Introducing Jax Daniel Ford...

The past 42 weeks seemed to fly by at times... and other times seemed to take an eternity.  I experienced things this pregnancy that I didn't with my first two, including being put off work due to extreme pelvic pain.  Already parenting two toddlers, combined with working full-time and managing the pain, meant that I was often physically drained.  I was very excited as the weeks passed by, and also a little sad, because I knew this would be the last time that I would experience being pregnant.

For those who haven't experienced it, there is nothing quite like the feeling of a little person moving inside your belly.  There's a personal connection long before the baby is born, something that is incredibly personal and private, and just between the two of you.  But the girls were growing more and more excited every day, and I knew they would just fall in love with their little brother once he was here.

After months of dreading "the penis," the end was near.  It was my third, and everyone was fairly sure that I would have that baby "any moment" as friends (and complete strangers) would point out as I walked by them.  I can't say that I felt huge this pregnancy... I certainly felt smaller than I was with Gracie, and I honestly didn't feel like I looked like I was ready to pop.  The baby certainly felt the same way, since at weeks 38, 39, and 40, I was "checked" for progress and was told that, although anything could happen, Dr. Rudd expected to see me at Labour and Delivery to discuss my induction on the 18th of June.

I was busy wrapping up my Sunday School program for the year.  On the evening of the 13th, I had Confirmation to get through, and the teachers of the Confirmation class and my program partner had been begging me to hold on until we were through with Confirmation.  That night, after everything was finally wrapped up, I said to the teachers, "I know you've been praying for me to hold on so I could be here tonight, but you can stop now!"  Someone commented on how funny it would be if I went into labour that night.  I went home, fell asleep, and woke up at 12:45 a.m.  It was labour.

I got out of bed at 1:30 and paced the upstairs of my house for an hour and a half before deciding to call the hospital.  Since it was my third, and I had a history of hemorrhaging, and the contractions were about 5 minutes apart, they told me to make my way in.  I paced another half hour or so before I decided to wake up Danny.  When I told him it was time to go, he informed me that he had heard me on the phone with the hospital, which meant he had heard me tell them I was in labour, and decided to go back to sleep!!!  What a man! :)

We made it to the hospital just before 5, where we waited in the ER for a good 10 minutes before someone showed up to let us in the actual hospital.  They hooked me up to the baby monitor, and at 5:20 my water broke.  The contractions were still about 4-5 minutes apart, which gave me some recovery time in between, but I have to say, they were stronger contractions than I had felt with either Gracie or Ella.  I insisted on an epidural (I had missed out with Ella) and relayed my story about having to deal with the hemorrhage last time without any sort of pain relief.  It had traumatized me, and I had nightmares about it for months afterwards.  As soon as the anesthesiologist was available, I had my epidural (success!!), and tried to get some rest while I waited for baby boy to make his appearance.

At 9:15, they brought in Dr. Hamm.  He was with me when I delivered Ella, and had dealt with the bleeding afterwards.  I was very happy to have him again for this baby, he is a very calming presence!  At 9:24 a.m., baby Jax was born, and I was surprised to find out that what I thought was my smallest belly actually held my biggest baby, weighing in at 9 pounds, 5.1 ounces.  After he was born, we all held our breath and waited... waiting to see if the bleeding would be controlled, or if we would have a repeat of Ella's birth.  We waited, and waited, and waited.  Nothing happened.  Which was not good either.  We waited some more, and Dr. Hamm repeatedly reefed on my stomach.  Still nothing.  Not a spot of blood, but also no placenta.  We waited some more and Dr. Hamm advised that he was going to have to take me to the OR to get the placenta out.  Thank God, I already had the epidural!

Once the OR was prepped, they took me down.  The epidural was numbing, but not enough to do what they needed to do.  My right side wouldn't freeze, so they kept upping and upping the medication.  Eventually the anesthesiologist said that he was going to flood me with the medication and if I still wouldn't freeze, he was going to have to put me out completely.  The rush of medication made me extremely nauseous and my whole body felt like it weighed 300 pounds... but it worked!  Dr. Hamm worked his magic, and I was in recovery 15 minutes later.  I wasn't allowed out of recovery until I could lift and bend both of my legs.  My right leg thawed within an hour, but it took until 1:30 in the afternoon before I could move my left leg enough for them to release me.  I was finally taken back to my room, where Danny and Jax had spent the last 3-4 hours bonding.  It was a rough afternoon, but by 4:00, I was feeling relatively normal again.  The girls came and met their brother for the first time, and Nanny and Grampy got to meet their first grandson. 

As the nurse told me later, after the retained placenta, followed by a pretty significant blood loss in the OR, I was not going to be feeling great.  By the time I got home from the hospital on Sunday evening, I felt like I had been hit by a truck.  My hands were aching from the IVs I had in each of them, my back was killing me, and my hips ached worse than I could ever imagine.  Yesterday I left the house for the first time since being home, finally starting to feel like a normal person again. 

Jax is fitting right in.  He is a voracious eater, which reminds me again how much I dislike breastfeeding, but so far is the most calm and laid back of the three.   Gracie constantly needs to be touching him, and Ella is amazed by him.  Every day gets better and easier, and we are so thrilled to have him here, finally, as part of our family!  We are officially complete as the Ford Family!

 

Nesting's a Bitch...

Towards the end of pregnancy, women go through this natural occurrence known as "nesting."  According to all of the pregnancy websites out there, nesting is a natural instinct whereby mothers-to-be prepare their home for the new arrival by cleaning and organizing the "nest."

I spent the better part of last week "nesting."  My mother came down to help out, and we spent all week cleaning.  We cleaned out the girls' room, organized the boy's room, sorted through six bags of boy clothes (thanks, Michelle!), organized the bathroom closet, the living room closet, and the hallway closet, cleaned out and organized the laundry room, cleaned up the guest room, and even got the oven and microwave cleaned (although, to be fair, we can thank my dad for those last two).  On Friday, after a 2-hour grocery shopping trip, we spent the better part of the next 12 hours cooking and stocking our freezer.  We made chicken noodle soup, beef barley soup, chili, pulled pork, chicken fried rice, cabbage roll casserole, dijon mustard chicken drumsticks, slow cooker cilantro lime chicken, balsamic vinegar glazed chicken, kobe glazed beef roast, hamburgers, three meatloafs, slow-cooker beef fajitas, potato and fish hash, taco meat, shake & bake chicken, and 18 breakfast sandwiches.  I even managed to get 5 dozen biscuits made for the freezer too.

Half of the groceries for our freezer-stocking adventure...

The other half of the groceries... 

My lovely assistant... plucking a chicken! :)

Don't mind the apron, it's Ella's.... and doesn't quite fit! :)

The first of my 5 dozen biscuits! :)

 Here's my problem with the nesting instinct though:  The instinct part.  I call bullshit.  There is nothing instinctual about it.  There is no "oh, I should get my house cleaned up before this sweet little bundle of joy arrives" urge.  There is, however, a "holy fack, I have two weeks left before this all time consuming booby muncher gets here and the house looks like a fuckin' pig sty" sort of feeling.  That's not instinct, that's panic!  I know that in roughly two weeks, I will arrive home with this little bundle of blue, and I will be mostly relegated to feeding, changing, and burping that baby.  When I'm sitting in my rocker feeding the little man for the 10th time in three hours, and I see a cobweb hanging from the ceiling, I know that it's going to stay there for approximately the next 4-6 months.  Because I will have better things to do.  Sure, the dishes will get done, and the floors will be vacuumed, and if we're really lucky I may even wash a load or two of clothes.  But the super dirty little stuff, like the piece of (what I assume is) apple that fell behind the couch sometime in the last 4 years that I only discovered while "nesting," or the pile of brown gunk building up in the door of the dishwasher, or the inch-thick layer of dust and dog hair collecting in every single closet... well, that shit will stay there until (a) this baby stops being such an energy-sucking force in about 6 months, or (b) nope.  There is no b.

The other thing about nesting being all "instinctual" is the fact that instinct brings to mind another word: Natural.  Believe me when I say there is nothing natural about my preggopotamus ass climbing up and down the stairs 15 times carrying different crap to different areas of the house, while sweating bullets, and grunting like a pig.  There is nothing natural about my preggopotamus ass literally getting stuck on the floor because I have been on my hands and knees scrubbing out a cabinet for the last 20 minutes and now I don't have the energy to lift said preggopotamus ass back into a vertical position.  There is nothing natural about any of it.  I hate every second.  I bitch and complain every single moment.  If it weren't for the fact that my mother was here to keep me inspired, I would probably still be on project #1, and break #246.  Not to mention that my mother is as old as the hills... not truly, but with the knees of an 80-year old woman, we were quite the sight, both moaning and groaning our way through the week.  Cleaning sucks.  Cooking sucks.  But deep cleaning and freezer-stocking-cooking sucks even harder.  Even with help and good company, it sucks preggopotamus ass!  Not to mention that every single night last week, my legs screamed at me and my back ached, and my belly contracted, all in protest of the extra work I was making us do!

There's an upside to the panic that comes when you are running out of time to get anything done... once you actually get it done, it's done.  It's clean!  My house looks fantastic, and I even finished a project or two that was on my list of nesting chores from when I was pregnant with Ella (that's right, I'm so incredibly lazy, some of these projects have taken another two years to complete!).  And the fact that I got the cooking done amazes me.  I certainly paid for it that night, with a couple Tylenol 3s and a night spent on the couch to ward off as much of the pain as possible.  But it's done, and I can feed my family when the lazy, exhausted moments happen in the upcoming months.

Things are cleaned and organized for the time being, and that makes me feel a little more relaxed in these final days leading up to Baby #3. But there's no doubt about it... nesting's a bitch!

In preparation for cleaning out the girls' room,  my mother and I built this lovely bookshelf together.
Elvis took over residence shortly thereafter! :)