Salt and Pickles

After having my membranes stripped at my Friday (oct 24) monitoring appt, my water broke at 11:15pm just after getting in bed.

Zaia Bee was born saturday October 25th at 4:07PM. she weighs 7 lbs 1 oz. we’re having some breast feeding issues, but she’s getting her colostrum. She’s long and lanky with round smooth sweet cheeks. She’s warm and soft and the best to snuggle. I had two labors. The first was awful, around 7 hours long, and didn’t have any relief between contractions, I shook uncontrollably for 4 hours (very exhausting) and threw up a lot. The tub made things worse, sitting on the toilet made things worse, laying on my side made things worse, dancing made things worse. I gave in on my natural labor dreams and had an epidural

.. then I had a dreamy wonderful labor. I napped a few hours.. they came to check me around 3pm and suddenly I was fully dilated and she was at +1 position. about 20 minutes later she was out. (i was saying 30-40 minutes. my mom swears it was more like 20 of pushing). and the pushing was easy and I was in a great mood through it all. Hans and my mom were my rock star supporters.

ZB is perfect and we will post photos tomorrow and zaiabee.com will become active once i’ve downloaded photos.

The baby can come any time now! really. i’m ready.

but at my appt yesterday, while my cervix was forward and soft and short… no sign of kiddo yet. no dilation.. no plug..no nothin except a few contractions here and there.

and I was so sure she’d be early! Tomorrow is her due date.

I’m too lazy to blog most of the time. In fact lately i’m too lazy to do much of anything except nap. I don’t even cook anymore.

I reached 37 weeks today! my belly is heavy and distended and I can’t sleep very well and there are all kinds of aches and pains, but still… since I stopped puking, pregnancy has been relatively rosy. but I’m still ready for it to come to a close! in another week, at least. I have a wedding to go to next weekend, and a few more things to do to get ready. But after October 13th, i am so ready for this little girl to make an appearance.

We had house cleaners come and do a deep clean and ooh la is it nice to have a sparkley house. it’s still cluttery as we haven’t put everything away yet or some things are ready to go out the door , but it’s clean clean clean. Also I got a massage and for at least 5 hours , my hips didn’t hurt.

today I went to a lactation consultant who is familiar with breast reduction patients and showed her my boobs and she touched them and it wasn’t sexy in the slightest! but I feel very hopeful that I’ll provide a good amount if not all of my baby’s sustenance. I’m going to do my best, that’s for sure. (so i say now, before the annoyance of multiple pumpings and mastitis and other discomforts)

I had an u/s yesterday and the baby weighs around 6 lbs. A l ittle small for 37 weeks, but totally within range.

I really do love the nap lately. I should try to time it better or I wake up at 6:30 pm and then try to go to sleep again 4 hours later and everything is skewed.

Last night our doula came for our last pre-natal appt and she had us practicing pain management techniques. Somewhere around when I was leaning over the yoga ball with Hans pressing on my lower back, i had a moment of “holy crap, this is REAL”

soon I will post a link to the baby’s blog and I probably won’t write here much .. not as though I was writing much here anymore anyway!