally amazing!  She's incredibly verbal, speaking in full, often grammatically correct sentences.  She astounds me with the words she knows and her ability to communicate at her age.  She also is funny as all get out!  She's starting to crack little jokes, and pretends a ton. She's tall, and beautiful, and so so sweet!  We love watching her become this independent little woman, who knows how to assert herself and loves babies and eats berries by the pound and continues to be a fairly uncoordinated little toddler! She's the best!

Words words words!

Talia is approaching 17 months on Friday!  She has developed quite the little vocabularly in the last several weeks, thought it would be fun to list her words for posterity!

Baby, diaper, all done, up, down, night night, yeah, no, mama, dada, baba/papa (grandpa), Talia, eat, eyes, ears, toes, water, milk, please, thank you, phone, cheese,socks, dog, poo poo, more, moon, shoes, boots, out, hat, nose, teeth, belly button, eggs, Apple, book, bird, ball, choo choo, mine, kitty, banana, spoon

Animal sounds: moo, baa, hoo hoo, ssss, ah ah, woof, meow, elephant trumpet, mah, bock bock, gobble

That's all I can think of now! Talia is 17 months old today, and continues to be a pretty amazingly awesome little girl! We love her so!!!

15 months!

Talia is now a 15 month old toddler!  She is a walking, talking, hilarious, bright, loving, stubborn, adorable toddler!  What's new in our world?

Talia started walking!  She took her first real steps on August 9th.  It was after a busy week; she had surgery to remove a cyst on her skull  (That was a whole other ordeal that was pretty nervewracking, but we are so happy to have it over with!) and my brother Nicholas' wedding to his awesome lady Kyla, in which Talia was a flower girl!  We got home that Sunday, and Talia was supposed to be taking it easy.  Of course, she would have none of that and started taking all these steps everywhere, and toppling over left and right.  It was hilarious and exciting!

She then took quite a while to decide that walking was really her main mode of transportation, but about 2 weeks ago something clicked, and now she hardly ever crawls.  It's so so so much fun!!!  She had started "jumping" which consists of bending her knees and popping up.   She is getting pretty fast, but she still falls down A LOT!

She is really starting to become verbal.  Her signing has improved, she now uses More, Airplane, Water, All Done, Hat, and Help.  We are working on giving her some more words, as she is picking them up much more easily and it definitely helps her frustration levels to be able to tell us what she wants.  She also has a lot more words!  Her fav's are Mama, Dada, I read (ah wee) Bye Bye, Hi, Shoe, Nurse, Uh Oh, and No, which she says in the cuuuuuuutest voice ever!  She uses "ahh ahh" for all animals, except cows which say some variation of "meeeeee".  I love having her talking!

Daycare is going well, she seems to be enjoying her teachers and classmates, and having a lot of fun there.  She still comes home pretty worn out, but I think generally we feel pretty good about her going there.  It is still hard being away from her all day, but for the time being it is what we will continue with.

Sleeping is going sooooo much better!  She naps really well at daycare, and often naps for a couple hours at home on the weekend.  Kevin worked really hard on getting her to go to sleep on her own for a few weeks, and it seems to have paid off!  We really didn't want to use Cry It Out methods, but she was not responding well to me putting her to bed, so Kevin took over a couple months ago.  We stopped nursing to sleep, instead nursing first, then stories and song, then Kevin puts her into her crib.  It took a while for her to decide that it was okay for Kevin to leave the room, but now he puts her in and she gives a little whimper, but he shuts the door and she often stays asleep all night!  Wooohooo!  And she is also letting me put her to bed now, too!  Phew!

Eating tends to be a little bit of a struggle, in that she pretty much only wants to eat carbs, cheese, and fruit.  Veggies are not her thing.  Trying not to stress about it, but it is frustrating!!!!  She is, however, drinking more cows milk these days, so that is nice.  We are only nursing 3 times a day, wakeup, when she gets home from school, and before bed.  It was working really well for us both, except I got sick a couple weeks ago and had to go onto antibiotics.  She had a pretty nasty reaction to it, with a really bad diaper rash.  So we decided to just give her the last of our freezer stash of milk and I pumped and dumped.  We made it through the week, but it was hard.  Then this last week, I got a plugged duct which turned into mastitis, a breast infection requiring 2 WEEKS of antibiotics.  Ugh.  I needed her to nurse much more often to help with the clogged duct, which she was more than fine with, but then yesterday it looked like she started having the same symptoms.  So feeling a little frustrated since we are out of frozen milk.  We are going to try to power through it together and be really proactive treating the diaper rash, but if it gets too bad I will stop nursing her again.  Ugh.  I have been pretty sad about it, because I am worried that if we stop nursing for a week, then she will be weaned, and I don't think either of us is ready for that!  Ironically, I was considering weaning her next month, but with how I am feeling about it right now, I don't think that is really going to happen!  Ha!

She has her 15 month pediatrician appointment on Wednesday, so we will find out how much our girl has grown then, but dang she is TALL!  We were at the park a few days ago and ran into our neighbor who has a 2 year old, and Talia was as tall if not a little taller than her!  And she definitely eats a lot of food, just maybe not the best food! ;)  She can eat 2 whole scrambled eggs for breakfast along with peanut butter toast and fruit!  Whoa!

She has done some epic traveling the last couple months, with her first trip out of country and her first flight across an ocean!  We took her to the Women's World Cup final in Vancouver at the beginning of July, and then headed to Hawaii with the whole family at the end of July!  She did awesome on the flights, and was a pretty good travele overall!  We've done lots of hiking and she always does well wherever we schlep her!

She is really funny, she loves to make us laugh these days, and her own sense of what is funny is expanding a lot!  We are having a ton of fun watching her grow!! 

***

Update from the pediatrician:

Height 31.5 inches, 81st %ile

Weight 22 lbs 15.5 oz, 73rd %ile

 She is clearly doing great!!! :)