Carissa's birthday

Today started off great with Gemma going back to sleep after our 5:00am feeding. She woke meup at 7:45. I was surprised to find Carissa up and out of bed. It turnout she went for a run since she couldn't sleep. I found her feeling bad and as time went on things got much worse. We had to cancel our family get together and go to the hospital. It turns out she has a horrible kidney stone. We are staying the night hoping she can pass it. :-(

So. . .LOST is pretty much a terrible show. . .

For the past six years, we have had a love/hate relationship with LOST. Mostly a hate relationship because it has been such a frustrating show. We started watching it after season one had just finished - a friend of mine at work loaned me the DVDs after telling me for a while how great the show was. We thought we would give it a try, and ended up holing up in our condo for a whole weekend and watching the entire season straight through. We were hooked. We watched season two while it aired and really enjoyed it. Then things started going downhill. For seasons three and four (as the show got progressively more frustrating and kept wandering off in weird directions), we were hit and miss. Actually, we missed pretty much the entire second half of season four and ended up catching up much later. We still weren't thrilled with it, so we didn't even bother watching season five.

Then we kept hearing how great season five was. So, a couple of weeks before season six was supposed to begin, we decided to scope out season five (mostly since it was available for streaming over the Internet via Netflix). Once again, we were hooked, and we holed up for another weekend and watched the entire season straight through. It was awesome. LOST was back on track, and we were ready for the final season!

Then the writers immediately threw this flash sideways/alternate timeline nonsense at us. Or, as my favorite LOST blog likes to call it, "Snoozeville." We went back to hating the show pretty quickly, but figured that since we had invested five years in it already, we might as well see it through to the end.

Well, due to the sleep deprivation that comes with having a newborn, we didn't get to watch the last two episodes until yesterday. And we were seriously underwhelmed and disappointed. The big finale was pretty much one big haphazard montage of nonsense. They didn't really answer anything, and the answers they did provide were so vague and ambiguous and nonsensical that they weren't really answers at all. Plus, there was a SERIOUS cheese factor. All of the fated hookups that happened in the last hour were just absurd.

But I have to say my favorite part of the finale (and I say "favorite" sarcastically) was the scene where Claire gave birth to Aaron in Snoozeville. Having recently given birth myself, I was laughing hysterically at the absurdity of this scene. She is just chilling at this concert, suddenly has like 2 contractions (out of nowhere), pushes 3 times, and the baby is out, all in a total of about 15 seconds. Then, while holding her still-slimy, *giant* newborn on her chest, she is feeling well enough (with no medication) to start making out with a random (drughead) bass player/hobbit that she has just met. Right.

That was just one of the many things I found unbelievable about the finale. Another was the tree falling on Benry and him just walking around seconds later with no explanation for how he got out from under the tree.

Anyway. . .Gemma is wailing and I could rant about this all day so I'm going to wrap it up by saying that I'm not sad that LOST is over, because looking back on it, it was a pretty terrible show. I am, however, going to stick with the one other on-air TV show we actually watched this season: Vampire Diaries. Ian Somerhalder (who was such a waste of time on LOST as Boone) is so fantastic as Damon Salvatore that he makes Vampire Diaries worth watching all on his own.

Play Gym

We ordered a little play mat/gym thing for Gemma and got it a couple of days ago. I think she wasn't sure what to make of it at first but she seems to like it now. She especially enjoys staring at herself in the mirror. I don't blame her - she is so cute, who wouldn't want to stare at her all the time?

Hydrangeas

We've had hydrangeas in our backyard for several years now, but they've bloomed only sporadically and have never really looked that great. Two years ago, they were growing really tall and stalky and top-heavy, so last year I tried to prune them so they would grow more in the shape of a bush. Apparently this was not ideal, as they didn't bloom at all last year. This year, they were low on my priority list, so I didn't do anything with them. Apparently ignoring them is the correct approach. They have grown huge and are shaped nicely now, and are covered with blooms. I'll know for the future to ignore them!

Two Week Checkup

Yesterday morning we took Gemma to the pediatrician for her two-week checkup. She will not be two weeks old until Friday, but our pediatrician is leaving today for 2.5 weeks on a medical missions trip to Uganda so he wanted to see her before he left.

She was doing great at her checkup. Her head had grown slightly, she possibly had grown in length a bit (it was unclear), and she was back up to her birth weight of 7 lbs. 5 oz. Actually, she was closer to 7 lbs. 6 oz. The doctor was really impressed because just last week she had been down to 6 lbs. 10 oz. so she gained a lot of weight back in just a short amount of time. She is no longer yellow either, which is great. When we took her in 3 days after birth, they were concerned a bit about jaundice. For two days in a row, we had to take her to a lab to have her heel pricked to test her bilirubin levels (this was also what took us so long getting home from the hospital the day we came home - we had to wait on the results of one of these tests). On the first day, the number was still climbing, but by the second day, it had dropped. So we were glad to hear that we wouldn't have to put her through those tests anymore and that there was no more risk for jaundice.

The doctor said she was doing great and was really healthy. It was very reassuring to hear. I have worried a bit off and on about whether she is getting enough to eat since I am nursing her (although I haven't worried too much since the sheer amount of dirty diapers would indicate that she is extremely well fed!) so this was good to hear. As long as she stays healthy, we don't have to go back to the pediatrician until July!

Quick attempt to post

Unfortunately bloodspot doesn't like my iPad so I haven't been able to post. Try ing something new...let's see if this worked.

First Mother's Day

Just wanted to blog quickly about how exciting it was to be able to bring my beautiful baby girl home on Mother's Day! They finally discharged us both from the hospital around 1 pm on Sunday afternoon and we were able to head home. My family was visiting from North Carolina and had prepared a little celebration for me for my first Mother's Day. We enjoyed some pizza and cupcakes and admired beautiful little Gemma.

What an amazing blessing I received when Gemma arrived just in time to come home on Mother's Day. It was my first Mother's Day and I will always treasure that memory of bringing my little girl home for the first time.

Here she is sleeping peacefully in her carseat when we brought her in the door.

Gemma's First Day

Gemma Natalie Shealy is Here!

After thinking about it a lot, we ended up deciding that it would probably be for the best to just go in on Friday morning to the hospital and have them help me along with my labor. In the end, that turned out to be the right decision for sure. I was up most of Thursday night having contractions for about 5 hours, but again they never got closer than 8-10 minutes apart and eventually they just stalled out completely again. Friday morning we got up around 5 to get ready to go to the hospital and the contractions were back to being extremely mild and about 15 minutes apart. I lost the rest of my mucus plug right before we left.

We got to the hospital and they got me all checked in. Around 8:30 or so, they broke my water and started me on Pitocin to regulate my contractions. I wanted to wait on the epidural as long as I could in hopes that it would help my labor progress. It turned out that waiting on the epidural actually might have kept me from progress. After two hours of strong, consistent contractions, I was still only at 5 cm. By then I was starting to be in a lot of pain so I went ahead and got the epidural. An hour later I was at 6 cm. A couple of hours later I was at 8 cm. A couple of hours later, I started feeling really bad. I felt like the epidural was wearing off, and I started vomiting, which I thought was a reaction to the antibiotics they were giving me.

But then the doctor showed up to check me and it turned out that I was fully dilated and that the baby was at +2 - already on her way out! They got me started pushing and about twenty minutes later, she was out! On my final push, she didn't quite make it out, so they tried to get me to do a couple extra pushes. I was too exhausted and so they decided to wait for the next contraction. But then suddenly, she just came squirting out!

Everything about her was great! She was born at 4:25 pm, was 7 lbs, 5 oz, 19 3/4 inches long. She had great color and she latched right on when I tried to nurse her. All three of us are healthy and doing well. We are so excited to finally have our little girl and we love her so much already!

The Epic Labor Saga Continues. . .

I feel like a walking time bomb. This morning, I started having contractions again. They were about 15 minutes apart and were much more intense than most of yesterday's, although nothing near as intense as the ones I experienced for a few hours last night. My doctor's office opens at 9, so at 9 I called and left a message explaining what had gone on last night and saying that the on-call doctor last night had said that I needed to come in this morning for a checkup. About two hours later, my favorite nurse (Diabetes Lady) calls back and gives me the standard lecture that I need to wait until my contractions are 5-7 minutes apart for an hour before I come in. Blah blah blah. I'm like, Yes, I know that, that is not why I'm calling. I explain the whole thing again and finally she's like, Oh yes, you need to come in right now.

So I take a shower and we haul it to the doctor's office. Even though we were just there yesterday. My contractions continue every 15 mins. or so. We get to the doctor's office and they hook me up to a monitor. At which point my contractions of course stop. At which point I get extremely frustrated because this happened when I was 36 weeks and they didn't believe I was having contractions (although when they checked my cervix, I was 1.5 cm dilated). In my head, I thought I must be hallucinating the contractions.

Even though they weren't recording any contractions, the doctor came to check my cervix again. I was expecting nothing, since the contractions appeared to be imaginary. So I about fell on the floor when she said I was about 5 cm. Apparently I have been in labor for the past 3 days. It just keeps kind of slowing down for long periods of time. Fun. At this point, I was expecting her to just send me on to the hospital, because when I came in, they told me that if I was 4 or more, I would be automatically sent over.

Well, not so easy in my case. Since my contractions had mysteriously vanished, she said I had 3 options. Option #1: I could go on to the hospital and they could give me some medication (I'm assuming Pitocin) to "augment" my labor and get things going again. Option #2: She gave me some sleeping pills, told me to go home and get some good sleep (since I haven't slept in 2 nights due to contractions) and then they could induce first thing tomorrow morning. Option #3: I go home and just see what happens. Right now, I am sticking with #3 as I would really like to not be induced, but I'm freaking out a bit about being at 5 cm. As much as I don't want to be that woman who is in labor forever, I also don't want to be that woman who shows up at the hospital with a baby already coming out (or doesn't even make it to the hospital - yikes!!!) at which point it is too late for anything to numb the pain. . .so for now it is still up in the air. Option #2 is looking more and more appealing the more freaked out I get.

I did feel slightly better about my own ability to judge what is going on when I had a contraction about a minute after they unhooked me from the stupid machine. Just to verify that I was not crazy, I told the doctor I thought I was having one and she felt my stomach and said I definitely was. Of course I would immediately after they took me off the monitor. . .

Anyway. . .we are asking everyone to please pray that this little girl just comes on her own very soon! We are really hoping the contractions will just start back on their own sometime today. The doctor did say that if they get to be 6-8 mins. apart again for a while, I definitely need to come on in this time. Apparently I should have gone in last night. Oh well.

Not a Fan of the Labor Fake-Out

Around 4 or so yesterday afternoon my contractions started coming closer together and getting more regular. By around 6, they were coming about 6-8 minutes apart consistently. By 8:30, they were still regular and were starting to get much more intense. In fact, I was getting to the point where I thought it would soon be time to go to the hospital. We even called the doctor and she said we could come on in or wait it out a little bit longer. She said it definitely sounded like I would be having the baby at some point in the next 24 hours. I decided to wait it out at home a while longer and try to get some sleep. For the next couple of hours, I couldn't sleep because the contractions were getting pretty intense, and the baby was going nuts in between them. Then I eventually drifted off. . .and so did the contractions! Grr! I do remember them tapering off the night before too, so hopefully they will start up again this morning. I really hope they become the real deal pretty quick here though, because I'm already absolutely exhausted after two nights of contractions and don't think I can handle days more of this stopping and starting business!

Possibly I Maybe Might Be in Early Labor Perhaps? It's Unclear. . .

Went to the OB again this morning. I will be 39 weeks tomorrow according to them. I started having what I think were contractions sometime yesterday evening and had them off and on (irregularly) all night last night. Was still having some when I woke up this morning. Also some nausea, some back pain, and a lot of cramping in my tummy. I say that I think they were contractions because having never done this before, I'm not entirely sure and I'm so afraid of being that person who shows up at the hospital thinking they're in labor when nothing at all is happening that I am probably tending to err on the side of thinking I'm not having contractions when I actually am. It definitely kept feeling like my whole tummy got really tight and there was a lot of pressure and this seemed to be accompanied with waves of cramps, so I'm going with it.

Anyway, it turned out at the doctor that I am about 3 cm dilated so I guess something must be going on. I have been at about 1 cm for the past two weeks, so I guess this is good news even though I could just hang out at 3 cm from here on out and have to be induced. Who knows. Since I left the doctor, I've still been having contractions (I think) and they seem to be about every 15 minutes or so (maybe). I am hoping that this is early labor and that the contractions will just keep coming and start getting closer and stronger throughout the day so that we can meet that little girl soon! I am however, expecting more likely that they will just stop all together and May 13 will come and go with no baby.

While we were in the doctor's office we did discuss the plan for if the baby is late. The doctor said she wouldn't want to let me go past 41 weeks, but she said that since I'm diabetic (also unclear), I could have a choice and I could just go ahead today and schedule an induction for next week on my due date or the day after. I have not really heard good things about induction and I would like the baby to come on her own when she is ready (even if I question their due date), so I told her I would just plan on coming in next week as usual and then we could schedule for another week out. The doctor said she thinks I will probably go into labor on my own, possibly this week, and didn't think we would need to worry about it anyway. Again, though, who knows.

Anyway. . .I am hoping that this is the beginning and that the baby will soon be making her appearance. But if not, we are praying that she does at least come soon enough that I won't have to be induced. We will see what happens. . .it would be great to have her by Mother's Day. :)