Love Bursts

OMG. 
You guys. 
I have a baby!!!!! 
A real live BABY!!!! 
And I get to KEEP her!!!

Every day at random times (not coincidentally, rarely from 1-6 in the morning ha ha ha), my heart is absolutely overcome with joy and love knowing that Gianna is here and she is my daughter! Chris and I call them love bursts.

She's only been with us for two weeks, and they haven't been the easiest couple of weeks, but she's completely stolen our hearts. We never had a chance--we are so head over heels in love with her.

I'm the luckiest momma alive :-)

Gianna's Birth Story: 10 pm-3 am

Missed the post about the week leading up to G's birth? It's pretty interesting, trust me. :-) Read here.

…I got in bed around 8:45. I read for a bit and fell asleep around 9 pm, only to be awoken at 10 pm by a horrible pain my back…

Let me preface this post by explaining something about myself. I am not normal. I am a very weird person and do things in a very specific way in order to work with my personality (crazy, Type A, resistant to change, stubborn, overreacts). Therefore, many of the things I did to cope with labor, or purposely put myself in denial seem really odd probably to a lot of people, but it’s what worked perfectly for me.  

Okay. Now, to be honest, I don’t really know exactly when I woke up, nor when I went to sleep. I do know that it was sometime between 9 and 10. The pain in my back was really sharp and didn’t subside. I’m sure I had had some Braxton Hicks contractions at some point, but don’t really know. I think it was my first “real” contraction and I kind of knew that. I remember looking at my phone and seeing that my mom had called at 9:15 pm and thinking that I was glad I hadn’t been awake to answer because she has this creepy intuition and probably would have known something was up. 

I thought that the pain would subside and that I would be able to go back to sleep, as is suggested for women to do in early labor…but it didn’t. I remember that drinking a very strong cup of Red Raspberry Leaf tea can help your uterus figure itself out—basically if you’re in false labor, it will help stop the contractions and if you’re in real labor, they will continue to intensify. As you can imagine from the timeline of this story, the latter happened. 

I was getting up and going to the bathroom (to umm…empty my…bowels…) every 10 minutes or less, and trying to walk through the contractions. I had my bloody show pretty early on and was like—cool—bowel emptying and bloody show, these are  like the first real labor signs I’ve had. At the midwives, they don’t usually “check” you in the weeks prior to your due date to see if you’re dilated unless you ask them to because it’s only one of many indicators of the birth timeline and isn’t really helpful. For example, for me, if I found out if I was 5 cm at my 38 week appt, I would’ve been anticipating and probably would’ve been super nervous and anxious and not slept at all the week before. So, I’d never been checked and had no desire to be. I wanted to be ignorant. No expectations. Just trust my body to do what it needs to do when it needed to. I know my personality and I know how to work with it—that was my prescription, not necessarily my advice for everyone. So, you can understand that it was a little surreal to get those first real labor signs. I knew that at some point I would actually give birth, but it was a distant reality. This made things a little more real. 

Now, I know that bloody show isn’t necessarily indicative of impending labor, and that it can happen days, even weeks before the real deal. Early on in my birth story reading (I literally read HUNDREDS of natural childbirth stories to prepare), I learned a few things:

1. Many first time births are start and stop and that I shouldn’t get excited and tire myself out
2. “Signs” of labor are different for everyone and a “textbook” case is super rare. Everyone has different timing and I shouldn’t measure myself by an arbitrary birth measuring stick.
3. Every contraction is working to do something, let your body work and keep loose…eliminate all tension
4. Timing contractions is okay, but if you’re a Type A personality, it’s probably a mistake and will be a waste of your brain cells/energy/emotions (therefore, I never, not once, timed any single contraction, so everything I say is absolutely approximate)
5. Bad back labor/pain probably meant that the baby was posterior (spine to spine)

Anyway. Like I said, I had totally psyched myself up for a marathon 3 day labor. After a few times of this bed/bathroom thing, I gave up. I figured. You know what. Sleep is not going to happen for me. It’s NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Instead of getting worked up and upset that I can’t sleep, just be productive.

 

I also thought about my back labor. To be honest, back labor was the one thing I was most fearful of. I know that posterior births take longer, have a higher incidence of tearing, and are more painful because of the back labor. The longer part was what worried me at the moment, because I already felt like the back pain was unbearable. I couldn’t imagine going through another day or 2 days of this, and then still having energy for delivery. I used my iPhone to search how to flip a posterior baby. I tried a couple of the things, which had me on all fours and resembled yoga positions. It actually kind of helped with the pain too, in a small way. 

Like y’all saw in the last post, I had made a lot of tortillas. I decided I would go ahead and make bean/onion/cheese chalupas for the freezer to have as a quick meal in the upcoming weeks. So, while having some nasty back labor and contractions (now closer together maybe 5ish minutes apart? Who knows.), I cooked. 

At this point, I couldn’t stay stationary and I had to do a little “labor dance” to get through the contractions. I would put my hands on the counter and lean over and just move my hips back and forth. It didn’t really help or lessen the pain, but it was something to do to get through it. I also paced back and forth. At one point I also used the countertop to be counter pressure against my back. (By the way, I never really felt much in my belly, it was just firm…maybe the back pain was so much I couldn’t feel anything else???) 

It didn’t take long to make the chalupas, so I cooled them, wrapped them up in 3 foil packages, and put them in the freezer. By this time, I was thinking—hmmm I wonder if this is real labor? Should I wake Chris up? This is starting to feel intolerable. No, I shouldn’t wake Chris up because he is sick and he needs to rest. Plus if I’m in real labor, at least one of us should get some sleep. 

It was about midnight now, I think. I really made a point not to look at the clock because it stresses me out to look at time while I am unable to sleep, ignorance is bliss in this case. I remember praying and thinking about Jesus and Mary a lot during this time, specifically Mary in the manger giving birth in such nasty conditions, wondering how she dealt with labor. Although she is without sin and was chosen at the beginning of time to give birth to the Savior, God didn’t give her a “pain pass” on labor. 

Once I finished the burritos, I was hoping to do something else productive, but all of a sudden, contractions were happening so quickly that I couldn’t do anything else.  I was down on the ground on all fours swaying my hips side to side. Again. Did this help with the pain? Nope. Why did I do it? No idea. Just instinct. I really kind of felt like some kind of animal because I couldn’t really think, I could only respond and relax. I remember thinking, this TOTALLY SUCKS! If I’m not in real labor right now, I don’t want to know what the ‘real thing’ is like….I am an IDIOT! There’s NO WAY I can do this for much longer. OMG I am totally going to wimp out and get pain medicine.

Self doubt is annoying, but I just kept doing the same thing over and over, completely ignorant of how fast or slow time was passing. Eventually, I heard Chris wake up to go to the bathroom. He must have seen that I wasn’t in bed, so he opened our bedroom door and saw me bent over the table swaying in pain. Bet he didn’t expect that… 

I checked the clock and saw that it was 3 am. 

Next up in G's birth story? 3 am-6 am. Stay tuned!

The week leading up to G’s birth

*disclaimer* this post may or may not make 100% sense...working on less sleep than normal LOL *end disclaimer*

Hey everyone! Chris and I slowly but surely adapting to our new lives with G. Hopefully in the next week or so, we’ll be posting both of our versions of G’s birth story in installments. 

I’m taking a “mommy-break” right now at McDonald’s drinking some decaf coffee. I miss being productive and working on the laptop all day, so it’s nice to be here doing something other than being a human “Dairy Queen” (I stole that term—yes, from you Lisa!). ;-)

The 2 weeks following our babymoon were super busy, as I had a HUGE “before baby” to do list. I baked lots of bread and tried to get freezer food ready to go, made triple batches of lacto-fermented veggies, yogurt, as well as stock the pantry with some of our “essentials”, and washed our first set of cloth diapers, which we'll use once G is about 12 lbs. 

 Cloth diapers on the clothes line Chris made for our apartment! 

4 dozen-ish soaked kamut tortillas (yeah, sounds weird, just know they are really healthy) made using my awesome old-school tortilla press!

Loaf 1 of 5 of fresh baked bread. This one is white whole wheat soaked english muffin bread. Yum.  PS--if you haven't baked bread, you should. It literally costs a quarter to make bread that would cost $4 at the store. And you can count the ingredients on one hand and pronounce all of them :-)

So, the last picture you guys saw was from our babymoon in Broken Bow at 37 weeks. Here is me at 38 weeks:

 (Yes, you've seen this outfit before. This was literally my go-to staple pregnancy outfit.)

--------------------------

 Between 38-39 weeks, Chris and I both got sick. Chris had been feeling really crummy on Tuesday, January 15^th and even came home early. He felt fine the next day, but then I felt sick starting Tuesday night so Chris stayed home to take care of me. I went to my midwife appt and everything was dandy with the baby. I was super congested and felt like I had some upper respiratory thing that I normally get once a year. Wednesday afternoon-Thursday morning I had an on again/off again low grade fever of 100.5 and felt pretty crummy. Ugh. I hadn’t taken any medicine the entire pregnancy and certainly didn’t feel like starting now, but I know it’s not good for the baby for me to have an internal temp over 100, so I took 1 Tylenol at I think 3 different times. I moreso relied on home remedies and my good immune system to fight the sickness, which I was worried could actually be the flu. They included:

·         Ice pack on forehead

·         Sleep

·         Honey/lemon in Upper respiratory or Cold Season Tea

·         Turmeric in pretty much all the food I made

·         Homemade soup with leftover turkey bone broth

·         Neti-pot ( clear out snot)

·         Vicks vapo-rub + steam treatment over the stove (One day I’ll make my own vicks…)

·         Detox bath (Apple cider vinegar, baking soda, and Epsom salt)

·         Apple-cider vinegar water (good for detox/sinuses)

·         Lemon water (detox)

·         Lecto-fermented veggies (probiotics for good gut flora, in case I had to end up taking medicine that killed all my healthy bacteria)

·         Whey with OJ (same as above)

·         Gargle warm salt water

·         Extra prenatal vitamins

Basically. You name it, I did it. All those home remedies were EXHAUSTING let me tell you. Anything I could think of that would help congestion, fever, stuffy nose, or boost my immune system, I did.

By Thursday evening I was better, other than this horrible junk in my lungs that I’m still coughing up. Unfortunately, the next day, Friday, Chris came home sick with a fever that didn’t go away...

On Sunday, January 20^th, when his fever finally got to 102, we decided that he needed to go to the Emergency Care Clinic because it was getting a little too close for comfort to G’s “due date” (January 27^th) and we knew that both of us needed to be healthy, recovered, and well rested for the weeks ahead.

Well, it turns out that Chris had the flu and was put on a 5 day/2x a day medicine. We hate medicine, but knew that it was really important to fight his flu with everything we could and make sure I didn’t get sick again. 

That afternoon I was feeling awesome and really back to my old self again. I decided to get some much needed fresh air. Y’all know I like to combine exercise and productivity, right? Well, I recently started using an app called “Shopkick”. Basically you walk into stores, scan certain items, and look at ads to rack up “kickpoints” that translate into giftcards. I knew a few ppl who used it and it’s literally so simple. If I’m already going to Target, why wouldn’t I take a few extra minutes to scan some products if I can benefit from it? I needed to get out of the appt on Sunday and get some Vitamin D (sun), so I ended up walking 3ish miles to different stores. It was great to get out and I felt awesome. (PS if you want the app, you can click on my link above, and both you and I will get extra points) I think with that one day of walking, I got like $6 in giftcards. Small, but a start, and I got a workout at the same time. My kind of a good time. Haha. 

I went to Mass by myself because Chris was basically one big tired germ bomb, and I prayed for a healing miracle for Chris and that G would stay put until her due date so that we could be healthy. (**keep this in mind for later**) God is funny in the way he answers prayers. 

Once I got home, Chris took this week 39 picture of me. I hate all of the ones he took, I felt like an ugly blob who was still coughing up a lung. Yes, I’m dramatic. 

In the evening, I decided to sleep in the guest bedroom because Chris was super sleepy and I was having trouble falling asleep because I had messed up my sleep schedule from being sick and coughing all night made my ribs really sore, coupled with being, you know, 39 weeks pregnant. 

Little did I know what the rest of the night would entail and that 12 short hours later, I would be holding my baby!!!!

I got in bed around 8:45. I read for a bit and fell asleep around 9 pm, only to be awoken at 10 pm by a horrible pain my back…

…To be continued

OOPS, I forgot. Y'all probably want a couple pictures of Gianna, so I'll sate your appetite. :-) She is literally so cute it makes my heart ache!!!!

Our lives together so far...

Hello everyone from Christopher, Rachel, and Gianna!


Although lacking a little bit in sleep, the past week has been incredible! To sum up, Gianna was obviously born early, we were totally unprepared, Chris had the flu, I was recovering from some pseudo-flu/upper respiratory business, water birth is awesome, heart shaped uterus complicates everything, my mom is my Grandma hero and we would have been totally lost without her help this week, etc etc etc. There were some posts in progress, like the last mysteries of the Rosary, week 38/39 update, and keys to a happy/healthy pregnancy that obviously didn't happen as a result, but hey, life happens, and it's pretty stinking good.

Gianna is literally the most perfect baby in the world and we've been having a blast getting to know her and giving her lots and lots and lots of kisses!

We're in the process of putting together the birth story from both of our perspectives, but in the meantime, wanted to share some pictures we've taken over the past few days with you. Hope you all enjoy!

SHE'S HERE!!!

After lots and lots of hard work, Gianna has made her entrance into this great, wide world!

She was born January 21st, 2013 at 9:22 AM, weighing 8 pounds, 7 ounces.

Mommy, Daddy, and Baby are all very exhausted, but doing great! More to come once we get a little sleep ;-)

Please pray for all 3 of us as we enter this new phase in all of our lives!

St. Gianna Beretta Molla, pray for us!
St. Elizabeth, pray for us!
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!
St. Agnes, pray for us!