Vital stats:
4 days old
6 lbs. 3.5 oz.
(Discharge weight from hospital 2 days ago: 6 lbs. 2 oz.)
Anna got her first shot today – they start the hepatitis B vaccine series at birth now, but we wanted to discuss that with the pediatrician first instead of getting it done at the hospital. And everyone was pretty impressed that Anna was already gaining weight back. (Actually, me too, because she’s already pretty fast and efficient at nursing, so I wasn’t quite convinced she was getting enough!)
July 12, 2008, 4:27 AM
6lbs, 5 oz
18.5 inches long
So I wasn’t too far off in saying that it would be good if she came after dance camp ended last Friday! I woke up at 12:50 AM on Saturday, and felt like I might be having “real” contractions, but I waffled a bit about whether to wake Denis up. After another couple, though, I woke him up and he started timing them…at 3 minutes apart lasting a minute each. The midwife thought we could probably think about heading in – although I was still half convinced they were going to send us home with a false alarm. So Denis threw some stuff in a bag (I never did get around to packing) and we called my mom to come over and stay with Carrie, and the doula to meet us at the hospital. We got to the hospital shortly before 3 (if I never repeat a car ride like that it will be too soon), and we were holding our baby an hour and a half later.
I managed to not only have my VBAC, but there was no time at all to even consider pain medications (I hadn’t quite made up my mind on that part) and so it was about as different from Carrie’s birth as it could have possibly been. I was up and showering not even two hours later, and we came home last night, after just spending 36 hours in the hospital. We could have stayed a second night, but we wanted to get back to Carrie, and get some rest – since hospitals are about the least restful places you can stay in.
So far everyone’s doing great. We’re going to have to make some adjustments, but overall Carrie is beyond thrilled to have her little sister and just wants to hug and hold and kiss her all the time. I’m incredibly sleep deprived, so I’m going to go feed the small one again and try to get a little sleep before she wakes up and wants more!
Dance camp is officially over, but Carrie loved it. They even had a little recital, and amazingly had managed to get the dozen or so 3 year olds in Carrie’s group to learn three (simple) dance routines – one tap, one ballet, and one…well, it was a large group dance with all 60 of the girls in the camp, I couldn’t really give the style a name.
I’m impressed enough with the studio that I think I’m going to sign Carrie up to take lessons there in the fall. She really does love dancing, and while it might be nice to expose her to other activities, I also want to encourage her to do things she loves. So for now we’ll do dance, and if she stops liking it so much we’ll reevaluate then.
While there’s still quite a bit of general cleaning that has to happen around the house, the baby’s room is pretty much done, enough of the laundry is done, and at 38+ weeks the baby is close enough to being “done” that I’d be really quite happy if she came any time now. (Actually, though, maybe after dance camp ends on Friday would be better.)
I suppose we should really pack a bag or two and pick a name soon…
Carrie has dance camp this week, every morning from 9-12. On the one hand, it’s nice to have a few hours to myself…on the other hand, I think Carrie might have been a little overwhelmed. There were at least 50 little girls in leotards when I dropped her off this morning, and she wound up in meltdown mode when we got in the car after. But she says she liked it and wants to go back, so we’ll see how tomorrow goes.
And I keep trying to call it band camp.
Thank goodness for great-grandmothers who go shopping and send random things to their great-granddaughters, or Carrie would have been wearing something much less patriotic today! (I kind of totally spaced, and didn’t even think to find something red, white, or blue for her to wear…and the one blue skort she had was in the wash anyway.)
We pretty much just hung out, worked on the baby’s room some, went to my parents house for dinner, and stayed up really much too late to see if the fireworks that used to be visible from our hill were going to happen. They didn’t but between hanging out around the little open grill we’d used to make s’mores and watching the stars, Carrie didn’t mind one bit.
Oh, and we figured out how to get her to go to sleep right away: keep her up until 10:30!
Any time from today on is considered full-term for this baby, so we’ve been trying to get the big things done enough to feel ready. Big things like: digging the infant carseat out of the basement…check, doing some baby laundry…maybe tomorrow, packing the bag for the hospital…uh, yeah, better do that soon… And, of course, trying to get the baby’s room to a point where it’s not completely under construction anymore. Denis got the painting done this weekend, and he and my youngest brother got the furniture mostly sorted out. Carrie has a “new” (my old) dresser in her room (with a mirror!), and the changing table/dresser is all set to be filled in the baby’s room. Once we get the closet organizer in, the window treatments up, and assemble the crib, the room will be as done as it needs to be for now. I’m not assembling the crib until everything else is done, though, because I went into labor with Carrie the night we put her crib up, so I’m feeling a little superstitious about that…of course, by the end of this predicted hot and humid week, I might just be begging to get that crib ready…
Oh, and happy birthday, Lisa – sorry I couldn’t go strawberry picking with you today!
With the gradual rise of my blood pressure, I’ve been getting to do weekly blood work (fun!), non-stress tests (actually, those are pretty relaxing), and yesterday I even got to have another ultrasound, just to make sure everything was still looking good. Of course, I wanted to be sure baby was fine, but I also asked the tech if she’d be willing to just double-check for me that there is still a baby sister in there. Although it would be a pain to have to repaint the pink wall in the baby’s room, my bigger concern was that Carrie has been talking about her new baby sister for four months now, and I’d been getting more and more worried that we’d wind up with a surprise in the delivery room and come home with a baby brother instead. (How exactly would I be able to explain that?!?)
But, she is definitely still a girl. No doubt in the tech’s mind, so that’s one less thing for me to worry about. Oh, and she looks perfect in all other ways as well, so now we just get to play the waiting game while she decides what her birthday will be! And possibly try a little harder to pick a name…
Dear Carolyn,
Today you are three years and eight months old. You really are too cute for words sometimes. Lately you’ve been cracking me up on a daily basis…and driving me up a wall on a daily basis too!
So what’s been going on this month? Not much! School ended, and with it any pretense we had of a daily schedule. You’ve become mightily addicted to TV, as I’ve been trying to keep my feet up and my blood pressure down. We have daily battles over turning the TV off, but once we do you have no problems filling your time up with other fun things. I do feel badly, because you beg to go to the park or out in the pool on a daily basis, and I just don’t have the energy to do those things with you without another adult around to lend a hand right now.
On the other hand, you’re intensely into books right now. There was a stretch of a week or so where if Daddy or I sat down you’d hold us hostage with book after book after book after book…pretty much until we couldn’t possibly read one more thing without completely losing any voice we had. And then you’d switch to the other one of us. As a result, you either have all your books memorized, or you’ve finally connected all the pieces to actually read fluently. (And given that you can read new books pretty much on your own, I’m guessing it’s more the latter.)
I think you might be headed for a growth spurt, because you’ve actually been eating lately. Not just your standard cereal, yogurt, fruit, veggies, pb&j kind of diet, but actual meat, pasta, and even scrambled eggs. The other day you even ate rice and beans – granted, they were in separate bowls (god forbid anything touch – you get that from me, apparently I did that as a kid too), but the point is, you ate them. You’d still live on olives and blueberries alone if I let you, but I’m glad to see you actually do like food, and will eat it when your body needs it. That’s really all I can ask. (Of course, it’s never been a problem getting you to eat ice cream.)
I just realized that if all goes according to plan, this might be the last update I write to you as an only child. (If your sister is a bit late, you might get one more letter all to yourself!) I have really mixed feelings about this. I know you’re going to love your new baby sister, and at the same time I’m worried that you’re going to think we destroyed your life. Change is really hard, even for someone as “old” as I am, and we’re going to be asking you to handle a very, very big change. I hope that all the dire predictions about this that we’ve gotten from (assuredly well-meaning) others are wrong, and that even though your life is going to be very, very different, you won’t really hate us for it, or feel that you’ve been displaced or replaced. Nobody, ever, could take your place in my heart. You are my very special baby girl, and you always will be.
Love, Mommy
Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a pink and yellow room. (Let’s just hope the ultrasound technician was right about this baby being a girl!) There’s still quite a bit of trim painting to do, a closet organizer and shades to install, and a lot of furniture moving that has to happen, but I’m actually starting to believe that the room might possibly be usable before the baby arrives! (Four or so weeks to go…)
Bonus points if Carrie’s “big girl” room is completely set up too. I found the neatest idea for rain gutter bookshelves which will solve a lot of problems for us – most of which involve the insane number of books the kid has already, all of which are too tall to stand up on her tiny bookcase. Plus, it’s cheaper than even the cheapest flimsy particle board bookcase you can buy right now. So even when we need to replace it in a few years – I can’t imagine that she’ll still be reading the sort of books we’d put in these shelves by the end of elementary school – it won’t have been such a huge investment that we’ll regret it.