My Growing Girl

Anika has been filling up our lives for a little over two weeks now, and every minute has been wonderful. Yes, even getting up in the middle of the night is wonderful because it is time I get to spend with my little girl. I'm sure the wonder will wear off soon, so I am trying to enjoy and remember this time in our relationship.
Having a baby has made me realize exactly how much my mom loved (and still loves) me. My daughter is helpless to feed herself, to clothe herself, to change herself, to move herself, and do pretty much anything. I am her sole source of food, and then Garry helps me do the other things, but while he is at work, I am her only caretaker. I really wish I remembered my infancy, if just to realize sooner how much my parents loved me immediately. I wish I remembered my mom sacrificing sleep to feed me, being willing to get bodily fluids all over her when changing a diaper or burping me, talking to me sweetly, and being ever-so-careful with me since I was so fragile. With this leap into motherhood I can imagine my mom doing the same things I now do for my daughter for me with the same love I have for my Anika. This love is an amazing thing. I only wish I hadn't taken my parents' love for granted as a young child, as a teenager, and as a young adult. How much better would my heart have been and my honoring of my parents would have been had I thought more often about my infancy. I guess better late than never feeling this at all, right?
God is blessing little Anika richly and I am so thankful for the growth she has had recently and that her checkups are going very well. She was back up to her birthweight by the first week, and this second week visit she had gained a whole pound, so she now weighs a whopping 7 lbs 8 oz. Her cheeks are definitely filling out and her legs are getting a little more plump, which is great. She needs some fat on her to keep her warm in the cold Nebraska winter.
Here are some recent pictures!

My hungry, hiccuping girl

Healthy, happy little girl!

Garry and I took our little Anika to her first check-up tonight at the pediatrician. We are extremely blessed to have a wonderful pediatrician at our church, so we are seeing her for all of Anika's needs. Even though Anika does NOT like getting undressed and being cold, she did wonderfully in all areas of health. She has already gained back four ounces that she dropped and is back up to her birthweight, which is amazing. I wasn't too surprised because she has been eating really well. Dr. Belin also said that everything about Anika is looking very healthy and she seems to be right on track. Anika's blood tests from the hospital also all came back negative, so we are full of praise for that. I am overwhelmed by God's grace to us in our beautiful daughter and am trying not to take her progress and clean bill of health for granted. Our Father in heaven is providing for us abundantly more than we have asked, and I can only pray that His will be done in my little Anika's life.
We were also blessed by having my parents come down for a quick visit so the new grandparents could spend some time with their granddaughter. We had a nice time and Anika was held enough to last her at least a week...or until we are able to see them again.

Meeting Grandpa Sparks

Time with Grandma

Practicing tummy time with Daddy

My Anika

I'm not sure exactly how to start describing the past few days. Exhausting, amazing, excruciating, joyous, and blessed are the first that come to mind when I think back on the journey of labor and birth.
We started our journey on Monday morning, September 20th, around 10:30 when I could start feeling contractions about 10 minutes apart. They didn't hurt at all, but I could tell there was a definite tightening. We weren't sure if they were actual contractions or just more regular Braxton-Hicks. At 5:00 we went for a walk because I really wanted to get my body going, so we tackled the hills in our neighborhood for about an hour. During the walk the contractions started coming about 5 minutes apart and continued that far apart after we were finished. By 8:00 they were coming every 4 minutes or so and were becoming more uncomfortable and i had to use breathing patterns to get through the contraction. We called the midwife at 9:30 PM and she told us to try and wait a little longer and stay home as long as possible if the contractions were not unbearable. By 11:30, contractions were coming every two minutes and had been for about an hour, so we called the midwife again and she told us to come in to the hospital so we could check it out.
We arrived at the emergency room right at midnight and waited for a nurse to come bring us to labor and delivery. After being checked in and answering some questions, the midwife came in and checked to see if there was any progress. Unfortunately, though my contractions were still very regular every three minutes and getting stronger, I was only dilated two centimeters. This resulted in a two-hour walk around the halls of the labor floor. The contractions were a lot more painful now, so I was hopeful when the midwife checked me again at 3:30 AM that we would have progress. Unfortunately, I had only progressed to barely three centimeters. Boo. The midwife didn't want to send me home because of the regularity and strength of my contractions, but she wanted me to get some rest before the hard work that was ahead of us. She gave me a sedative that was supposed to only knock me out for one or two hours before we started working on the labor som more, but apparently I am a lightweight when it comes to drugs. I was practically unconscious for four hours while they continued to monitor the contractions. All through my "nap" the contractions continued to be every four or five minutes.
Once I woke up, it was back to walking around again for a couple hours. Unfortunately, this did not progress me any further. At 11:30 AM I agreed to have the midwife break my water to hopefully get active labor going. After working the hallways again, the contractions really started coming strong and hard and full of lower back pain. Baby was turned the wrong way in the birth canal, so all the pressure of the contractions was in my back. Extremely painful, just saying. After a few hours of these awful contractions every other minute, the midwife arrived to check my progress. I was praying quite hard for at least a couple centimeters, so we were ecstatic to hear I was at 7 centimeters after all that work! After another hour it was time to push, and the midwife turned baby so she could come out the right way. I pushed for about 15 minutes and out came our little girl!
The moment I saw her, everything I had just endured was completely worth the effort. During the hard parts I was wondering if I was just stupid for not wanting an epidural or any other pain meds, but after I was finished, the transition straight to motherhood was easy. I needed to be cleaned up, but nothing extensive so I could focus on my daughter right away. I also felt just fine afterwards, the pain was almost instantly gone.
When the midwife put her on my stomach and Garry had announced she was indeed a girl, I was elated. She was beautiful. She still is, in fact.
Now we have been home a few days and are adjusting to life with our little Anika Grace, I am even more affirmed in our decision for me to stay home full time for awhile. Figuring everything out is going to take awhile, but so far I am loving being a mom, and Garry is the best dad I could ask for. Our Father God has been wondefully merciful and gracious to us through Anika, and we are so excited to teach her all about Him and His love for her.

Any day now...

Tomorrow is our official 39 week mark, and I am considered full term. Hooray! The only drawback is that there is no magical formula or predictor to know when our baby will decide to come. As the midwife said today, baby could come any day. My checkup today went well. My weight gain is still right on track, baby's heartrate was still nice and strong, blood pressure is fine, no swelling, and I have effaced really far and am one centimeter dilated. In short, nothing to tell exactly when I will have this baby. As long as baby is still healthy, and I am still healthy, I will wait patiently. I am feeling more Braxton-Hicks contractions, but that is normal as well and doesn't mean I am a certain time away from going into labor. More importantly, Garry is back and now I don't have to worry about him driving four hours to get here in time. Mom and I filled the last day of her being here with getting in touch with our inner crafters and put together a mobile to hang above the changing table in baby's room. I documented some of our project in picture form. I am very happy with how the mobile looks, especially considering my mom and I usually do not do projects like this.




The walls are actually blue in the baby's room. This was a demo hang in the other bedroom.

Less than TWO WEEKS...hopefully

Here we go. The final countdown. We are now simply waiting for baby to come in God's timing. However, we would be most appreciative of God's timing to be after Thursday of this week since Garry is out in Iowa City. Thankfully my mom graciously agreed to come and stay with me while the father-to-be is out of town, just in case baby would decide to make an early appearance. We have been keeping busy preparing more things for the household for when baby arrives. We made FOUR chicken pot pies (one to test and three for later) and did a test run of a taco lasagna, which was definitely good enough to make more. These are the start of my stockpile of freezer meals for the first couple months. I still have more that I want to make, so we'll hopefully get one more recipe put away by the end of the week. We also are going to work on a mobile to hang above the changing table.

Chicken Pot Pies!

Ready for the Freezer

The beef taco lasagna that will be joining the pot pies in the freezer

Here is also a side shot of baby and me for the 38th week, although baby is pushing out on the bottom half, so my belly looks sort of funny.

Gearing up for baby with 37 weeks down!

Thirty-seven weeks.
Part of me feels like I've been pregnant for a long long time; the other part feels like I just found out yesterday that Garry and I were going to be parents. I guess that's sort of the thing about a nine month time span. Enough time to physically/mentally/emotionally/financially prepare (sort of), and yet not too much time to get extremely tired of not having my body all to myself. My life still has sort of a surreal quality to it when I think about having a baby. I mean, I know plenty of friends who have babies. All of a sudden, there's just this other person there for whom they get to be completely responsible. I've seen other people go through this transition, but to go through it myself...it still doesn't seem real. Some days I still can't believe that I am pregnant. I mean, I KNOW I'm pregnant, but it's just one of those life-changing things that happens to other people and that I was hoping would happen to me...and now it has.
Reality is starting to set in a bit more with the purchasing of baby gear. Craigslist is awesome when you live in a decent metropolitan community like Omaha. So much gently used, cheap baby gear that I get overwhelmed looking at all the posts. I still use caution with this website, but all my experiences so far have been extremely positive. Thanks to being thrifty, we now have a baby bouncer and pack n play, in addition to the changing table I bought previously on craigslist. Garry and I also purchased a travel system so that if baby decided to show up early we could at least get our little one home from the hospital.

Baby's "new" bouncer

The pack n play

Baby's mode of transportation

37 weeks!

In case you forgot what 15 weeks looked like...