Ava's arrival

As many of you read in my previous blog posts, I have been worried about the possibility of not making it to the hospital (it's an hour away-my labor with Elise was just under two hours TOTAL). Because of that, we opted for an induction at 39 weeks. We just had to make it to 39 weeks and any worries of not making it to the hospital would be over. So, we set a tentative date for the induction for October 1 at 4am. Technically you can get bumped so we weren't sure it would actually happen that day, but it was pretty likely.

The night before my grandma BBQed ribs at her place and had us for dinner. We put the girls to sleep there, so that we would be set to leave bright and early in the morning. Not forgetting that we are an hour (with NO traffic) we left the house at about 2:30AM to get down there for our 4AM appointment. At that time of the morning, there is literally no traffic so we were there around 3:30AM.

They put me in a room and we readied ourselves for induction (I was a little nervous still never having experienced one before). Well pretty much the short version of the day is that we pretty much just sat there for hours waiting.

I had to get the strep B antibiotics so they hooked me up to an IV and got that started pretty quickly. Then we waited. Eventually they gave me a cervix softener to see if I would dilate a little more before breaking my water or giving pitocin. I was already about 3cm when I arrived that morning. We waited some more. The nurse came to check every once in awhile to see if I was dilated more or to check out my IV levels. And we waited some more. The doctor came and went. We wondered if they would ever get the party started...I guess my doctor had some sort of a meeting that was supposed to last until 2PM, though my nurse thought she said 12:30PM, and my doctor was going to come and break my water then. She figured the labor would go pretty quickly at that point (I was having random, painless contractions at that point), so she had informed the nurses to tell me that if I thought I wanted an epidural I should go ahead and get it before she came to break my water.

So I thought about that long and hard. With Kayla, the nurses didn't realize how dilated I was (I went pretty quickly) so by the time I got the epidural I only had it for like 20 minutes before pushing. It wasn't long, but it was wonderful. With Elise, there was clearly no time for an epidural. Most of my very short labor was done at home where I didn't feel so confined, and we were really only at the hospital for the pushing. And I had no idea what to expect from this induction experience. I did know that I would be pretty confined to the bed with all the IV's and stuff and I thought to myself, "hey, if the epidural is covered, why not?" Plus because we had hardly gotten any sleep and I was totally exhausted already, I was not about to possibly go through either a very long or a very short, intense labor again in that state. So in came the anesthesiologist. After he left and I was feeling nothing, not even the small, mostly painless contractions that my body had started experiencing fairly regularly at that point, we waited some more. That was around 1PM.

My doctor got done with her meeting a little early and came by around 1:30PM. I was still only about 4cm and had only had the cervical softening stuff at that point. She broke my water and headed back to try to see a few patients at her office while labor progressed. My nurse, who I really liked, came in and out periodically and Chris and I watched contractions on the monitor...and also caught Around the Horn which we haven't watched in years (totally reminded me of you, Sean and Tracy!). Anyway, I could feel the pressure of each contraction but not the pain and they were coming close together and were very strong on the monitor. That made my nurse happy because it meant that my body had kicked itself into labor and I would not need the help of any pitocin since my body had decided to go ahead and take over and do this delivery thing. ;)

Eventually I felt pressure lower and different, so I called the nurse in and asked if she could just check because it felt a little different. She checked and I was fully dilated, which clearly surprised her (it was close to 4pm, about 2 1/2 hours after we had finally done anything to really START the process of labor and delivery). She told me that if I could just try to keep the baby in and not push, the doctor would be here in 20 minutes. So we waited and with the help of the epidural kept that baby in there a little longer. The doctor arrived, I pushed about 5 times, and we beheld our third beautiful little girl.

Ava Chantal.

Everyone oohed and ahhhed and declared her gorgeous. And we thanked God for a safe delivery and another sweet baby girl to love. We also thanked him for epidurals. :)

Ava's Stats

Born: October 1, 2012 at 4:19pm

Weight: 8 lbs.
One week early

Length: 19 3/4 inches

Induced labor: so technically this was an all day "thing"

From when labor contractions actually started and were regular (when the doctor broke my water) total labor was about 3 hours or so.  

Elise-5 months

Elise is 5 months old already. Daily she is gracing us with sweet smiles and a friendly disposition. She is so content. She is happy just to move around on the floor, grabbing toys, and putting anything and everything she finds into her waiting mouth. She is now sitting up on her own, though she rarely lasts longer than 30 seconds before she faceplants or rolls to her side. She loves watching our new fish swim around in the tank, but most of all, she loves watching her big sister, Kayla. Kayla runs around the room from one activity to the next; feeding her baby, reading a book, coloring a picture, playing with her truck, and then it begins all over again. Elise watches her in amazement and awe. I'm not even wondering if she will be an early walker; I'm preparing for the inevitable. She's going to want to follow Kayla all around doing whatever she's doing.

Also new around here is Elise's newest move: the "scooch". She can get up on all fours, but has not figured out how to crawl yet. Instead, she uses her arms, legs, and core to somehow propel herself forward to grab things. She is everywhere now....nothing is safe from her or her curious mouth.


You may have noticed that I changed up the layout and colors of the blog. It's football season, and around here we cheer for the Cincinnati Bengals (and the 49ers, but I'm a submissive wife, so the Bengals colors showed up on the blog). WHO-DEY!!

My current thoughts on pregnancy, football, and Kayla

Let's start with Kayla. I mean, who DOESN'T want to hear about her?

Kayla is into everything. We have begun teaching her some baby signs. She now does "more", "please", "up", and "thank you" quite well. We are working on "potty", "baby", "milk", "juice", "all done", and "diaper". She's a quick learner, but a bit lazy in her consistency if we don't require the sign before giving in.
As you can see in the attached video, she has a shelf that holds her books. She likes to take them off one by one and read a few pages, throw them into a pile on the floor, and continue on until the shelf is completely empty. Then begins the fun for Mommy. I get to pick them all up and put them back on the shelf so that 10 minutes later she can come and "read" all her books again.
We are showing Kayla pictures of family and practicing names...so far she says "Bob" (my brother, Robbie, whom we refer to as Uncle Bob), "Pau" for Paul, who is like a second dad to me from when I lived up in WA, and "Papa" for Grandpa, my grandfather who passed away earlier this year. We are working on many more, but trying not to overwhelm her since between our two families there are about 30-40 different grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc to learn.



Onto the next subject, Pregnancy. This pregnancy is going great so far. I am now more than halfway, but not much more than that. I will be 21 weeks on Friday. We had our 20 week ultrasound, and our little baby moved constantly for an entire hour. The ultrasound technician somehow managed to get all the pictures/measurements she needed even with all the constant motion though. In case you still don't know, we aren't finding out if it's a boy or a girl, so you'll just have to wait till March like the rest of us.

I am showing now. I said that before, but it was only really showing to ME then. Now it's actually showing to everyone, though it's still small enough that it mostly looks like I've gained about 10 extra pounds. Soon enough, it will be even bigger and completely obvious that I am PREGNANT and not just chubby.

Next and last subject will be short and sweet. Football. It's almost to the point this year where it's so depressing to watch that I don't want to even waste the time and energy. My 49ers and USC have been "struggling" for lack of a better word. Chris' Bengals have been the most frustrating though. They show all this potential and make some great plays, but they somehow make sure that they lose every time. The only plus is that since they aren't aired often over here, we don't have to watch them self-destruct every week. Instead, we get to hear about it through family, and other media forms. After watching them lose on Monday Night Football last night, I think I prefer HEARING about the losses to watching them. Please somebody, tell our football teams to get it together and push the fast forward button to next football season already.

Oh, and Cameron, give us our pans back already.