Baby Unbreastfeeding

Baby had his first non-breastmilk/formula (which is used on road trips) two days ago.  He had a smidge (an ounce...most of which ended up on his bib) of pear juice.  I don't know if it was the traveling or the formula or something I ate or what, but he was having a very ouchy tummy and hadn't *gone* in numerous days, so I tried the pear juice.  It totally helped the little bubelah out.  I'm still hoping to hold out on starting foods until after six months since my supply is generally pretty good.

Rolling

He's been rolling from front to back for a LONG time, but yesterday/today was the first time he's rolled from his back to front.  My little baby's growing all up.

Health Goals

I decided I'm going to try to be healthier (for actually).  I have a general eating plan I'm going to try to follow (and it's not too hard when Dad doesn't request I make three desserts for his birthday...I can't resist chocolate chip cookies and brownies!) and decided that if I take before and after pictures, it'll be more inspiring.  So despite the fact I don't particularly love my body right now (although I don't hate it either), I'm going to post them in hopes it will help keep me accountable.  These were taken the middle to end of June (just before our trip to go help Devin move).

Roller/Scoocher

Hux *may* have a) rolled over for the first three times before he turned two months old, b) gained to about fifteen pounds by two months, and c) started scooching around (he can scooch off of the playmat, etc, but is definitely not crawling yet) by 2.5 months.  Gosh this kid is weird...

Zachariah Huxley; Born March 19, 2013

I went in for my 41 week appointment and had an induction scheduled (strongly recommended) and my membranes were "stretched" and I was told about it afterwards (which explains a lot).  I was a 4cm at my appointment.  Mom, Gabriel and I went to In-N-Out for lunch and I'd started having contractions at about noon.  At three or so, I texted Chris and let him know that he should plan to come home instead of going to PT.  During Gabe's naptime, I alternated between being in the front room...and then the bedroom on the exercise ball...and then finally made it into the bathtub right around the time when Christopher got home from work.  It took me FOREVER to finish watching the episode of Medium (while trying to time contractions to make sure) so that we could head off to the hospital.  Yes.  I'm weird like that and wanted to get to a good stopping point.  We headed off to the hospital at 5'ish when the pain (especially in my back...again...like I had with Gabe) was less than bearable and my contractions were 3-5 min apart.  By the time we got checked in, questions answered, and had my first cervical check, it was 7pm (I was told when I first got there that since my first labor was 14 hours, I'd probably have a 7-10 hr second labor).  I'd brought my birth plan with me, but pointed out when I first got there that if I hadn't progressed enough/if the back pain didn't get better, I'd scratch my entire birth plan and want an epidural right away.  I didn't realize I wouldn't even be checked until 7 hours after things had started.  When I had my first check, I was at 5cm.  Yeah.  Exactly.  I'd progressed one miniscule cm since 10:30 that morning.  Poo poo on that.  I wanted pain relief and I wanted it NOW.  I told the nurse as much.  It took until 10:00 to get said epidural.  And it took four times of getting sticked in order for them to find the right spot. 
Life is hard when you're me....
Please note that while we'd researched different ways to deal with back labor, they couldn't get a good reading on Baby b/c he kept moving, so I had to stay hooked to the monitors on my back for several hours.
That said: after I got the epidural, things got WAY better!  The back labor was 99% gone.  The contractions were 99% pressure, 1% pain (until the very end).  So I watched Grease (twice) and Willy Wonka (once, I think) and spaced out a lot.  Baby Fester kept having issues with his heart rate dropping (like Gabe did that one time) and I was warned that he may have the cord wrapped around his neck, so we were being extra monitored and hopefully things would go well.  Things didn't really get better.  I ended up attached to monitors, an epidural, an IV, and then oxygen by the end of things.  It was pretty crazy and I'm SO glad Gabriel never saw me like that.  I imagine I looked scary...(and scared)...  Blah dee blah blah smack... 
I was fully progressed, but Fester was having more and more issues with his heartrate, so I ended up getting rolled into the OR just in case they had to do an emergency cesarean.  By the way, this was WAY more terrifying than what happened with Gabe, but at least this time they let me know what was going on the entire way (whereas with Gabriel, no one told me anything, but 5 or so nurses ran into the room freaking out, etc when Gabe had issues with heartbeats).  Maybe it's because I let the initial nurse know what happened with Gabriel and that I wanted to be informed the whole way...Maybe it's because this time I actually talked, whereas last time I didn't really speak through the whole thing...Maybe it's just because people were nicer this time than they were with Gabe...
Zachariah Huxley was born at 0211 on 31913.  I pushed for a handful of times and then they brought out The Vacuum and sucked him out with the next set of pushings.  Despite having an epidural (which may or may not have been working uber well, since I remember two of the nurses talking about if they could get Dr Fields over in time and decided he wouldn't make it) pushing out a 10 pound (literally) baby was one of the most painful things ever!!!  Then again, I didn't have any tearing big enough to stitch and healed/am healing quickly.  And...Chris didn't get to cut the cord (again) but I'm assuming that's because the cord was, in fact, wrapped around Fester/Zach's neck and he was blue when he was pooped out, so they had to take care of that *minor* (
Oh yeah.  So last time the biggest thing was that I said maybe 3 words the entire time (and went natural for about half of it before getting hooked up to Pitocin and drugs).  This time, the biggest thing was that I was shaking...like...a LOT...because it was so painful (and later shaking because of a bit of pain and a lot of fear; sorta like how when I'm angry I go silent and shake with frustration, only this time I was shaking with pain and/or fear) and went naturally for 10 of 14 hours of labor...

It's now a week and a day post partum and everyone's doing well.  I guess the one upside to being nauseous for all of pregnancy and then pooping out a ten pounder is that I'm already back to my pre-pregnancy weight.  Yay?

It's my due date and I'll cry if I want to

40 weeks today.  I'm up to almost 165 lbs (from 148 starting weight).  Luckily (?) I've gained 5-7 lbs in the last month or so.  Woo hoo???  A few weeks ago at the doctors office, he said it could be any day now (that's what they said with Gabriel too and Gabe was born at 40.5 weeks).  I made a joke about Baby Fester being born at 40.5 weeks and Dr wasn't going out of town, was he (that's what happened with Old Dr; Gabriel was born the day she left town for a week)...  Little did I know, Current Doc is (what do you know) going out of town for 4 (or is it 5?) days starting 2 days after my due date.  Awesome.
What can I say?  My kiddos just love to stay inside of me for extra long!
I wouldn't mind so much if my back and feet weren't so owie (although it's not all the time, so I'm grateful for that) and if I, you know, wasn't still feeling nauseous (although it's also gotten rare'er this last month, so yay for that!)...
I'm extra glad my mom's in town.  She let me sleep in yesterday and has been uber helpful around the house and with The Gabe (who's been loving her visit).
On our way home from church on Sunday, I asked Gabriel if he was excited to meet Baby Fester and Gabe's all "yes I am.  I'm also excited to meet my baby brother."  He's such a cute weirdo.

So...Fingers crossed...Any day now...Just like I've been told for the last several weeks...

Feb 2

Yay!!!  Long story short: I've generally stopped taking nausea meds since Dec 21st.  I've had to take four pills since then b/c it got so bad, but haven't puked once since then and have only had to take the rare pill.  I'll totally call that a win.
I'm also now a good 10 pounds heavier than when I got pregnant (yea).  I'm honestly grateful to be able to eat *most* things again and not feel wretched, so now I've gotten to the point where I need to really focus on eating a balance of healthy things and delicious bad-for-me things while still moving my body (aka exercising) which I've not been very good about these last two weeks.
I'll be honest:  this is our last pregnancy.  I'm 100% sure.  We've already made plans to ensure this will be our last biokid.  I'm good with that.  However, I do still get the rare feeling where I'm semi-sad...like with Alien Belly (which seriously creeps me out): Fester's now so big that he doesn't really kick/punch all that much b/c there just isn't space.  Instead, you see this huge lump move slowly across my belly and it's really freaky.  (Seriously, it freaks me out.)  But then a small (very small) part of me thinks "Enjoy it; this will be the last time you get to be creeped out by Alien Belly on/in your own body, yo).
I don't remember getting middle back pain with Gabriel, but it happens pretty much every day with this pregnancy.  In the middle of my back?  That doesn't even make sense!
And Fester still prefers my right side.  Previously, he would try and kick through the right side of my belly (it hurt pretty bad sometimes b/c he'd kick and/or kick/stretch so hard).  Now, though, he seems to love to be nestled up under my right ribs...  I have no idea what body part it is, but it's always there...and it's generally just a weird type of uncomfy...Yesterday, though, he moved crazy fast and it felt like he almost broke my rib.  I literally gasped in pain.  Ah...  Good to know he loves me.  :)
So I have about a month left to go.  We'll see how long it takes.  I'd *thought* I'd read somewhere that second pregnancies often were slightly shorter than first times...but almost everyone I've talked to has said their second pregnancy went longer than their first (which is sorta scary since Gabriel came a half-week late).  Now it's just a guessing game.  I prefer him to stay in there for at least three more weeks or so...  We'll just see what he decides to do.