friday, january 25th, 2008

I had only one thing on my To Do list for Friday....Give Birth. And I'm happy to announce that I was able to check that one off. The day finally arrived, and so did Little Dude. Happy Birthday Jacob Alexander! Baby Jake was born at 6:26 p.m. and he weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz.

For those of you interested in labour details, it began Thursday evening. Maria will be happy to know that I was emailing her about work stuff (lucky Maria) around 4 p.m. and thought "Hmmm I think my water might have broken. Interesting." By 5 p.m. we were getting ready to go out for dinner (to Gina's!!!) and I definetly thought that I didn't know...nice for ambiguity. So off to the hospital we go. Sure enough, yes it had broken. But since I had absolutely no contractions whatsoever, I was sent home for the wait and see with instructions to return Friday morning at 7 a.m. I was relieved to know that I was on track for Friday's agenda. Naturally Neil and I went to Gina's for dinner, with the hope spicy Mexican food would kick-start contractions. Later we enjoyed some movie watching....I highly recommend Will Farrell's "Stranger Than Fiction".

Friday morning rolls around and still no contractions, which means only one thing....time to be induced. Off to the hospital and the process begins at 8 a.m. Our nurse Kat was wonderful. In the new maternity ward at the hospital, you are assigned one nurse who for their entire 12 hour shift remains constantly with you.

Our friend Vanessa was also there to help with the whole birthingprocess; we were truly blessed to have her help! So the waiting began...waiting for contractions to begin. And they began slowly; there were popsicles to eat, the hallway to walk, lots of anticipatory conversations. And all along nurse Kat kept saying, "You still have a sense of humour. This is not a good sign. It's better when you become grumpy, it means that labour has truly started."

Well I lost my sense of humour about 1 p.m., and I can tell you that while contractions might not have necessarily been the most painful sensations that I have had, the induced contractions come on suddenly and have very little (30 second?) intervals in between which leaves you exhausted and exasperated. I did spend about 3 hours in the warm tub, which was wonderful. My final stages of labour (i.e. the pushing part) started around 5 p.m. Induced labours are often fast. And furious. And furious. But no pain medication taken, so it couldn't have been that bad, eh? Well it was. All my helpers were fantastic. Baby Jake arrived after 5 and half hours of labour before my agenda deadline of 8 p.m. Way to go Little Dude! After he emerged I immediately regained my sense of humour with "Thank God! That was the best feeling in the world. Can I sleep now? I'll just be over here."

'The Best Baby Ever!!' was born 7 lbs 10 oz and 21 inches long. The three of us stayed in the hospital for two nights, and came home on Sunday. January 25th is Robbie Burns day, so Jake will have some fantastic birthday times at the pub when he gets old enough. Happy Birth Day Jake! We love you.

sugar cookies

Today's pregnancy craving....sugar cookies.

belly cast

This project was alot of fun. And I have to admit that it wasn't something that I would have honestly pictured myself interested in doing. But Karin had some extra plaster gauze strips that she passed along, which made the whole thing easy to do. First step, Neil cut the strips into short pieces, wetted them, and made the cast. It only took about 20 minutes for it to harden up.

Second step, was the decorating of it.....Neil's suggestion which made it so much more awesome. There are lots of painted ones out there (which I didn't know that people did), but I wasn't too inspired by the mother earth images that people mainly selected. So I decided to make it colourful, sort of 'stained glass' look with glued on tissue paper. I used simple modge-podge with a gloss finish, tore up pieces of paper and glued, glued, glued.

I am really happy with the finished product and I'm glad that I made something to commemorate the big preggo belly with; something that was definetly outside my usual realm of comfort. And the best part is that Neil and I made it together.

visiting friends

An excellent way to wait for the arrival of Little Dude is to visit with friends. This includes visiting with Little Dude's future little friends too, like Sable and Zeke (two weeks old) and their awesome mom Cathryn.

Yesterday was a big visit day. We started with breakfast with Dick and Ann Beamish. Nothing sets a day off right than some fantastic coffee, with eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and toast with marmalade.

We had a surprise visit from Bonni and Colin Wallace and enjoyed some afternoon tea. Saturday night is Hockey Night in Canada and we hung out with Rob, Vanessa and Zoe to watch all three teams that I was cheering for lose: Montreal lost to Phillidelphia, Toronto lost to Buffalo and Vancouver lost to Los Angeles (though it is kind of nice to have Marc Crawford beat the team that fired him).

Good friends, good times.

little dude's room

Okay, now its less than one week to go. I sure do hope that he arrives this week. I am ready to meet him...tired of waiting. So to kill some time, here's a look at the nursery that Neil and I put together for him.

Ta da! The room was formerly an office/craft room that I used, and it was already painted a creamsicle orange colour. So we left it that colour to keep it bright and cheerful. I drew some fun sea creatures including starfish, whale, octopus and stingray (happy go lucky stingray) on some circular canvases (photo from previous post) . The colours used match some circle lights that are hanging across the top of one wall. So keeping with sea creatures, I took an old mobile that no longer had dangly things on it, got some wooden sea creatures from a craft store and made a mobile (starfish, whale, crab, scallop and turtle). We traced the wooden cutouts (along with a Dolphin) on the closet doors and Neil and I painted them in.

Of course I did some knitting. Made a blankie, made a whoozit kind of guy (that is also a rattle) and of course made a knitted robot. Every little dude needs a knitted robot.

waiting for little dude

There are 7 days to go until the due date of Little Dude. I have been off from work now for 4 weeks. The Christmas holidays were great (photo below right: Merry Christmas), and putzing around the house has been rewarding....everything is ready for Little Dude’s arrival. Just waiting now. Which is getting a little bit boring. You can’t really let’s say take a roadtrip, or go off on a weekend of skiing etc. There has been lots of movie watching, reading, knitting, a date night out.

We have cleaned out the freezer (photo left: watching eagles eat the freezer burned fish) and put in some pre-made frozen meals; we have decorated the nursery in a sea life theme (photo above: some canvases that I painted up to hang on the nursery wall), we have organized all of his clothes (how can there be so many for a little guy that hasn’t arrived yet?); we have read the books; we have the crib, the car seat, the stroller, the high chair; we got the cloth diapers and the changing station with what I call ‘bum condiments’ i.e. ointments and such; there is the baby washing stuff that is all ready to go to clean off his dirt (better than hosing him down); my bag is packed for the hospital; we have made a plaster of paris cast of my belly (photo right: the cast itself, could this become a chip bowl?); and Vanessa has taken photos of us and the round protruding Little Dude. Now we just wait. And wait. And wait.