Prepping for Halloween

BAM-o-ween at the Bellevue Arts Museum. Lots and lots of crafts and fun things to do for free, a great afternoon. 

Dancing it up as Princess Anna at the Farmer's Market.

Pumpkin carving at the Country Club  with the whole family. Nice not making a mess at home!

Looking forward to Halloween, though rain is in the forecast. 

More Days in Auburn

Second day on the trail, we ticked off eight more, that seems to be the magic number before we tucker out. There are four more to nab, so we hope to finish it off tomorrow. I'm taking full advantage of this awesome whether we are having! I'm not counting on the weatherman to hold the rain off. 

Managing Crazy with Geocaching

So last night I was checking out the geocaching site for the first time since Neah's birth. You'll never guess...they launched a geotour last Saturday in Aurburn. Well, we were planning on going to story time in Maple Valley today, so we decided to hit the trail afterwards. 

Pyper made comments like this all day:

"I love going on road trips!"

"Let's go to another park with a Geocache!"

"Can I have another snack?!"

Along the White River, before we got mud in our mouths!

Cache and play on!!!!

The caches for this geotour are all in Auburn Parks, so lots of playtime for the energizer bunny. There are 20 in all, and we accomplished 8 today. Pre-Neah we would have gone for them all, but I don't think any of us could have hung in there that long. Pyper requested to finish the mission tomorrow! Who am I to dispute  that?

I guess you can manage crazy with Geocaching, we had a great day listening to books on CD, eating snacks, playing in the beautiful weather, and of course caching, though I think that is becoming lower and lower on the priority list. It's the journey that we enjoy most, and spending time together. Neah did great too!

Gramma's Here!

Yup, Gramma in Panther colors, and she got to go to the game too!

Gramma made it out to the West Coast for Neah's welcome into the world. So grateful to all who decide to help in 3 year old management and all the other housely stuff. 

Garden Angels taming the strawberries. 

Pumpkining around at the pumpkin patch  

This is the first post writing since the crazy really set in, I'll try for brief, but more frequent posts in the future. Wish I had the mindset to share in depth the gratitude I feel for grandmas right now! Thank you Gramma Jody for making the trek out here and making my first month a little easier!

Winding Down from the Excitement

I guess it's a little crazy after birth. There's a lot of excitement and everyone wants to see the baby, even only after a couple of hours of birth. Yesterday and today we had no visitors, it's been super mellow, other than some kind of screaming fit by our eldest. 

Postpartum is surprising, even if you've done it before. During birth, all you want is the baby to come out. My labor was 7 hours and 25 minutes from start to baby. We are now coming up on a week exactly since birth and it's been rough physically, mentally, and emotionally. The first two days you are hormonally wired to stay awake. Yes there is lots of bleeding as your placenta wound heals, but that's expected. The tenderness and swollen genitailia make for some discomfort, but you know it will pass. Your first stool after birth makes for interesting noises that mimic labor contractions, and then there's the extra being to love, hold, feed, pee, poop, burp, and comfort 24/7. 

We are adjusting one day at a time. I guess that's why they come out so cute, so it makes it all worth it. 

Baby Neah's Arrival

Today I had an amazing HOME birth! It started precisely at 8 AM when I felt a little wetness when I turned in bed, so I got up to go pee. I didn't have to go, the discharge was a little tinged pink. Then I felt a cramp in my lower belly. The cramps didn't stop at all the first hour, so I woke up Andy for back-up as I still intended to take Pyper to gymnastics. I had 5 minute contractions, 45 seconds long, consistently all morning. We even stopped for her Chinese red bean bun snack and I got some bakery treats next door. I had a contraction at at the shop waiting for the worker to take care of the other folks. 

This is what two hours of contractions look like. My friend Anna took this picture before our girls ended class. 

The contractions didn't feel great as you can imagine, I was definitely having trouble managing the pain around 11 AM when we got home. We called Sunita, our midwife, we called for the birth tub, we were getting all the forces mobile. 

There was a stent went the tub people came, and then Pyper needed to eat, which took Andy away from me, but man, he did a gazillion things, it was amazing. 

Around 2 PM our Midwife did arrive, I was in the back bathroom, I remember a presence sitting down at the bathroom door as I got through a contraction. I had already had a "bloody show", and it was just increasing. The contractions at that point were weaker, I was falling sleep between them, and I was thinking maybe an IV would be needed to kick start things, but it never came to that.  

Pre-tub solution, and Mid-wife's little helper. Our Midwife, Sunita, is the one helping Pyper. Tara is a mid-wife in training and did a great job helping me progress. 

A couple more contractions later, Andy had the water warm enough and over the heating element to make the tub operational. Not sure how I managed the maneuver mid contraction, but I got in the tub and things ramped right back up. In fact, the need to push was there on the first contraction in the heavenly bliss that was the birth tub. 

Pyper did well. She got bored with the contractions earlier on, but was there to rub my back when Andy did something else. "I'm doing better than Mommy is!" At the edge of the tub she said "having babies is hard work!" She paid attention when things began to happen, happily waiting for the baby's arrival. 

So there I was in the mega huge supportive birth tub with a nice cushy floor and foam railing. I just got in a kneeling squat and then apparently Neah's head was right there. I broke my water on the first contraction in the tub, how convenient. 

It wasn't a quick pushing session, but it was productive the whole time. We did a couple position changes that definitely made for progress. When I finally pushed her head through, the cord was caught on her shoulder, so she stayed put till I had another round of pushing to finish the job. Neah's heart rate stayed good and we birthed a baby girl. Yup, still hard, but two thirds the time of Pyper, and smooth the whole way. Felt fantastic feeling so good after compared with the last. So at 3:25 PM we had a girl that was roughly 7 pounds, 5 ounces. The first thing she did was pee on me. She also had a strong latch right away which helped to detach the placenta as I stood up to use gravity to free it completely. 

Family of four, first latch while still connected to the placenta inside me. 

This time it was less shocking to have a baby present, and we enjoyed being with her as a family. We all got to feel the pulse in the umbilical cord which was pretty incredible. It took awhile for the placenta to detach, that's actually when the tub got really bloody. Shortly after the team put me to bed. 

Baby girl in the house!!!

Baby inspectors, she's perfect!!! Great teamwork. 

After she peed on me I missed the second pee because I didn't have all my supplies ready, but I've caught 3-8 in a row, plus the biggest meconium ever. Not bad for the first 12 hours. She a natural at this baby communication thing, we haven't even opened the "just-in" case disposables. We may be returning those. I love EC and its freedom from dirty diapers, landfill additions, and unhappy babies. She took to the cue instantly. 

UFO's

UnFinished Objects...

Amazingly enough we finished Pyper's Anna dress earlier this month after completing the cape over a month ago. That was a surprising check off the list, but I guess that started our roll and we were able to motivate and finish some more projects. 

Princess Anna dress

Somewhere in the mess of things we also got another batch of Italian plums from the neighbors. We dehyrated the extras from the first batch, but we went after preserves for this one. Ten cups of fruit, two lemons, and a cup of sugar later, we had some tastiness. 

Yummy plum preserves over shortbread 

Finished Neah's quilt today and we tackled tie dying as well. Neah's quilt is the first quilt I've done from start to finish. It's a simple one, but with everything going on it seemed like the biggest project ever.  

Yarn tied quilt I will probably never attempt again. 

I definitely didn't think I'd get to this tie dying project. We had a whole pile of white, slightly milk stained hand-me-down white newborn shirts and socks, that we're going into the Goodwill bag unless we made them into something cool. We just had to buy the tie dye material which we got on super sale with a coupon. 

It was a committing project, considering Pyper made one shirt for herself and about a dozen projects for her sister. She did make one for her dad too. This in itself took a couple hours and she said she was tired by the end of it, but stuck with it till there was no die left. We unravelled our hard work and saw some amazing results! 

Successful Tie Dye, they fit stuffed animals as well. 

So we finished up everything we had on the prebirth list! Yahoo!!! Now it's time to chill and get on with the birth.