3 Months

This sweet girl is three months old. In the last week or two she's suddenly realized there is a world around her and she is really happy about that. Don't be fooled by these pictures. She is super smiley and starting to giggle and it's delightful. This is one of my favorite stages, when babies really start to interact with the world around them. 

At three months Chloe still sleeps through the night most nights. She's still in her rocker sleeper and loves it. She isn't much of a day napper unless she's in her swing, so we do that a lot. She sleeps really well in her carseat too, which is lovely because I do a lot of pickups/dropoffs these days.

She's very patient with her sibling's love. Genevieve can't stay away from her. She kisses her all day long and Chloe mostly isn't bothered.

She's growing like a weed. She is over 13 pounds now and fitting into her 3-6 month clothes and even some 9-month clothes. She loves all things cloth. The fastest way to calm her down and help her sleep is to give her a blanket, most particularly a beautiful white knitted one from her Grandma Great, Bill's grandma.

I take her and Aaron running with me a few days a week and she is kind enough to tolerate it. She doesn't sit up well yet, so she kind of slumps in her seat, but with the head debobbler thing from her carseat that she grew out of she is pretty comfy in the stroller and she usually falls asleep.

Mostly she just tags along with me everywhere I go and is pleasant as can be, which is really awesome. Oh how I love this sweet little girl.

She laughs!

Chloe started laughing this morning. I even got it on video. It's adorable. But it was before we got all the way dressed for the day and there's a bit too much undergarment in view. Hahaha! So just know that we're enjoying the cuteness and I'll try to get a video soon with clothes on.

We went to the Clemson First Friday parade last night. It happens every year the Friday before the first home football game. Not gonna lie, it was the tamest parade I've ever attended. Apparently Utah knows how to make parades a bit more exciting than this one was and I was spoiled without even knowing it. We had fun even as I wondered why I would want to see all the sororities on campus walk by shouting the Clemson cheer. I noticed not a single fraternity participated. We've never gone to it before, so chalk it up on our list of lasts. It was hot! I've been checking the weather and this weekend looks like it will be the last two days in the 90s. Folks, 93 degrees is too hot for September. Chloe's face in the pics says how she feels about that.

But regardless of the heat and the general chillness of the parade and lack of floats and people throwing candy, it was totally worth getting out on a Friday night to be with the crowds and let the kids get all excited. We're starting to come out of our shell of staying at home all the time. When I had Aaron that first year we basically hibernated. It was so stinkin' hard to get everyone out the door to do everything. But now a couple years later it's somehow not so hard, and so rewarding to get out and about. I think it's because the other kids are a lot older and more capable even as we have another baby. It makes all the difference. It's good because I'm not a natural homebody, so being able to get out and about again fills my cup.

Aaron is all about balls, so these ones totally made his night.

Guys, I'm hot!

The low flying plane and news helicopters were pretty fun for the kids too.

No seriously guys, it's hot, and this hat is doing nothing for me. Ha!

Lasts

We drove there and back 9.5 hours yesterday to go to Isle of Palms beach by Charleston. It was a whim of an idea I had Sunday night that Bill jumped on board with and helped me make happen, and it was awesome. Getting back at 10PM on a school night was maybe less awesome, but it was totally worth it.

See, Bill and his advisor are both pretty certain he will be able to finish his PhD in time to graduate next May. As all grad students know it's never certain until he has passed his dissertation defense, but it's a very good sign that both he and his advisor have the same goal and expectation and are working towards that.

That being the case it has suddenly hit me that we may only have nine months left here in South Carolina and we better enjoy as much as we can before we graduate and head off to who knows where, but most likely far away from here. I really love living here. We have such great friends and grad school has been about as good an experience as we could expect from it, and I will really miss this place when we leave. It's been almost four years and that's definitely the longest we've lived anywhere since we got married, so it has definitely grabbed me. It will be a sad day when we drive out, albeit also wonderful because college will finally be over and that makes me ecstatic.

Anyway, so we headed down to Charleston and had a lovely day at the beach. Chloe experienced the ocean for the first time and seemed okay with it. The other three had a fantastic day. They love the beach and playing in the waves and building dribble castles with dad and shoveling mountains of sand and going and playing more in the waves. It made me a tad nervous how far out they were comfortable going, but I was also really pleased that they got over their fear of the waves, especially Aaron, from when they were younger. The footing is pretty uncertain in the ocean and they figured out how to stay upright, which is great. We stayed close enough to grab them if they did happen to get knocked over, and all three had at least one wave completely wash over them at one point during the day, but they were okay and came back for more.

The best part for me was when we pulled them around in the shallows on the boogie board. Aaron especially had this look of pure ecstasy on his face that made me so happy. I was surprised he wanted to do it, but after seeing Bill pull Spencer and Genevieve around, he hopped on and asked me to take him for a ride.

It was a good day. It may be the last beach day before we move. We shall see. Check that one off the list though. 

Oh, and Bill and Aaron were certainly there but I only took pics while I was hanging out with sleeping Chloe and when she woke up, and they didn't come over then, so we'll just pretend we have pics of them.

Genevieve is 4!

My sweet and spicy Genevieve turns four years old tomorrow! She's been so very excited about her birthday all summer long. Hers is the last of our four summer birthdays, seven weeks after Aaron's, so it feels like a long wait. But tomorrow is the day and she's so happy. She keeps telling me things that will be different since she's four, mostly things she won't be scared of, like the Harry Potter movies for one. I love how her mind works.

We celebrated her birthday today, with all the food she wanted to eat, plus her requested cake, strawberry with pink icing. My friend posted it on her blog and it is divine. We went to a handy dandy funfest put on by Clemson City and she thought it was all for her birthday. Win! She got lots of great presents from us and her grandparents and when she went to bed tonight she told me it was the best day ever. That's what I like to hear! And we're going to celebrate a bit more tomorrow, so it will keep on being awesome.

My oven isn't level, so everything comes out slightly thicker on one side than the other. Since this was a double decker cake I just strategically put the rounds so the thick and thin parts matched up. Voila!

This is so Genevieve. No clothes on, hair in her face, and so happy about her new gifts. She's a firecracker of a girl and she sure does know how to enjoy life. 

She helped me add on the sprinkles before we blew out the candles. She's not as interested in cooking with me as her brothers, but she comes in sometimes.

So much happiness in this special girl.

Genevieve is a girl of extremes. She feels everything so strongly, so she is so happy, then so sad, then so angry, and whatever other emotion she can feel. I love that she tries to make others feel good. I wish she wasn't so good at setting her brothers off, ha! She loves Chloe with utter abandon. That baby has received thousands of kisses from Genevieve. :)

She's so excited to start preschool. She has to wait about 10 more days, but it's coming up and she's going to love it, I'm absolutely certain. I can't wait to see what this year holds for her. She's going to rock it, whatever it is.

First week of school in the books

Spencer had his first week of school this week and it went awesome!

I can't believe how old he looks in this picture. He is doing so well. He loves everything about kindergarten. 

I took him to school on the first day. I walked him into the gym where the other kids were and sat down with him and asked him if he wanted me to walk him to his classroom. He thought about it for a good long moment and said no. I asked if he was ready for me to go. Another long moment of thought, then yes. Ha! It's like he wasn't nervous at all. Maybe he wasn't. That's not an emotion he feels very often as far as I can tell. I had a much harder time leaving than he did having me go, but no actual tears, just teary thoughts. 

Since then Bill has taken him to school on the way to work and I pick him up in the afternoons. It's working out great. 

I don't have tons more to say about kindergarten except that I knew he would love it and I'm so glad he does. He wants to go back every day and that makes me happy. 

We're reading a ton now. I had gotten out of the habit through Chloe's pregnancy because I was so tired, but we're back on it and have been plowing our way through the Little House on the Prairie books. The kids love it. We're on book two and read a couple or three chapters a day. 

Genevieve starts preschool in 2.5 weeks. She's so excited for that too. We went to a preschool playdate on Wednesday and she had a ball. Her backpack that had been on backorder finally came in and she wore it all day long. It was adorable.

 

Come September 7th when she starts it is going to be really quiet around here in the mornings. I can't wait to see how much she loves it too. I know she will. 

End of the summer

Remember all those articles that come out every year around this time with controversy about parents being too excited for their kids to go back to school and throw guilt around about how we should treasure every moment with them and we're bad parents if we are ready for school to start and get them back into it? I'm sure another round is just waiting to come out in the coming days.

Well guess what? They're utterly ridiculous because kids going back to school is awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And not just for the parents, but for the kids. So while I'm probably not going to stage a photo of me jumping for joy in the background of my kids' first day of school photo as if I can't wait for them to be gone, well, I can't wait.

This summer has been a total wash. School ended and I went through the last few weeks of my pregnancy, which are always the worst. Then I had Chloe and spent the next month recovering from that. That's mostly past now. But I still only have a seven-week old and her schedule is all over the place. I have three other kids who have decided they need to take all their aggressions of being cooped up and a bit bored more often than not on each other and fight entirely too often. This summer has been horribly hot and humid with very little of the normal breaks for beautiful rainstorms that we usually have. Going outside is pretty torturous most of the time. There aren't a lot of activities to do in our little rural neck of the woods that don't involve swimming, which is really hard to do with just me and all my kids. And let's talk about how most activities are hard to do with me and four kids five and under.

So you know what? I'm really excited for summer to end. I'm excited for Spencer to start kindergarten. He's giddy over his teacher and going to school. I'm thrilled Genevieve gets to start preschool in a few weeks. She can't wait. She's going to love it. I can't wait for the potential of Chloe and Aaron being asleep at the same time occasionally. The idea of sitting on the couch and just not doing anything for a bit and not having anyone come blazing in with some need is tantalizing. I can't wait for the kids to come home after their days happy and make better use of the time they have here at home instead of counting the hours. Despite Chloe sleeping through the night, I still don't get enough sleep because I have other responsibilities when she's asleep and most of the time I don't go to bed at a decent hour.

So crazy articles aside, I am thrilled for the end of summer and the start of school. I'm thrilled for them to be gone so I can breathe again. I'm thrilled for the experiences they are going to have that I can't give them. I'm thrilled for their growth and learning. And I'm ready for a bit of breathing room to get the handle of this four kids life. It's something else. I love them so, so much and I'm grateful for every one of them and their amazingness. I'm also completely overwhelmed at regular intervals and feel totally lost. And let's not forget that I'm there's a real possibility that we could be done with grad school next summer and the happiness that brings me knows no bounds. For now Bill works days, he works nights, he sometimes works Saturdays and all so that can become a reality. He is working his tail off and he is amazing for the effort.

This article touched a chord for me today. It's very true. So onward and upward and let's be done with summer and onto the next phase. No regrets and no guilt. Just excitement for new things. 

Pictures from this week

Sleepy Chloe on my shoulder. So sweet

She deigned to sit in her bouncer, which she does not love yet, for a few minutes late at night while she was happy right before bed.

Spencer asked us to take his picture at the park

More park

Everyone's favorite seat, though we officially call this Chloe's stroller now to avoid all arguments.

Look, she does smile! She's rather long suffering of her sibling's love and starting to favor us with more of these. It's fantastic.

These are pizza rolls. They are amazing. The cheese leaked out the bottom and got crunchy. Oh so good. Home run dinner. We'll be making these again. 

Not a good shot since it's through the screen, but Genevieve and Aaron decided to camp out under the trampoline. Aaron was full on laying on the dried out grass with no clothes on. We've had a horribly dry summer, so the lawn is basically dead. It made me cringe as I was worried about ants mauling him and scratchy dead grass, but he didn't seem to mind at all.

Impromptu Potty Training

Aaron is in the midst of potty training. He's two years and three weeks old. This is like six months before I would have even thought about potty training him, but it turns out kids sometimes have their own agenda.

Tickled pink to be in "big kid" underwear

He's been telling us he's poopy for at least a month. Most of the time he's not, he just wants his diaper changed. We've been coaching him to tell us he's just wet and he sometimes does that too. In the last couple weeks he's started actually taking his diaper off, which is shocking when you find him naked. It's only happened once when he was poopy, but it made me nervous.

Lately I've been telling Aaron that if he needs to poop or pee he should just go in the toilet. Every time he very firmly said, "no!"

So Bill and I decided two days ago to pull down the potty seat that fits on top of the normal toilet. Aaron has never seen it before and I figured why not, we used to put Genevieve on the toilet before we put her in the bath and that worked well when we actually potty trained. Well, Spencer and Genevieve got all kinds of excited and helped us show Aaron how it worked and what do you know, he peed in it right then and after that he refused to put a diaper back on. Since he's already taking them off, it's not like we could really keep it on him. Instead he said he wanted underwear. I happen to have a few pairs from when Spencer potty trained and they were too small, so these were new. We put them on Aaron and he was beyond tickled. He spent the rest of the day going pee about every ten minutes on his own. He was totally enthralled. There was not a single accident.

The evening rolled around and he utterly refused to put a diaper back on for bedtime. Good thing we've potty trained two kids already and have lots of bed pads and that whole routine is old hat. We took him to the bathroom, put a pair of underwear on, and left him, fully expecting to have a wet bed when he woke up the next morning. Except there wasn't one. He stayed dry all night! By comparison, neither of my older ones could do this until much after they day potty trained and one still isn't dry every night. So at this point I'm totally blown away.

So yesterday we had more of the same. The toilet wasn't as much a novelty anymore, but he still only had one accident and it was outside on the porch, so totally not a big deal. My house has all wood floors, so even when there are accidents inside, it's not even a big deal. And this morning he woke up dry again.

Today hasn't gone as well. We've been in and out doing all kinds of things and he's had a few accidents, but he also pooped in the toilet, which is amazing again because that took Spencer a few weeks to figure out back three years ago when we potty trained. He peed during his nap too, but again, fully prepared for that, so not a big deal, just another load of laundry with a pad and blanket.

So there you have it. We're potty training completely at the mercy of Aaron. He started it and it seems we're going to keep doing it. In my experience potty training usually looks like an initial few days where you have like 30 accidents before the kid figures out, generally through bribery, that the toilet is okay to pee in. Then there's months after where you remind them pretty regularly to use the bathroom and eventually they figure it out and go on their own, but it's quite a few months. I'm just tickled that it looks like we totally skipped that first phase. I've always found that part so taxing and it's pretty well the best news all week that I may not have to do it this go around. Aaron is definitely earning favorite child status for this week. Hahaha!

Chloe at one month

Chloe hit her one-month mark on Saturday. What do you say about a baby that tiny still? She's still cute. :) She lost all her hair on the top of her head last week, just like her brothers did. We still haven't decided if her hair is blonde or red. We'll have to wait for it to grow back in to see what how it looks.

She still sleeps through the night, which is amazing. She slept from 8:30 to 4:45 this morning. That makes such a huge difference for my recovery.

She's getting more interactive. We're seeing more smiles and she likes to look at everything. She lets us lay her down on the floor now and she'll just look around.

She has trouble actually going to sleep and will only sleep so far in her rocker/sleeper, not flat on her back anywhere. But that isn't a problem, just a bit of a future worry for switching her to her pack and play, but whatever, no use worrying about that now. My friend just gifted us their swing, and she is loving that tonight, which is wonderful.

She's growing like a weed. I don't know exactly how much she weighs, but based off of trying to weigh her while I held her the other day, she's already up to 10 pounds. So pretty much she's growing like a weed, which is great.

She still has her siblings completely enamored. She's tolerant of their overzealous love, thankfully. And that's it for now. She's calling me. :)

Aaron is two

Oh geez, this kid. I love him to pieces. It's hard to believe he's already two, but more so it's hard to believe he's only been earthside two years. He's packed a lot of impact in that two years and I can't remember at all what it was like before he made his debut into our family. So without further ado, here are a few great things about Aaron that I don't want to forget.

Aaron is a charmer. Those that know Bill know about the little twinkle in his eye that he gets when he's about to say something really funny to someone in a side conversation or have the perfect comedic comment. Well, Aaron totally inherited this trait. He has the best sense of humor. He gets that same twinkle in his eye and I always know whatever he does is going to be super funny. He loves to laugh and make other people laugh.

Aaron is always up for trying something new. He doesn't have a lot of the boundaries that the older two have developed. For instance, I usually keep a bag of homemade cookies in the freezer. We usually have one a day. The instant Aaron learned how to open the freezer, the barrier of my kids asking me if they could have a cookie evaporated. See, Aaron goes and opens the freezer and gets one for himself without asking. He always grabs one for the older two as well and sometimes one for me too. How can you be bothered at a kid for getting into something he maybe shouldn't when he shares with everyone around him?

Aaron is adventurous. Why not hop back in the pool after your bath and getting pajamas on? Seemed perfectly reasonable to him. I just laughed. I find that's a better reaction than getting bothered. Everyone is happier.

Aaron loves to be carried. Mostly he just wants his daddy to carry him everywhere, because he's more attached to Bill then I thought possible, especially after Genevieve going through this age phase, as she was super attached, but Aaron takes it to a whole new level. He LOVES his daddy. 

He's a food lover. He doesn't always want to eat what I give him, but he loves to eat. It's refreshing.

He loves hats. I have to say he looks pretty good in them too. 

He adores his baby sister. He was the first one to hold her the day she was born. He mostly calls her Baby, but he knows her name too and he'll use that. She's been crying a lot in the car the last couple days and he will say, "Mommy, rock the baby." So sweet. He has a gentle soul. He sees when people don't feel good and wants to make them feel better. He is so attached to his Goonie stuffed bear. We've bought one for each of the kids and when one of his siblings is crying he'll run and find theirs and bring it to them. It's like he thinks in his head that Goonie makes him feel better, so obviously it will make them as well. They don't have nearly the attachment to theirs, but not surprisingly, they have grown to love theirs a lot as well! This kid is influential.

Aaron is a problem solver. He comes upon an obstacle and rather than be deterred he figures out a tool that he can use to get past his problem. It's a marvel to behold. He climbed on chairs way earlier than any of my others. Honestly, he has had more bumps and bruises than the older two because he's always pushing limits to do more. I kind of love it because he's not easily frustrated and that makes a rather delightful child.

Speaking of delightful, he's just such a sunny personality. He has mastered the concept that saying please gets him a lot of things. He's currently exploring the screaming option as well, likely as a result of seeing his older siblings try it, but he's quick to stop when we tell him it won't get him anywhere. He's a thinker and it's fun to see the wheels turning in his head. 

Aaron knows what he wants. He's very willing to share his opinions. Again, it's super refreshing to ask him whether he wants to eat something or do something and get an honest, clear cut answer. I really appreciate that when life at my house is so chaotic. 

And so that's Aaron right now. I can't wait to see what the next year brings. This kid is such an integral part of our family and I'm so glad he's ours.

Naming a baby

I don't think I've ever told the story of how we chose Chloe's name, and now seems like a great time to do that. I'm convinced she's in on choosing her first name. Bill and I somewhat half heartedly had thrown names around the first few months of my pregnancy, but nothing was sounding right. We didn't have any names we both liked. I can't remember exactly when it happened, maybe sometime in January, but one day I woke up with the name Chloe bouncing around my head. It was kind of like a bell rang in my head and I just knew that was her name. It felt so certain to me that I hesitated to tell Bill in case he didn't feel the same way. We went out on a date for our anniversary a day or two later and I told him I had a name but I was hesitant to share it, lest he shoot it down. I really shouldn't have worried. Bill totally isn't like that, but whatever. Anyway, to my surprise not only did he not shoot down the name, but he loved it. We basically just looked at each other, marveling.

So we had her first name, but her middle name was another story. We spent the next probably four months throwing names around to no effect. In the past we've used family names for middle names, but this time that didn't work out as well. I love both my mom and mother-in-law, but neither of their names worked as a middle name very well, and I didn't want to use just one and not the other since she's our last baby. My other kids are middle named after Bill and I and then my dad.

I finally decided I wanted to find a name that had a meaning that was special to me. I started searching around and still didn't find a lot, but kept at it. We actually decided on the name Chloe before we knew for sure she was a girl. I had always thought we would have a boy, a girl, and two boys. That's a different story, but I felt like Chloe was a girl pretty much from the day I found out I was pregnant, which was both very surprising and very exciting for me. Another boy would have been great, but having a girl was unexpected and a lovely surprise. It balances our family out and just made me very happy. So my searches for names that had meaning centered around all sorts of positive words like happiness and joy and such. I actually found the name Anabel a few months ago and Bill didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. We threw out quite a few other names and nothing else clicked, so we decided basically that unless something else came to us, that would be it. And nothing else came, so there you go, Chloe Anabel, our sweet surprise of a girl. She's a wonderful addition to our family, completing it and bringing that special feeling into our house that comes from a new little one.

Chloe Anabel

I have a quiet moment right now while the kids are either asleep or outside with Bill, so I'm going to jump on it and write Chloe's birth story. I imagine it will be a while before I have another chance if I don't.

I have 19 nieces and nephews on my side of the family, plus another seven on Bill's side. We have quite a few chances to land on shared birthdays as a result. Back when Spencer was born, we were surprised and pleased that he was born on my birthday. When Genevieve came along she ended up sharing a birthday with her cousin Michael, 16 years her senior. Aaron came four days after my brother and nephew's birthday and he doesn't share with anyone, though he shares birthday month with his dad. So this go around I was due on June 25th, but my niece's birthday is the 22nd, my sister's is the 16th, my aunt's is the 26th, so there was a high likelihood I could have Chloe on another shared birthday.

Throughout my whole pregnancy with her I felt like she was going to come early. I grew very fast early on, so when I compared photos with my other pregnancies, I was much bigger at the beginning. I stopped doing that after the first trimester, so in the last few weeks of June when I happened to do the same thing again, I was surprised to see that things had changed. I was actually smaller with her than with any of my other three kids. I was a little shocked actually because I just expected to be bigger each pregnancy, as had been the case before. It threw me off just a bit on the whole idea that she would come early, as she still had room to grow, more than the others had.

Fast forward to June 10th. Bill is at a conference in Boston. I'm home with the three kids, surviving his five days away while 38 weeks pregnant. That night while I work I start having contractions. I recognized them as such and not Braxton-Hicks, but yet they weren't painful, which left me wondering a bit. They went on for close to five hours, long enough for me to text my midwife and let her know, just in case anything progressed. I went to bed that night wondering if I would be woken up to more intense ones, but nothing happened. Bill got home the next day, much to our shared relief, and over the next ten days probably every other night I had the same thing happen, hours of contractions that never escalated but were definitely the early labor type.

June 21st then 22nd roll around. I was really hoping the 22nd was it, but by the evening it was apparent nothing would happen that day. I was discouraged. It felt like I was going to be pregnant forever. That seems absurd to type, but the feeling is very real. It just feels interminable at the end. Chloe had descended so far in my pelvis that everything hurt. I couldn't sit, move, walk, do anything without just being uncomfortable or in pain, so time was moving very slow. I was finding it very hard to sleep as well, so the exhaustion was hitting hard. Bill gave me a blessing that night at about 11pm that was comforting but also left me feeling like I'd be pregnant at least another full day. He said I would get a better night's sleep and that she would come very soon and be healthy and well. We headed to bed and I fell asleep quickly.

Side note, despite feeling like I was going to be pregnant forever, and so ready to be done, I actually didn't feel particularly ready for labor. Previously my shortest labor was 12 hours with Aaron and it was intense. Genevieve was so big that the end of her labor was really crazy hard too. Comparatively speaking, my entire pregnancy with Chloe I felt way better than with the last one, but those last few days were so uncomfortable that I was having a really hard time feeling like I had more to give in labor, and I expected to need more. So I wanted to be done, but at the same time I was worried I wouldn't have what I needed to get through this last hurdle.

Okay, back to falling asleep on the 22nd. I don't remember if it was two or three times, but between 11pm when I fell asleep and 12:45am when I woke up for good, I got up two or three times to use the bathroom. Each time it felt like I had been asleep forever, and I had this band of pain in my abdomen that was really annoying. But each time I went back to sleep until 12:45am when I got up one more time and the thought suddenly hit me that maybe labor had started and it wasn't feeling like contractions because I hadn't realized that's what they were, so I wasn't relaxing. As soon as I tweaked my mental view of what I was feeling and relaxed, the band of pain transformed into contractions, and not just little ones, minute-long contractions coming every three minutes. I tried to lay down and sleep some more, but only made it through about three or four before I rolled over and woke Bill up and told him I didn't think I was going to be sleeping anymore tonight.

I almost felt silly calling my midwife at this point, but you can't argue with that kind of intensity and time in between contractions, so despite only having had five or six contractions, I went ahead and texted her to come. She's an hour from me, so that factored into my reason for texting so fast as well. It turned out to be a very good choice.

Bill and I immediately got to work prepping for the birth. He worked on blowing up the tub and getting it filled up, I started gathering supplies: the birthing kit, plus all the miscellaneous things like bowls and trays and towels from around the house. I was having steady contractions still, but for the first time I had no back labor, so when Bill tried to come and push on my back like he had every other one of our babies, I sent him off because it wasn't needed and didn't feel good. Instead I just leaned against doorways or tables and rocked my hips back and forth. That seemed to be the trick to work through each contraction. This went on for about an hour. The hose got all tangled up, so we had to fix that before we could fill the tub. Aside from that, the prep work went smoothly.

Somewhere around 2am one of the assistant midwives showed up. She immediately got to work setting up the stuff they would need during the actual delivery. At this point I was hanging out in the living room leaning against the desk, rocking through each contraction. They had upped in intensity some. I was having 30-second long less intense ones followed by maybe a ten-second break and then a full minute long hardcore one that I started to need to vocalize a bit to make it through. I had a hard time believing it, but I also started to feel her moving down I guess into the birthing canal. It had only been an hour!

This whole time everything was so surreal. I had such a hard time believing things could really be progressing as fast as they seemed to be and I didn't want to lose my mental edge if I had hours ahead of me. Now is probably the best time to mention what turned out to be the secret weapon. Way early on in my pregnancy my midwife told me about an herbal mix she recommended called Gentle Birth. I got it the same place I got my birthing kit. It involved taking a bit of a tincture three times a day for the last five weeks of my pregnancy. It tasted a bit like dirt, but nothing too onerous. I'm convinced this is what made such a difference for me this go around. I realize every birth is different, but this is my fourth and the other three had marked similarities that just didn't happen this go around. I've never dilated early the other times. While I didn't get checked at all, I'm convinced all those nights of early labor really were doing something and I was much further along Wednesday night. I've never had contractions hit so fast and so consistent. They weren't particularly intense, and that has never happened either. Basically everything was faster, less intense, and easier, and I couldn't recommend higher to any friend of mine that is pregnant or will be to try this stuff out. If it has any similar effect for you it will be worth it. It's not even expensive stuff!

Alright, back to 2am or so. I'm in what I realized after the fact was transition. I'm having super long contractions that I have to vocalize a bit to get through, but honestly, are still totally doable. I'm feeling her move down. I'm beginning to feel like I might want to push soon, which totally blows my mind. The pool is finally filled enough and I decide it's a good time to get in. I wasn't sure how it would feel, but turns out it felt amazing. The warm water was great. My actual midwife showed up about then, at like 2:20-2:25am. I have just a few minutes' break from contractions while I imagine my body adjusted to being in the warm water and how good that felt. Then I have one contraction and I kind of move around to figure out how to best work through it. The next one that comes I'm leaning against the pool side and it's the first one that feels like it gets ahead of me on the pain scale, but I have a feeling to push and I do a bit and that brings instant relief and I can handle it again. Again, I'm mind blown at this point. The next contraction comes, I feel again like pushing, so I do, but honestly, it was at like 60 percent of what I have ever pushed before with my other kids. I was worried about tearing and I didn't want to go too fast. And guess what? Out comes her head! What?!?! Unlike my first two, where I felt relief after their heads came out, I still was in pain at this point. I couldn't tell if I was still in the middle of a contraction, but since I was still hurting I figured I was, so I pushed again, also not at full strength by any means, and what do you know, out she comes! Ah! What relief! I tell you, that is possibly the best feeling in life, that moment after having a baby. Such relief. Such happiness. The midwife laid her on my chest and wrapped a towel around her and we just lay there, marveling and what had just happened. It was 2:41am, less than two hours after I had been woken to my first contraction, and I had my baby in my arms.

Chloe didn't want to nurse at that point. She was good to just chill in my arms and look around. She was super alert for probably three hours that morning. We stayed in the pool until I delivered the placenta, then I transferred to my couch, which was right next to it, and chilled some more. The midwives eventually checked Chloe out, weighed her, etc. She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz, was 20 inches long, and had blonde hair.

The midwives took care of literally everything else. Eventually Chloe did nurse and they set things up so we could go to sleep. They cleaned up the pool, all the supplies, washed any towels. It was incredible. I literally woke up later that morning to a spotless house and a new baby, as if nothing had happened. I can't say enough for how amazing that was. The whole reason I did a home birth in the first place was because we have so little access to midwives where I live that the drive felt too long to us. We opted to do it at home, and that turned out to be the best choice.

And that's about it. This was by far my best birth and best recovery. I'm still in that recovery period, but I didn't need stitches, so aside from generalized soreness and tiredness and all the exciting parts of getting used to nursing again and such, things are progressing as well as they possibly can. It's wonderful. She sleeps like a dream. Like the first few nights she slept eight hours. Holy cow, not being completely exhausted makes a huge difference! We're sticking pretty close to home, minus a few grocery store trips, and otherwise just getting used to being a family of six. The other kids absolutely adore her. So much love is flowing from them to her. She's taking it well. :)

And the best part of all of this? We're done. We have our four kids. That's what we always wanted and she definitely feels like our book end. So this is my last recovery, and I'm just enjoying everything about a new baby for this last time. It's a really delightful feeling and I'm kind of reveling in it.

Swimming and babies

My visiting teacher in my ward has a lake house on one of the lakes by us, Lake Keowee, and she was so kind to invite us over to swim and have dinner yesterday afternoon/evening. It was one of the loveliest afternoons I've had in ages. Spencer and Genevieve love the water this year. They have vests they use to float and while last year they were totally unwilling to test them out, this year they're all over it and they had a fabulous time swimming around and floating. My mom is here and she swam with them while I helped Aaron, who was not as excited about the whole water thing, and that was wonderful too. She's so great with the kids and they love her to pieces.

Aaron was freaked out by the waves that came in when boats went by. He was similarly weirded out when we were at the beach last month, so I can't say I'm surprised, but thankfully he calmed down after maybe an hour and we got him in his puddle jumper and playing more in the water and on the beach. He's usually such an adventurer that I was kind of surprised, but we'll get him excited about the water soon enough. :)

This is the only picture I got while I was there. Lake Keowee is the most beautiful lake I've ever been to, and it's 10 minutes from my house. It's almost entirely surrounded by private property, so we can't really go just any day, but we have a few friends with property there, so we get to go occasionally.

It was wonderful to sit in the water this far pregnant and feel so much lighter. Here's to more of that this summer, especially after the baby arrives. Sometimes I forget how much I love swimming and how it's not actually that huge of a deal to get the kids ready to go do it. We've got to take advantage of so much water around us while we're here in case wherever we settle after graduation doesn't have that. So here's to more swimming this summer. :)

38.5 weeks

I've now entered the stage where I feel like I will be pregnant forever, so might as well not worry about it, lol. But seriously, for the moment I've found my calm groove again and am just waiting a bit more patiently for when labor starts for real. Blessedly, I'm less uncomfortable at this stage than I've been with any of my other kids, most likely related to the fact that I'm smaller, even though this is my fourth. I didn't expect that. I popped out so fast and looked bigger early on, but it has really slowed down this third trimester.

I've been taking a supplement recommended by my midwife for the last month called Gentle Birth that is supposed to tone down the intensity of labor a bit. I believe it is what is causing me to have so much seeming action towards labor without actually going into labor. Hopefully that means that when go time actually hits it will be much faster than with my others. Aaron was my shortest at 12 hours, so I'd love have a bit shorter this go around.

In the meantime I've gotten a surge of energy and have been getting things done like crazy. I spent the last couple days madly finishing the quilt top for a baby quilt. Bill gave me some fabric for my birthday back in January for just that, and I finished it yesterday except for the border. I tried out paper piecing for the first time and I am really pleased with how it turned out. It's impossible to get that kind of precision any other way that I know. It wasn't nearly as hard to learn as I thought, and so rewarding.

My mom is flying in today and to prep I got a sudden urge to bake a zillion things, so yesterday I made some sourdough bread, bagels, granola, and even made food for the kids for their meals, ha! That feels hard at times, but I had all this energy and it was awesome. 

I'm still feeling all energetic this morning, so we'll see what the day holds. 

One day down, four to go

Before I got pregnant Bill and I factored in the piece of information that he would have a conference in Boston that he wanted to go to and present at a couple weeks before my due date. Back then it sounded like no big deal. I could totally handle it.

Fast forward nine months and day one is past and we have four days to go. So far this morning I've already finished my work, done some yoga, and we ate breakfast that wasn't cereal. So pretty much day two is in the bag too as a success and it's not even 9AM. Hahaha!

But really, it's a little crazy to be 37 plus weeks pregnant with three kids and no husband. And we did it to ourselves. And it will be just fine. And if it's not, and for some crazy reason the baby comes earlier than any baby I've had in the past, it will make for a crazy story for ever after. But I think that won't happen. I think we'll have an uneventful week and get Bill on Saturday and my mom next Wednesday and then Miss Chloe will make her appearance much closer to her due date. And my fingers are heavily crossed for this result. :)

And then the calm disappeared

And with a simple phone call this morning my calm evaporated. I got a note a couple months back stating that my insurance was getting bought out and going away, but all services would be the same. I still did my due diligence at the time to make sure that was the case, and thought it was. But SC has a stupid law about if you want to use midwives you have to have two appointments with an OB to "approve" going to them. The legislative babysitting drives me insane. Well, that OB, the only OB any of the midwives go to, because where I live is incredibly underserved for midwifery care, and the OBs won't help partner with them, applied to that new insurance and they rejected their office. I didn't think to call them to check. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because I couldn't change and keep my midwife. 


So I spent two hours this morning talking to multiple different places trying to find someone that will take the new insurance and also do that second OB visit I need to satisfy SC law. I finally found someone who should work. And I'll be driving an hour and a half to get to them. Ridiculous! And they were kind of punky about it.
I kind of want to say screw all of them. I chose my method of birth because it's what is best for me and my baby. I don't live close enough to a hospital to use my preferred provider without having significant risk of having my baby in the car. Last go around the hospital sent me home because they didn't believe I was in active labor, and I had Aaron 30 minutes after rushing back since transition started ten minutes after I arrived home from being sent home. So just pay for the services already and think of what's best for the health of me and my child, not what is the mainstream normal method! I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate dealing with insurance companies. And don't get me started on how I'm still up in the air waiting for services to be covered for Spencer too.
I don't even know if my midwife services will be covered now. I do have a letter that promises they will. I talked to her and she's like, well, we'll work something out if they can't pay. Awesome. That's code words for we'll put together a payment plan for you to pay the rest like you're self-pay. I have no doubt I will be fighting them about it for months after I have the baby. I'm so incredibly ticked about all this. I can't imagine the amount of tension bottled up in me right now is particularly good for my current state of health. But I have a really strong desire to start throwing punches at several different parties. Messing with the 9-month pregnant girl just isn't a good choice, folks. 
But the worst part, I'm stuck. I will be fighting with insurance. Likely I will be paying more for my birth than has been planned for the last six months. Of course we'll make it work. No, I don't need to be bailed out. I just hate it all. I hate being in an income bracket where I have to deal with the Medicaid crap and don't really have another option. I hate how broken the medical industry is. I hate that my choices are severely limited because the state legislature is a bunch of idiots who are scared of maternal care that is mainstream in every other country in the world. I kind of want them all to burn. And mostly I just want to be past all of this. Past having the baby, past paying for whatever all this will take, past grad school, past wondering where the heck we're going to get a job and where we're going to move and the sheer uncertainty of life for the last few years and at least the next one or two more. I'm so ready to get to a point where we can pay off our debt, start putting money away, have some peace of mind about our forward motion. Some days just feel really crappy when I think about the actual situation we're in. This suddenly became one of them.

Home Birth

It's June 1st! I've made it to the month Chloe is going to be born! That feels great. Yesterday was my first home visit from my midwife. I believe I've mentioned I am going to have this baby at home this go around. I have several reasons for that.

First and foremost, I nearly had Aaron in the car on the way to the hospital that was 35-40 minutes from our house. He arrived 30 minutes after we got to the hospital, albeit for the second time that evening. They didn't believe me when I said I was in active labor. I was right. They were wrong. We've since moved further away from that hospital, so now it is an hour's drive. I just didn't have an inclination this go around to do transition in the car and be concerned the whole time about how that would go down.

Second, I live in a part of South Carolina that is very underserved for midwifery. I've had all my babies with midwives and I vastly prefer that arrangement to going to an OB in a typical hospital setting. I did have all three others in a hospital, but under a midwife's care. With Aaron I had wanted a birthing center, but finances and the group I picked didn't have their center open yet, so that didn't work out. Anyway, I had a rather bad experience at the beginning of this pregnancy with the certified midwife group I had used last go around and it turned me off using them again. I was left scrambling 12 weeks into my pregnancy trying to find a different provider that I trusted. Turns out the closest birthing center to me is an hour away not factoring in traffic. With as fast as the end of Aaron's birth went, that made me super uncomfortable. Pretty well the biggest stress for me of any pregnancy has been what to do with my kids when it's time to deliver the next baby. It really bothers me, when very little else does.

Second, my husband is a grad student so I qualify for Medicaid when I'm pregnant. It's a nice benefit for being in such a low income situation, I guess?? No really, I'm super grateful for that. Having a baby can be super expensive. The birthing centers didn't take that insurance. So even if I wanted to drive an hour for all my appointments plus to have the baby, I'd have to pay out of pocket. So there I was again, 12 weeks pregnant, not having luck finding a provider. I did a bunch of internet searching and finally found two independent midwives that came highly recommended. I spoke with both of them and one would charge me literally half what the other would because she took my insurance for at least part of the cost. I was sold.

In going with an independent midwife that means I jumped straight into the world of home birth. I'm totally okay with this. It's my fourth baby. I've had no complications with the others. The lack of stress knowing I don't have to go anywhere when I'm in labor is incredible. And if anything did happen, I do have a hospital just ten minutes down the road and my midwife would come along. So really, it took out all the things that stressed me with previous pregnancies. And aside from the financial affordability, I really like my midwife. She is great. She has four kids of her own not much older than mine. She's nice, fun to talk to, efficient, low key, and just a genuinely nice person. I feel really blessed to have found her.

So yesterday was my first home visit now that I'm 36 weeks pregnant. It was amazing to not have to leave the house. She brought the birthing pool. I'm going to try that approach this time. Chloe is looking absolutely perfect as far as this stage of pregnancy goes. She's head down, way low already, and in the optimal position for birth. In fact, she was going crazy with contractions all afternoon and evening yesterday, enough to make me worry just a bit. Bill's headed out to a conference to present and we need her to wait until he comes back to come. I've never had a baby more than a week early, but hey, she could throw us off. Things are all calm today though so I think we're back to the waiting game and I'm not worried anymore. Honestly, if she did decide to come early we would work through it however worked best and have an awesome story forever after. Three weeks left. All good things happening. I'm feeling pretty great.