The Good Stuff

Barrett had his one-month well-check this morning…he weighed in at 12lbs 12oz!  He is currently 23 1/4 inches long and has a head that is 15 3/4 inches. 

My little chunk-a-lump is one month old today!

We are doing pretty well around here.  I’m tired, of course.  Some nights Barrett will sleep 2 three-hour stretches followed by a few one-our stretches…those are the good nights!  Other nights he sleeps one to two-hour stretches all night.  Those are pretty rough for me.  I try to take naps every afternoon when the older boys nap, but it only works out about three days per week.

We are still nursing almost exclusively.  I give him 2 ounces of formula each night to try and help him sleep better, although I don’t think it is helping that much!  If he is awake, he wants to be eating.  So unless he is sleeping, I pretty much nurse him all day and don’t get much done.  Breastfeeding is not easy.  It’s important to me, though, so I’ll keep it up as much as I can.  This has been my most successful breastfeeding experience so far, so I’m optimistic we’ll make it to a year.  I haven’t pumped at all yet.  I’d like to store some breastmilk in the freezer, but it’s hard to pump when he is always nursing! 

Raphael is still home with us, which has been so awesome!  He and the big boys have been doing projects around the house and having fun playing outside in the nice weather.  It is going to be a rough adjustment for me when he goes back to work, that’s for sure! 

I’m hoping to try and get Barrett on a somewhat better schedule here soon to help make it manageable when it’s just me and all three boys again.  At this age I want him to sleep 3 three-hour stretches at night.  Then in a month, I’ll try to push him up to four-hour stretches at night.  What I’ll probably do to make that happen is to rock him and give him a pacifier if he wakes up before the three-hour mark for a few nights until his body adjusts to needing food less often at night.  Then I’ll try to feed him more during the day to make up for the difference.  I just need to have more sleep at night in order to be a functioning mother during the day!    Sleep-deprived Jacque is not a very patient Jacque.  I think I’m more pleasant to be around during natural childbirth than when I’m tired!  Ha ha!

Otherwise we are just trying to settle into a routine.  Even though it is a bit hectic at times, it already feels like Barrett has always been a part of our family.  The first week home was rough.  I cried a few times and had the baby blues for a day or two (which is typical for me).  The second week home was a little better…I only cried once!  By the third week I felt like we were getting the hang of things and I was much happier.  And now, aside from the exhaustion, things are going pretty darn well!  I’m so happy to have my three little boys.

Let me just be upfront here…this is a birth story, and I don’t tend to shy away from yucky details!  So if you don’t want to hear yucky details about birth, then you may just want to skip over this post.    Otherwise, enjoy this long and sordid tale…

Unlike my previous two labor experiences- which seemed to start and end completely within a 24-hour period- this one seemed to drag on for weeks!  I was sure that baby #3 would be born early.  Never would I have guessed that he would be born the latest out of all three!  On my due date, I started coming down with the same cold that had swept through my family the previous week.  I was in a panic because I knew he would be here any minute, and I didn’t want to have to go through the labor and delivery while being sick.  I wanted to try to go naturally this time, and that was one obstacle I really didn’t need.  Not to mention I worried about getting my baby sick after he was born.  Amazingly, though, the cold came and went in a matter of days and by the time my labor started, I had no indication that I was ever sick. 

This time, the labor was a long process that started about two days before he was born.  At dinnertime on Friday evening (January 13^th), I had three contractions that were kind of painful and lasted about a minute each.  They came thirty minutes apart.  Then they went away.  Then in the early morning hours, I had three more of the same contractions.  They kept me awake for two hours, but never developed into anything.  Saturday morning I had a few contractions here and there, but they weren’t progressing into anything more.  I made breakfast and cried to my husband over something trivial.  We went to a lunch date over at my mom’s house to visit with relatives who were in town.  I had some contractions while we were there, which were still about thirty minutes apart.  I also began to have my “bloody show” while we were at her house. 

Finally, at about 4:00 that afternoon (the 14th), the real labor seemed to start.  I was lying down to try and nap, but they began coming 15 minutes apart and were painful enough that I couldn’t sleep.  For the rest of the evening, they came 15 minutes apart.  I knew I was in labor, but also felt that it was going to be a while still.  We walked with the boys down to the mailbox in the dark to try and move things along.  (Our mailbox is a little ways down a private road, so the boys thought this was an adventure!)  We put the boys to bed at 9pm and gave all of the family and friends the heads-up that the baby would likely be coming in the middle of the night at some point.  Raphael lay down at 10pm to get some sleep and I lay down with him to try and sleep.  The contractions were still coming 15 minutes apart and were painful enough that I couldn’t rest.  I felt a little frustrated because I was really tired by this point.  Amazingly, at around 11:30pm, the contractions completely stopped and I fell asleep. 

When I woke up an hour and a half later, happy to be a little more rested, I was having a massively painful contraction.  It was hard to stay on my back.  I continued to lie there for a while anyways, and the contractions began coming 7-8 minutes apart and were painful enough that I couldn’t lie down anymore.  I got up, took a quick shower, put some makeup on, and got dressed.  I made sure my bag was ready to go and woke Raphael up.  I told him that the contractions were 7-8 minutes apart and that I was ready to go to the hospital.  My doctor had informed me that we should head to the hospital when they were about 5 minutes apart, but I just felt the need to head there anyways.  We called my parents and my step-dad headed right over to watch the boys for us.

We arrived at the hospital at about 2:30am.  As we were walking through the parking lot, I had another contraction and told Raphael that I thought I might just want to get the epidural…I was tired of the whole thing already!  We checked in at the ER and from there I was wheeled up to the labor and delivery triage department.  They always start the mommy’s off there so that they can determine if you are really in labor before they assign you a room to deliver in.  My contractions were coming about 5 minutes apart, but I was still in good spirits and was quite chatty with the nurse who was checking me out.  She even joked that she’d never seen a patient smile through a contraction before!  She checked me and told me that I was 5cm dilated.  She asked if I wanted to get the epidural.  I told her that I wasn’t exactly sure.  I had intended to go natural, but I was kind of waffling in my decision.  She smiled and said that she thought it was a good idea to wait on the epidural for a while if I could because the baby was sunny-side-up (a difficult position for delivery), and if I were to walk around for a while longer, he might flip around on his own.  She then asked if I wanted to try out a birthing tub?!  I was grinning from ear to ear because I had never imagined they had birthing tubs at the hospital and if they were willing to set one up for me, I was totally up for trying it out!  I then told her that I did not want the IV!  My doctor had said that if I did a natural delivery (and because my Strep B test had come back negative), then I did not need to get the IV.  I HATE those darn IV’s and so I was ecstatic at the thought of being able to avoid one.  Between that and the birthing tub, I had a newfound enthusiasm to try and go naturally!

It turned out that the nice nurse from the triage department (Allie) was also going to be my delivery nurse.  Yayy!  I already really liked her!  We got up to my room and she started filling up the birthing tub.  It took a while to fill up, so I began walking around the room to manage the pain of the contractions.  My doctor, who is new for this pregnancy, but whom I love dearly already, showed up to check on me.  I chatted with him briefly and he said he’d be nearby for whenever I was ready.  He had a patient in labor at a nearby hospital, and he’d be going back and forth…but we seemed to be on different timetables, so it shouldn’t be a problem.  My sister, Jaime and good friend Nicole had already shown up while I was in triage (They left for a little while to get me a sports bra and some deodorant from Wal Mart…you’d think by my third kid I’d know how to pack my hospital bag!  For the record, I also forgot flip-flops and lotion- two things I really could have used.), and now they were back, along with my mom and dad.  My grandparents also showed up at some point, but I have no idea what time that was and I don’t remember seeing them until after the baby was born. 

Me in the Birthing Pool and Allie (my favorite nurse ever!)

I’d guess that I was in the birthing tub for about an hour, give or take 20 minutes!  It was nice and warm and really seemed to help with my contractions.  The fact that I could move around and lean forward over the edge of the pool made everything so much easier to bear.  The contractions were quite painful and I could no longer talk during them, but between contractions, I was carrying on conversations and laughing with my family and sweet nurse Allie.  Honestly, if it wasn’t for that nurse, I would have never been able to do what I did.  She was amazing!  She was calm and encouraging and unobtrusive.  I could also tell that she really wanted me to succeed at going natural, but pushed me along in a gentle way.  Doctors are important, but it is the nurses who can make or break a childbirth experience. 

Ouch! Almost too painful to smile.

At somewhere around 4:45am, I had a really bad contraction while still in the birthing pool.  When it was over, I looked up at the nurse and announced that I was done with the whole thing and was ready for the epidural.  She looked at me sympathetically for a moment (because she likely knew the cold hard truth…that it was too late for an epidural), and encouraged me to get out of the tub and onto the bed so she could check me.  She said it was possible I was really close to the end and that’s why I was suddenly so miserable.  I agreed and they helped me over to the bed. 

She checked me and told me that not only was I 8cm dilated, but that the baby had flipped over into the proper birthing position!  She told me that if I could just hang on for one more hour, he’d probably be out.  I remember asking “So does this mean that I’m in transition…is that why I want to give up so badly?”  And she responded “Yes, all women want to give up at this point, but you are doing so great that I think you can do this.”  So I reluctantly agreed, but I asked for everybody but Raphael (and the nurse) to leave the room.  Everybody obliged and left immediately. 

Then things got really ugly. 

I was in so much pain that I was starting to lose control.  I was walking around the room in a panic.  I then had to run to the restroom because something embarrassing was happening and I was vomiting a little bit at the same time.  My contractions were on top of each other now, with no break in-between.  I continued to sit on the toilet because I just felt safe there for some reason.  I was moaning and getting up and down.  I was begging for the epidural.  She agreed to order it and went over to the phone, but I’m not sure she ever did order it…there was no time and she knew it.  Raphael stood back and let me be alone because he knows I don’t like to be touched or bothered when I am in pain.  He handed me wet rags when I asked for them and tried to encourage me the best he could.  At 5:24am my water broke while I was sitting on the toilet.  I immediately felt the urge to push. 

Allie told me that she needed to check me and asked me to go back to the bed.  I couldn’t move, so she and Raphael helped move me over to the bed.  She tried to get me to lay on my back, but I refused.  I couldn’t stand the thought of being on my back and I continued to lay on my side.  At some point my family came back in the room and stood off to the side.  My sister said it looked like I was about to fall off of the bed and I was making her very nervous.  Allie somehow managed to check me anyways and told me I was fully dilated and ready to push.  Raphael asked me if I minded that everybody was there.  I heard him ask this question, but I couldn’t answer.  After a few seconds, he said “Never mind!”.  The truth was that I didn’t care.  I just wanted to be done. 

Raphael said that it was at this point that people started racing around.  My doctor had apparently left to go to the other hospital and they knew he wouldn’t make it in time.  They kept trying to get me to wait to push, but I didn’t listen.  I NEEDED to push and they had better just get ready for the baby!  That’s when a woman came in and introduced herself, saying that she was going to deliver my baby.  She was another one of the doctor’s on call at the hospital.  Her name was Jacque, just like mine!  She told me to go ahead and push whenever I was ready. 

Dr. Jacque

And that is exactly what I did.  I pushed with all of my strength because it hurt really bad and I was not interested in pushing for 20-45 minutes like I had with my other boys.  I was done.  It was the most crazy, intense feeling in the world.  They call it the “ring of fire”, but I’d say it was more like the tunnel of fire.  It hurt all the way down.  Ironically, though, it felt better to push through the pain.  And I screamed very loudly.  I was that woman in the movies who is screaming a war-cry and making all the other women in labor nearby thankful that they had chosen to get the epidural!  After two huge pushes, his head came out and then one more and his body came out.  He was born at 5:33am.  I sat there in disbelief for a few minutes.  He was here, and I had actually done it!  I hadn’t died, like I thought I was going to.  I was so thankful that the end part had gone so quickly. 

Mr. Barrett Stone!

The doctor checked me and determined that I had a second degree tear.  She numbed me with a local anesthetic and began to stitch me up.  This is another interestingly gross difference between a natural and medicated delivery.  You feel like you have rug burn all along the inside and even when the doctor touches you down there, it doesn’t feel good.  She numbed me enough that I didn’t really feel the actual stitches, though, even though I felt like gagging! 

They let the baby stay on my chest for several minutes before they asked me if I wanted to find out how much he weighed.  We all knew he was big, but were curious for some exact numbers!  First they weighed him in grams and the nurses all gasped and chuckled!  Then they did pounds and we all gaped with our mouths open when we heard he weighed 9lbs 7oz!  His head was 15inches!  And he was 21inches long.  Good grief!  It’s not like we’re big people (as my husband has said repeatedly since Barrett was born)!  When they brought him back over to me, I began to nurse him and he was a pro!  He nursed for 30 minutes straight! 

Holy huge baby, batman!

I could tell that Allie was a little concerned about me, though.  She kept massaging my tummy and there were lots of big clots and tons of blood coming out.  She apologized for causing me so much pain (it wasn’t pleasant for her to do this), but she said that I wasn’t doing so well.  After a few minutes, she decided she needed to give me a shot of Pitocin.  I found this to be a little bit ironic…I had done a completely natural delivery with no drugs, no IV’s, not even a catheter, but now I needed some Pitocin!  That seemed to do the trick, though, and the bleeding finally slowed down. 

Overall, I’d say the whole experience was amazing, scary, and crazy!  Would I do it naturally again?  Hmm, I think you’d have to ask me in a year!  Immediately afterwards, I said that I would NOT do that again.  I would say, though, that the recovery was slightly easier.  It wasn’t night and day, but there was a difference.  I could stand up immediately afterwards and use the restroom without help.  And now at two weeks post-partum, I barely notice the pain from my tear anymore.  I’m pretty sure when I was cut with the other two deliveries, it was 3-4 weeks until I felt better down there. 

Either way, I just feel blessed and happy to have three big, healthy boys! 

Introducing:  Mr. Barrett Stone

Born Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 5:33am

21 inches long and weighed 9lbs 7oz!

We are doing well and trying to adjust to a new routine as a family of 5.  It’s been a little rough, especially with a big baby who needs to nurse constantly, but we’ll get there soon.  I’ll be posting the birth story soon…I hope!

  Nobody is as surprised as me to say that I am still here, with child!  I thought for sure that with my third baby I would go early, but life rarely goes the way we expect it to.  I went to the doctor this morning.  He said that I am 2cm dilated and a little bit effaced.  He went ahead and stripped my membranes to “help” things along a little bit.  He scheduled an induction for me on Monday evening, which means I’ll be almost 41 weeks along by then.  He said that he doesn’t think I’ll make it until then, though, which is a good thing.  I’d definitely rather go on my own! 

I didn’t gain any weight this week, which puts my total at 25lbs for this baby to reach full-term.  That is 5lbs more than I gained with Conner and 4lbs more than with Logan!    My blood pressure was slightly higher this week than is normal for me, but they weren’t concerned because it was still pretty low for the norm.  It was 120/70 today.  Mine is usually more like 110/60.  I am also measuring a little behind right now, at 38 weeks, but obviously there are lots of variables with that measurement.  He is low in my pelvis, getting ready to come out, so that probably makes the measurement a little smaller!  The doc is still guessing that this baby will be around 9lbs, and that shouldn’t change much in the next week (we hope!). 

I am actually on the tail end of a cold right now, so I figure every day that I get well, the better my delivery will be.  It’s bad enough to be in labor, but to not be able to breathe on top of that would stink!  So perhaps him being late is working out for the best.  My family was all ahead of me on this illness, so it should be done rotating through our house soon and then we don’t have to worry about passing it on to the newest little man! 

And without further adeu (adoo, adu?), let’s move on to our new tradition…the Miss Fatty Pageants:

Here we have Miss Fresh-Face 2007 at 40 weeks pregnant and no bags under her eyes:

Then comes Miss Granola 2009…she may be in labor at like midnight in this picture, but why should she bother to throw on some make-up before snapping a piece of history?:

And finally, we have Miss Exhausted 2012 (picture taken yesterday evening)…she’s got two kids already and she’s just plain tired.  The mascara is smeared beneath her eyes and she can’t breathe through her nose because when you have little kids at home during cold and flu season, you are always sick.:

Hmm, do you think I look any bigger this time around?  Hard to tell.  I definitely look smaller with Conner up top. 

I am still pregnant!  I went to the doctor this morning, at 39 weeks and 1 day.  He checked me and said I was a centimeter and a half dilated, but no effacement.  This is pretty typical for me, though, so it wasn’t that discouraging.  I have healthy pregnancies and a strong cervix, so I can’t complain if it doesn’t dilate all early like it does for most women.  I expect to go into labor sometime this week.  Both of my boys were born within days of their due dates.  Whenever it happens, I am ready!  I’ve been staying home a lot and keeping on top of cleaning and laundry so that I am as prepared as possible when it comes. 

The only thing noteworthy to come out of my appt this morning was when the doctor said “Well, it looks like you’ve got a big baby in there!”  Awesome!  The baby was rolling all over the place in my tummy when I was laying on the table and even the nurse was like “Wow, look at the baby move!”  I asked what he meant by “big” exactly, and he said he’s thinking about 9lbs.  I told him I could handle that because Logan was almost 9lbs and I was kind of expecting that much.     If he’d said 10lbs I would have been a little nervous. 

It won’t be long and I’ll have three little boys!  Yikes! 

  No, we are not out having a hot date night tonight…this picture is from a few months ago at my sister’s wedding!  I am actually getting ready to go to bed right now (and it’s only 9:15).  I’m exhausted! 

Would you consider it “nesting” if I cleaned behind the fridge and stove today?  How about if I moved the kitchen table away from the wall so that I could scrub the wall?  What if I told you that I cleaned the knife block and then my husband had to wash every knife in the block because some of the unused ones were “dusty”?  I even dusted the wine bottles on top of the fridge.  This is in addition to cleaning the bathrooms and floors.  And I made my husband wash and vacuum our van so that I could rearrange the boys’ sitting spots and put the infant carrier into a clean seat.  Hmm, I wouldn’t call that “nesting”, would you?!    

Good night and happy new year!

It’s one thing to have this great idea about homeschooling your children, and it’s quite another to actually DO IT.  I absolutely 100% believe in the benefits of homeschooling and I’ve never thought twice about sending my kids to school (Well, perhaps just once or twice I’ve thought about throwing them on the schoolbus and waving goodbye when they are driving me crazy.).  I’ve been researching curriculum since Conner turned three years old.  I am really excited about what the future holds for my boys.  The hard part is establishing a routine of actually educating them!  Weaving it into our day-to-day life and moving it up on the priority list as they get older. 

I am a firm believer that the best way to educate preschoolers is to enlighten their curiosity.  I don’t think that they need to be reading by a certain age or that they need to start learning history and science from the time they are little.  Those things all come in due time.  For the past four and a half years, I have focused mainly on teaching my children good character.  Manners, self-control, and fostering good relationships with others are the things that I stress for the boys when they are little. 

Conner will be five in just six months, though, so it is time for me to begin introducing some more structured learning time.  Conner hasn’t shown much of an interest in reading yet, but we are going to start putting a big emphasis on books here in the near future.  I wouldn’t ever want to force him to read, but I want him to learn to love being surrounded by literature.  Once a child learns to read, he can learn anything.  Logan is already showing signs of readiness to read, believe it or not!  There isn’t anything that kid doesn’t want to do!  Part of it is his personality, I suppose, but I also suspect part of it is being a younger sibling always wanting to get out of older brother’s shadow.  So I will let him learn to read right along with Conner and I if he wants to!

We’ve also been working here and there on teaching Conner (and Logan of course) to write.  He has picked it up rather quickly and can write about half of the alphabet well and the other half not-so-well!  The half that he writes well are the letters that make up his first, middle, and last names!  Logan can write a couple of letters as well.  The other night the boys really wanted to work on their letters, so after dinner (and before I left for a meeting), we sat at the kitchen table and worked on them…

They made a lot of progress that night!  The beauty of homeschooling is that you can work on things whenever you have a chance and whenever they are most enthusiastic. 

Another life-skill that we’ve been emphasizing a lot lately is learning Spanish.  Raphael can speak spanish rather fluently, and I know quite a bit of Spanish, so we teach them words as we go about our days.  When we are driving in the car, I point things out and teach them how to say the words in Spanish.  At home, it’s the same thing.  They know all the colors, some of the numbers, quite a few animals, and a lot of other random words that they’ve wanted to learn!  Conner even knows how to say “How do you say…” in Spanish.  So when we are out and about and he wants to know a certain word in Spanish, he just says “Como se dice…” and then whatever word he wants to learn.  The other night he was playing basketball and he came running over to me and said “Mommy, I’m en fuego!” rather enthusiastically. (Which means, “on fire!”) 

After the baby gets here, I know I’ll be exhausted, unkempt, leaking milk everywhere, and barely able to sit down without wincing…but I also know we’ll be spending a lot of time at home together.  During this necessary break from the busyness of life and running errands, I plan to spend more time doing specific blocks of “school time” with the boys and getting used to having that be more of a priority.  Raphael will take some time off work after the baby comes, so he is going to work with the boys on some fun science projects!  This will also allow me and the baby time to rest.

I am really looking forward to the days ahead with my children.  There is nothing in life that matters to me more than this.  I am thankful that I will get to spend the days with them in addition to the evenings and weekends; and that I will get to be there for most new things that they learn.  I’m thankful that my husband sees the value in these choices and is happy to have me home, raising and educating our kids (with his help, of course).