It’s amazing how much has changed since that day… it was a few days before IVF #2′s failed egg retrieval… I was so so so so not ready for that… but I am incredibly thankful to have been able to try again with IVF #3 the following cycle, the one that got us Bubs.

So, what’s the point of this post?

To say hello…

To hold this space because I haven’t forgotten it, I just don’t know how to put my feelings into words any more…

To encourage any of you who might need a little reminder that there is more to come… So so so so much more, you just have to keep going.

xoxo

Bubs is turning one at the end of next week.  I know!  She is amazing – silly, sweet, and is always in a good mood.  Motherhood is both different than and exactly what I expected.  Totally awesome, totally exhausting, totally worth it.

So much has happened in the last… has it really been more than nine months since my last post?  Stayathomemomitude is so much more hectic than I could ever have imagined.  Yes, I quit my job.  Bubs and I couldn’t handle it.  I also became certified as a birth doula and have been working professionally as a doula.

Oh, yes, and I am in the midst of drafting an email to the RE.  For real.

First, I must tell all you ladies still working towards motherhood: Keep at it. I’m still finding myself looking at Bubs thinking, She’s here!  She’s finally here!  She’s really, really, really finally here! If it wasn’t for our perseverance (a.k.a. stubbornness), she wouldn’t be.

Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Bubs.  She’s almost eleven weeks now, but this is a picture from either her first or second day. 

Her birth was pretty nuts. I’m very happy with how I labored – I dilated relatively quickly, but then got stuck at what they called “9+” for three hours because she was sunny-side-up and I had a little piece of cervix left.  I couldn’t help but push for the last hour or so, and then when I was finally 10cm dilated, I pushed for two more hours and she was very close to crowning and got stuck.  I negotiated with my doctor to try the vacuum, he told me it was going to hurt a lot, so I finally gave in to pain meds and got an epidural that took several tries to finally get right (yes, it sucked, and I still have bruises on my spine).  After several contractions of me pushing and the doctor pulling, she still hadn’t crowned and her heart rate dropped and the meconium flooded out of me.  She was stuck and failing.  We were rushed to the OR for an emergency c-section, and she was born about 15 minutes later, healthy and crying.

During the first few weeks, we had almost every issue we could have faced with breastfeeding, but again my stubbornness paid off and it has been great since she was three weeks old.  Now that she’s doing well with the feedings, she is refusing to take the bottle (stubbornness, the next generation) and I’m having to drive back and forth to daycare several times each day on the days I work, although I’m constantly about two minutes from quitting my job (and I’m only back part-time).

It’s so incredible to interact with her, it’s almost heartbreaking!  She smiles often, and seems close to laughing… I cannot wait for that to happen.  Watching her with D is the best thing I’ve ever witnessed.  He’s an even better father than I imagined and seeing how happy they make each other is worth all that we went through during the five years it took us to get her here.  She’s really, really, really here!

I don’t know what the future holds for us as far as more children, and I’m sad that I don’t have all the time in the world to worry about that later.  As soon as my period returns, the endometriosis will return and we’ll have to make a decision to either try again right away or risk it taking over again.  But we’ll make those decisions when we must.

Bubs arrived shortly before midnight on Thursday, birth story will have to wait a few days until I have time at an actual keyboard.

She’s beautiful- oh, yes, she’s a girl! I plan on putting together a password protected post as well so I can share a photo of her.

We’ve really loved falling in love with her. We both keep saying how we can’t believe she is finally here!

We are still in the hospital because of jaundice and trying to get her beefed up a little as she lost more than they’d like and is now a petite six pounds four ounces.
The boob magnet calls… I’ll write more as soon as I can!

I’ve been having contractions off and on for the last several days (although they’ve died off at the moment), and I was 3-4 centimeters dilated at my last appointment on Wednesday.

Tomorrow is our due date and tonight is a full moon!

We can hardly wait!

So.  What have I been up to?  Eating a lot of chocolate ice cream.  Laundry — so many baby clothes can fit in one load of laundry.  Not sleeping very well.  Swimming a lot to try to handle the smothering heat.  Playing stop-pushing-right-there-so-stinking-hard with the baby.  Trying to narrow down the list of girl names if Bubs comes out with girl-parts (We’re pretty settled on the boy’s name).  Lots of relaxation and exercises with D so that I can find my groove when the time comes.  Battling with the kittens over space and proper peeing etiquette (Any advice on how to get the second-on-the-totem-pole cat to stop peeing right outside of the box to assert at least a little dominance over the alpha cat?  He’s ruined our wood floors and I’m getting desperate to figure something out before this baby arrives.)

And, lastly, I’ve been doing a lot of expanding:

At 36 weeks

Out of everything at the end of this pregnancy, the most surprised I am is by my conflicting emotions: I don’t ever want this pregnancy to end, this closeness with Bubs, this special time — I’ve really enjoyed being pregnant; but I also cannot wait to see Bubs’ face, to smell Bubs’ skin, to look at Bubs’ fingers and toes…

Everything’s lining up for us.  We’ve gotten the nursery put together, clothes and blankets washed, cloth diapers ordered, Bubs is no longer breech, we’ve chosen a doula, I’ve helped my last doula client give birth, the car seat is installed.  We have a few more weeks of childbirth and other baby classes and then we wait until Bubs chooses to make an appearance.  I keep pinching myself – is this really happening?  And, thankfully, the pinch hurts because it really, really is.

Since I’ve been such a slacker at blogging, our baby shower was everything we’d hoped it would be – a lovely afternoon surrounded by friends and family.  And the cake, OH THE CAKE!  It was so delicious and I wish I had some right this moment.

I’ve been blogging less and less, and I feel like it will become more and more sparse once the baby arrives.  I’m still trying to keep up with as many blogs as I can, though, because support is as critical in the ALI Community as it is in real life.  It’s not an unfamiliar situation as there are countless blogs I’ve read over the years that have fizzled out with either the arrival of a baby or moving on to childfree living, or just simply moving on.  I started this blog four and a half years ago with so much ahead of me, so much to work through, and so much to get out of my system.  Now that we’re so close to our goal of parenthood there’s a new and different path ahead of me, one I can hardly wait to begin.

I wish that there was a three year old at home that we could be buying an “I’m the big sister/brother” shirt for in preparation of Bubs’ arrival in two months.  There’s no good in allowing myself to wallow in that What if?, but I still miss what is not but could have been…

I’m focusing everything good and powerful I have into Bubs, and, to quote myself,  I’m looking forward to looking back on this time with pride because we stuck with it and made it through to the other side.

We have a comfortably small house, perfect for the two of us, and hopefully perfect for three of us for at least several more years.  Our guest room was the smallest room in the house because we don’t have too many out of town guests.  Over the years, we’ve had roommates occupy this room, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes longer.  It’s always been my favorite room in the house, mostly because the bed is SO comfortable.

Guest Room (before September 2008)

In anticipation of beginning the adoption process (or actually getting pregnant from one of our cycles), we set up a crib I got from a coworker.  As you might know, it never got much further than that for a variety of reasons (first adoption agency was shut down, then we started looking into what turned into a marketing-centric adoption referral service, then we began the search into our state adoption services when we decided to move forward with IVF#2 and #3… which resulted in Bubs).

Guest Room/Nursery (as of September 2008)

The comfy bed has been moved to what used to be the music/craft/office/storage room which is now mostly organized and completely legit as a guest room.  The crib is new; the bookshelf at the bottom left has been passed around the family and was mine, painted yellow, when I was little;  I put together the Wizard.of.Oz puzzle when I was ten or so and have had it in my bedrooms ever since; the wall hanging quilt was a gift from my aunt; the painting over the lamp was my wedding gift to D that I commissioned a friend to paint for us (D’s a big ol’ teddy bear, and he always calls my long toes tentacles, hence the octopus); the glider/ottoman set we bought brand new for less than $100; and the bouncer in the middle was one of the first baby gear gifts we were given, from my SIL.  OH! I’m not sure if you can see it, but in the top left corner is a glass/stone wall hanging of a pregnant woman.  We gave this to my other SIL when she was pregnant with our nephew (now 5.5 years old).  She gave it back to us with a sweet note about how much it meant to her, and that she would like it to become a tradition to pass it around among pregnant family members.  I’m not sure if we’ll be able to give it to my SIL who is currently pregnant (SIL number three, to differentiate between the other two already mentioned in this paragraph) because she’s due only three weeks after me.

Nursery (as of May 2010)

I promise to post soon about the baby shower (it was pretty fantastic after hoping for one for so long).  And please take a look under The Bubs tab up top for two recent photos of my expanding waist (I’m trying not to post too many belly or ultrasound photos on posts so that people that want to see them can but people who don’t want to don’t have to)!