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Great day to have a baby!

39 weeks and 4 days: Well, the day has FINALLY arrived! 2/21/14 will be that birthdate of my second (and final) child :) We went to the doctor yesterday and had an ultrasound to measure her size and did a cervix check to see what kind of progress we have made, if any. The good news is, that she is measuring smaller than Cyrus (which is actually not good news for me bc I've put on a total of 32 pounds this pregnancy as opposed to the 28 with Cy…eeks - got some work to do now ;( ). She is measuring at 7.11 right now but that can be off by a whole pound as it's hard to measure this late in pregnancy. As predicted, absolutely NO movement in the cervix, still just barely 1 cm. So, we decided that I will go in this afternoon at 3:30 to begin the induction process. We will start with a cervical insert today/tonight and let that soften up my cervix a bit and then the doc will come in tomorrow morning to start the pitocin drip. Boo. Oh well, we'll give it a go. If things don't progress as anticipated with her or if it looks like we'll need another birth assisted with instruments (forceps or vacuum) we are going straight to C-Section. I am SO excited to get this sweet girl out of my body and into our arms. It has been a good (ok, great) pregnancy but I'm done with it. 

Brad took a few pictures this morning in her nursery. This is the LAST time my body will look like this so I'm embracing it today:) Next week will be another story! More on that later, I'm sure ;)  

This and That For Tag

I used the rainy/snowy weekend to get a few odds and ends projects done at home in preparation for Baby Tag. I purchased a few woobies for Tag but I also wanted to make her a special one. I found this great gray chevron material and the white dot fleece material at the Quilting material and made her a 30 x 40 woobie out of it. It was a little more challenging than I thought it would be because the white dot material was SO much more stretch than the chevron material and the alignment keep screwing up. I had to rip the seam out more than once (grrrr). It did come out wonderfully though and I would like to make one just like it for our comforter on out bed :) 

I also had the pictures printed from our homemade "Baby Tag" photo shoot and put them together into a framed collage. I think it came out great and is the perfect final touch on her nursery. Brad hung her name up this weekend too so we are ready to bring this little bundle home :)

Girl's Day :)

Alison and I had a lovely Girl's Day last weekend. We haven't really had a chance to hang out together much lately so we decided to get out early:) I got a text from her at 8am so that we could get a plan on the books before the boys (Brad and Creighton) planned their Saturday of fun. The boys are so good at planning their get togethers and spend a few Saturdays a month together riding bikes or going to a few drinks, so Alison and I jumped the gun this time;) We met early at Solar Nails for Mani/Pedi and then went to Sushi Box for lunch. It was such an awesome day, I love spending time with her. I always feel so great after, she is such a positive influence and wonderfully easy going. I am glad to have her in my life :)

Sweet Henry

We took Henry to the vet on Saturday, 2/15, to have him put down. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I have never had a dog long enough to get to this point in life and it was simply awful. He was 15 years old and at point in his life when it was just time. He cried every time he tried to sit or lay down, had lost his hearing, was shedding like crazy, losing weight incredibly fast, and had a hard time holding his bowels. It's just so sad because I believe that his brain was fine, in great shape really, his body just couldn't keep up.

We took him in and they gave him a sedative which really relaxed him and then gave him and overdose of a barbiturate (I don't know which one) that simply stopped his heart. It made me sick, I had this moment of panic when I wanted him back so badly after it was done. Just horrible.

That afternoon, I went to AC Moore and gathered supplies to make a shadow box for Brad (and myself) which now hangs in our room. I'm not surprised that I miss him, I'm just surprised at how much I miss him. I thought I was more ready for it than I was, I guess. I still get teary each time I was by the shadow box or find myself looking for him out in the yard or in the house. 

Skylar seems to be doing ok. I have heard of dogs dying from a broken heart when their partners die so we've been paying extra special attention to her and I think she's ok. She is definitely sad and she sort of wanders around the yard looking for him, but she is eating and getting around ok. She is 13 this year and is in great shape (surprisingly). My only issue with her is that she gets smelly like an old dog so I've committed to having her groomed every couple weeks so we don't have to deal with that part. I hope she's doing well, I don't think I could go through that again for quite some time. I know we'd like to get dogs again in our lives, but it will be a long time from now when the children are MUCH older. 

The Shadow Box of my boy in his prime. I also did a salt dough footprint of him. This is the foot that has the missing toe nail/part of toe from when he had cancer in Colorado. Had to capture that :) Such a good good boy. 

Valentines Day

Valentine's Day was nice this year. We don't make a thing of it in our family/relationship because it really is a silly "holiday" in my opinion. However, I do still like to observe it and get some little love felt thing for Brad, and of course, Cyrus. So, we started the day with pancakes that Cy and I made. His were chocolate chip and sprinkles and Brad and I had granola and cranberry ones. Yum! We don't do pancakes often so that was fun:)

We also exchanged gifts which included some nice cards, lots of chocolate, and I got each of my guys a little band for their Road IDs which says "I <3 U". Very Cute;)

We also met up with our parents for dinner at Mellow Mushroom, which was super nice. It was a fun day (and snow day from school at that) to spend as a family :)

Notice my card from B: "Nice Butt" - he's a charmer ;) 

Cy opening his present (book written with his name in it) from Mom and Dad.

Class Valentine's Celebration

Cy's class is having a Valentines Day celebration on Friday. I had high hopes of making really cute Valentines for his little friends at school but between getting my planning done for my maternity leave at work and final prep for the baby, I had to go generic this year (not to mention there are 30 kids in Cy's class!!). But, they still came out cute and cy and I had a great time putting them together;)

Homework

Cy's homework tonight is to find three things in a magazine that begin with the letter 'c'. We found a cat, claws, and Colorado. Cy labeled each picture by himself. His writing has come soooo far since he moved up to Pre-K at the beginning of January! I am so proud of him!!

Stubborn Babies

I had my 37.5 week check with Dr. Hirata yesterday and the outlook is not good, unfortunately. This pregnancy is progressing much like Cyrus in that my cervix is being totally unresponsive to the fact that we are almost done with this pregnancy. The major concern is that she is a big baby, much like her brother (who weighed in at 8.5 pounds), but anticipated to be bigger.

Cyrus's birth was tough. I was induced, seriously labored for 5 hours (contractions every 30 seconds for 20 - 25 seconds each…no rest, it was exhausting) with absolutely no dilation in my cervix past 1.5cm before I opted for the epidural. After the epidural, I was fully dilated in about 1.5 hours thankfully but Cyrus just couldn't engage. He couldn't get under my pelvic bones so aside from doing an emergency c-section, we opted for the vacuum. That was tough on him. He developed a cephalohematoma on the top of his head, torticollis in his neck, had to have spine manipulation and physical therapy after we figured out he was having issues. We were almost too late in that his head was FLAT (which I didn't realize was wrong) in such a way that the doc thought it was going to affect the formation of the rest of his features (eyes and ears). It was scary! They wanted to put him in a helmet for 17 months for 23 hours per day. We opted not to do that and I just did physical therapy on him each day and it definitely helped, although his head is still misshapen in the back. So, looking back on all that, I probably should have had the C-Section. My hold up then was that it didn't feel like the "right" way to bring a baby into the world. That it would be overly traumatic on him to be just yarded out of my belly without engaging in the natural progression through the vaginal canal. That being said, I think we can all agree, that his method of joining us on planet earth was not stress free for him, or for me.

So, back to Tag…she is not progressing, my cervix is not progressing, and she is just getting bigger and bigger. My doc, who is as close to a midwife as you can expect a medical professional to be, is the one who put the c-section on the table which is not like her at all. She doesn't want me to vaginally deliver a baby that is larger than 9 pounds (why do I have such large babies?!) and neither do it. So, here is what we have decided to do thus far (though this can change based on the next 2 visits). We are scheduling an induction on the 20th for a vaginal birth, but Hirata is planning on it being a 2 day labor (lord help me) at this point so I wouldn't expect to actually deliver until some point in the evening on the 21st. OR, based on the next few appts, we'll actually schedule the c-section (gulp) at which time I will go in on the 21st and have her removed.

I was really hoping my body would get on board with this pregnancy so that things would progress naturally. I am not one of those women who feels like childbirth needs to be a natural process, and I am aware enough of maternal mortality in the world to fully understand how fortunate we are to have these options to ensure a safe delivery, but it would have been nice to just have my water break and then head into the hospital after laboring at home for a bit. Oh well, it is what it is and we'll just keep moving forward in the safest way possible for me and this little nugget.

Snow Play

We have had some great snow days this year, and I mean great! We have had 5 days out of school which is so much fun for us and Cy. This latest one was wonderful because it was warm enough for the boys to play outside ALL day. I, of course, used the time to get the final things in order for Tag's arrival but the boys sledded, hiked, played, built a snow fort, and rode bikes in the snow from 10 - 4! They were both EXHAUSTED but had a wonderful day!