Halloween...

Yeah, sorry it took so long. I always procrastinate uploading my photos as my hard drive was getting so full that it was keeping the thing from working properly. Here are my cuties...




Frodo was Hamlet. Yes, you read that right. He was Hamlet. He designed the costume all by himself. I was laughing at his choice of characters and I quizzed him on the story. My son knows not only the main plot, but also *all* of the subplots and how everyone dies. Who knew what guiding children in the direction they show interest would do... ;-)




Rapunzel was a princess, of course. When we asked her if she was Ophelia to Frodo's Hamlet, she said, "of course not mom. Ophelia dies in a pool in the river. I had no idea she knew about the story, so I quizzed her, and without any prompting from her brother, she was also well-versed in the story. She's five.



Buggy was...a bug. It was the costume we owned that fit her. ;-) And boy, was it cute. She had practiced so hard at saying "trick or treat" and every time she did, she erupted into gasps of laughter. As we were taking photos, I told her to say cheese and you can see her here, signing "cheese". This is the photo I'm turning in to "Signing Time" as they are a major contributor in Buggy having the language acquisition that she does.


That last one is sweet little baby and Daddy in his be-all costume. This cloak has been many things for many people. Ghost of Christmas Future, Dementor, Obi Wan, generic scary guy.

The kids were going to do some looting to a few older neighbors and then meet me at the ward party, but they ended up having too much fun to be bothered with meeting me and I ended up alone at the party with my babe. :-) Oh well, at least they had fun and I still got the "tax" of candy. :-)

Can You Fix This...Please!

Aaack! I just talked to our insurance co on the phone because they have stopped covering Buggy's feeding supplies. I was informed that this plan does not cover disposable items of any kind. WHAT!?!?! Do you mean that I pay premiums for you to not help in my daughter's day-to-day living? You aren't going to cover something that is *essential* to her life? Her food bags aren't important because they are disposable? The lady on the phone tried to console me by saying that they didn't cover colostomy bags either...

Are you kidding me!?!?!?

They refuse to assign her a case manager, because they "don't do that for anyone" and then I get to clean up the messes of things not getting billed right, or being flagged because they "could have been caused" by an injury caused by someone else. (aka, someone else gets to pay for this)

On top of that, our car broke this weekend. I knew it was coming, but I didn't have the energy to deal with it just yet. It turns out that the radiator is done. It needed to be replaced. We hoped that would solve the problem of the heater blowing out cold air, but apparently not. We will have spent more than $1000 on the car by the end of this week...just when we were getting our food storage bulked up.

I'll probably erase this post because it's not very nice or happy or well though out or helpful or even productive. I just needed to gripe and the people I would normally call are gone.

Things would be much easier for me if I were an extrovert. :-P

Happy Life Day

As most of you know, Buggy's life day was on the 2nd of this month. It has been 3 years since my beautiful babe had a grade 5 brain bleed which caused her heart to stop and her lungs to fill with fluid. Our life has been a rollercoaster since then. She has been a joy and a master teacher to me. She is now talking up a storm and putting four or five words together. Here is pic taken just a few days ago with her "jiggle vest" on. This wonderful invention has kept her out of the hospital for almost one year...yes, you read that right. No admissions since November of *last* year. I doubted that day would ever come when we could live our lives and not worry about constant hospital stays. We're not out of the woods completely yet, but things are definitely looking up on the short-term health front.

Little has a "little" cold. She snorted around in a pool of snot last night and this morning it is much worse. She doesn't seem to be cranky, though, so it's all good. Other than sleeping a little more than usual, she seems to be okay.

Today starts our first round of Parent teacher conference. We'll be seeing the teacher at Public School preschool. The big kids have conf next week.

As you can guess, with all of the girls around our house, we do "princess" a lot. Rapunzel is catching on to her letters and J caught this pic while she had made her own crown and sceptor.

oops...

Sorry all. I was looking on a friends blog that had a blogroll and when the last post of the blog occurred and I realized (with proper shame, of course) that it's been over 4 months since my last post.

We had a family council and decided to have the kids go to public school for now. I was worried that they would start complaining after the first week and it's been 4 now and we're still going strong. Frodo loves his 3rd grade class and Rapunzel adores her kindergarten teacher. She's struggling with her letters, they still evade her much of the time, but she'll get it when she's ready. We have a literary home and I don't doubt that she'll read when she's ready, the trick is to keep her teachers from getting concerned and keep her from falling behind her peers too much (or keep from caring). I'm sure it will be fine, she has already picked up tons from where she started.

Frodo has started reading Animorphs. It's been so funny to watch him get so wrapped up in this fiction series *without any pictures*. We had the joy of discovering AR in the last few weeks and he seems to be right on track with that.

We sat down to dinner last week and he said "mom, it's nice when we're together." I asked him to clarify and he continued, "I mean, all of here, right now, being with each other...it's nice. Don't you think it's nice to be with us?" Both J and I assured him that we did like it. Before public school, we spent all day every day together. The kids had a hard time with sitting down to dinner together because they didn't realize what it was all about. Now that they spend significantly less time with us, Frodo seems to realize that the time we spend together is special and he enjoys it.

Rapunzel has also gotten very tired and cranky at school. She gets really exhausted by the weekend and often needs to spend much of it snuggled up with one of her grown-ups. Once Monday comes around, she wants to go back and she has never expressed displeasure or reticence to go after the first day, I think the crankiness is subconscious for her and she isn't always able to articulate that it's physical contact with her parents that she needs. I wonder how this trait will serve her when she becomes a grown-up herself and has hopefully had all of her needs met. I hope it will help her to be empathic and compassionate.

Buggy has absolutely loved her two schools. She screams in joy when she sees her teachers or her school bus (which she takes once a week) and then screams again when she sees mom or dad. She attends the two year old class in one preschool and her teacher reports that she is right on track cognitively with them. I watched her on the first day behind the observation glass and she was comfortable and played the whole time. The other class has her behind on her vision and fine motor, but she loves it and the teacher loves her. I think she spends most of the one day that she is there in various therapies.

Which leaves me for about an hour or so with the little, to whom I have not given a blogname, it's so weird to be in the home with out a brood all the time. No wonder other moms have cleaner homes. I've been able to keep the place 15 minutes from presentability for most of this time. I'm hoping once we have a system down pat that I can actually start doing some things I've been waiting to do (scrapbooking, beading or sewing anyone?). The babe is still taking about 3 naps and is starting to "let go" of the nursing nap, for at least one or two of those naps, so I'm reading less and doing more around the house. It's kind of nice. I'm even getting more time to type. It's perfect timing as my LLL work is going to become a little more time-consuming as I take on an area responsibility that could take me all over the state and I've been trying to get into for over one year.

We're nearing one whole year with a grown-up job and no more grad school. I still often feel like things are going so well in that department that I need to pinch myself. Who knew you could find a place where you could do something that made you feel good, and you could still make enough money to support your family without worrying about your job security.

So that's what we've been up to. It's been a full couple of months. Baby is starting to turn over a full 360. She looks just like the rest of us (who can be surprised with that). My mom was commenting that she looks a lot like I used to at that age, but she also looks tons like J and I've come to the conclusion that once you have as many children as we do, people stop trying to decide which parent she looks more like and instead with each child or the ever-funny "wow! she really belongs in your family doesn't she!" She's so smiley and has J's fake dimples on both sides. You know what I mean, right? J has one real dimple and one "fake" one, meaning, it has a kind of "fold" in the cheek, but it doesn't really look like a "hole" in the muscle. I don't know if that makes sense, but oh well...

We have a bunch of family and friends with babies coming and just shown up. Congrats to all of you! Hopefully you won't have to wait too long to hear from us.

Oh, BTW, if you also want to know what we're up to, come over to ourstory.com and look me up. It's an awesome website with which I'm having tons of fun. Come join me! It's under my "real name" instead of belcantomom. It's probably the only place on the web that is like that. I can keep privacy circles, though, so nobody has access to stuff I don't want them to.

Have a wonderful conference weekend!

This could be long, but it wasn't... (the Birth Story)

This is the birth story. It is graphic. Please use discretion when reading.


I may write a long post, but realize that in real life, it didn't really take that long. Or maybe, the "long part" didn't last very long. It was actually very quite manageable for most of the labor.

This time, I tried HypnoBabies. As opposed to HypnoBirthing. I used HypnoBirth last time as my doula was the teacher and I got a combined rate with her services and her class. It was good and I learned a bunch. I also *really* needed that doula and she was wonderful. If you are ever at all on the fence about getting one, I highly recommend it. She helped make my VBAC possible.

This time, I was looking for program that was a little more comprehensive and could be done at home. I knew I wanted women with me at the birth, but I wanted *my* women. i wanted my sisters and mom with me. I wasn't sure how I could make that happen, but that's what I wanted. Now that I had my "birthing feet" wet, so to speak, I didn't need so much a trained doula as my own family to support me.

I asked my sister to be my doula, as she has expressed interest in doula-ing and she said she would love to, but as we got closer to the birth, we both realized that it probably wouldn't work out. She is still in the "3 little kids at home" season and a husband that works swings. AS nighttime would be my most likely birthing time, we agreed that if I went into labor from morning to noon, she could come and not at any other time. (hehe, how's that for putting some limits?)

I couldn't ask my other married sister to be with me as she was due with her own little bundle only three weeks before me. So that left my unmarried sis and my mom. I hesitated asking my mom to attend as she had been so nervous with Buggy. It wasn't unwarranted worry; it was to be my first VBA2C and my first homebirth after being told by an MD that not only should I never get pregnant again, but that I would *never* birth vaginally. I understand why he said those things, but even though they were just his opinion, he said them and my mom was worried. Well, as I got closer, I knew that I needed to discuss this with her.

She was wonderful. She said that she would love to attend my birth this time. She did agree that she had been nervous last time, but that she felt I was totally capable of doing this. She felt that I was in capable hands and that I had educated myself well enough and knew what I was getting myself into.

This pregnancy has been very difficult, physically, for me. It was great until that last six weeks or so. (lest you forget, check out some of my earlier posts.) Baby was positioned very wonky and hanging out over my pubic bone. It repositioned my whole pelvis and threw out my back. Which in turn, messed with every ligament and muscle in my pelvic floor. That, my friends, was pain. I could barely walk at all, and most days had little to no walking involved. I started to get very impatient for this little one to arrive as I was tired of carrying all this weight. I couldn't figure out why she wouldn't come. I was having all sorts of labor surges, but nothing would stay for very long. I really felt like she could have been ready, but every time I talked to her, she wasn't ready to come. I slowly tried to reposition her with my surges and kept talking to her to tell her it was okay to come. Finally, I just got so discouraged that I couldn't go any further. I was at the verge of tears for about three days and one day they just wouldn't stop. I finally asked HeaterBoy for a blessing. I knew that I couldn't make it any further without one.

When he gave me the blessing, it was on Mother's day. It was beautiful. He told me to be patient and the baby just wasn't ready. I felt peace and comfort and the Lord knew what I was going through. (HeaterBoy wasn't aware of the extent to which I had gone to get this baby here.) I was finally resigned to a couple more weeks. I felt okay in continuing as I knew that God knew me. He knew my heart and my soul and he knew my baby. It would be okay.

We went to my mom's for dinner as it was "2nd Sunday" when we always go there. I was feeling a little better since the baby was now further "in" my body instead of just hanging out over it. I was having a bunch of surges, but I usually choose not to time them as it is pretty meaningless for me. If I'm really in labor, they'll keep going and get harder; if I'm not, they won't.

I timed them on the way home (for the last twenty minutes) and realized they were coming every eight minutes or so. Of course, once I got ready for bed, they had slowed considerably and I didn't want to get myself all worked up when I was still going to be a while.

While Jared and I were laying in bed, I told him I needed help getting up as I needed to get to the bathroom and right then, like a Pavlovian response, I got wet...all over. When I walked down to the bathroom and continued to drip...all the way to the room, I realized, we were absolutely no longer dealing with pee. :-) But as I was still not convinced I would be going into labor anytime soon, I called my midwife to tell her my water had broken, but didn't anticipate anything imminent and was going to bed to try and rest. I called my mom and told her the same thing. This was about 11:30.

I went back to bed and "did" my hypno cd's and there wasn't much going on. I was able to relax right through my surges without any problems, even though they were starting to wrap around my back. Eventually, I had to pee again, and I didn't like that I was leaking everywhere. I went downstairs and went to the bathroom and then tried sitting on the birth ball for a minute. Quickly, the surges got more businesslike and I realized that I wanted my husband with me. I called him on the phone (we have an intercom feature on our phones) and asked him to come down and time the surges. It seemed like they were coming faster and I didn't want to pay attention to timing. As he timed they required some relaxation to get through, but totally doable. I was still hoping that I could sleep in between, at the very least and wait till morning to have this baby.

I spent a whole water tank in the shower. It felt so good to have the hot water beating down on my back. When it cooled down, I got out and had Boy put the heat pack on my back.

I noticed that I wanted to lean forward on the ball during the surges and when I did, I could feel my cervix opening. I didn't want to believe that's what it was because I hadn't been in labor that long. I kept telling Baby to "come down" and I started to get really shaky. I remembered my midwife telling me that my blood pressure would probably get low during labor (it has in all of my previous births) and last time we "fixed" it by eating sea salt. My surges still weren't any closer than 4 minutes and gauging this labor like last, I still had a long way to go. I wasn't quite ready to call the midwife. I had Boy get me some salt and wake up my sister to make me some miso soup. I also decided to call my mom to come. I knew it could still be a while, but I wanted her there. It was about 3:30. I decided to switch positions kneeling over the ball. As I was there, the surges got a lot more intense and I started to feel a little pushy.

I was probably in transition at this point, but didn't want to really think that as I never really got that, "I can't do this anymore" kind of feeling. The only thing close to it was "I can't do this without that heating pack on my back". I really had to moan with the surges now and I decided to call my midwife. After that, I really needed to go to the bathroom and I told Boy that I needed to go but I didn't want to as that would mean leaving my beloved heat pack and I didn't think I could handle a surge on the toilet...

My amazing husband came with me and the surge was almost unbearable-even with the heat. I decided to go back into the shower as that was comfortable earlier and the water had been sufficiently reheated. I squatted-or tried-and couldn't keep my relaxation going through a couple of those. Then I realized at the peak on a surge that I was pushing and there was nothing anyone could do to stop me. That made me a little nervous as the midwife still wasn't there, but in that instant, I remembered that it took me an hour to push Buggy out.

Once I started pushing, I quickly realized that Baby was going to come *much* quicker than Buggy did. In fact, I could feel her move down the birth canal right then and yelled to Boy to hurry and turn off the water as she was coming out right now and the water was too hot for her. I no longer thought about who wasn't there yet, but just the overwhelming urge to *GET HER OUT*. I roared through those two or three surges.

As I pushed, I remembered at the last minute to feel for her head. Not only was she crowning, but I could feel her head ready to pop out. By that time, Boy was behind me, and I asked him if he could see her. He said he still couldn't but by then I could feel her head come out and the surge ended. I couldn't stand to have that stretching only half over and not do anything until the next one came, so I pushed the rest of her out without the contraction.

My husband caught our baby. My amazing rock of a husband stayed with me and we did it together.

After she was out, I was still squatting and I could hear her scream. He passed her to me and I knelt and held her until the midwife arrived a few minutes later. She screamed so loud that I never had to worry about suctioning her or her color. I was prepared with one of Buggy's sterile bulb syringes and of course, we have oxygen if we needed it. By the time I had the presence of mind to asses her color(about one or two minutes later), she was already *very* pink. Her vernix was so thick, I could barely tell, though.

The kids had wanted to watch the birth and I had told my sister earlier that I only wanted them there for the very end and she was outside the bathroom when all this was taking place. She heard me roar and then she heard the baby cry. She ran upstairs to get the kids, but they barely missed it. They came downstairs about the same time that the midwife arrived.

My midwife got there, kind of shocked that she hadn't even made it. She came into the bathroom and looked us both over. She gave a big smile, and said "You did it!" She helped me to sit down and get a little cleaned off, asked what I needed her to do. Then she checked the cord, which had stopped pulsing, and clamped and cut it. WE washed off a little more and waited a bit for the placenta to come. Then I just wanted to get out, so she helped me to get to the couch with my robe and some chux with the baby. And there, she helped with the shakes while we waited for the placenta.

We called the midwife at 4:00ish and Baby was born at 4:30ish. We waited for 40 minutes for the placenta and when it did come, it was small and very fat. And I was still able to push it out myself. I wasn't so exhausted that I couldn't do that, like I had been last time. After it came out, I felt *so* much better. My mom got there just after the placenta was delivered.

After a while, I felt like I wanted to shower. So hubby and my midwife helped me up and I was able to shower. I put on my own clothes and went and sat on my own couch and snuggled my baby for the rest of the morning.

Since she came so fast, there was no head molding, and I didn't tear or anything. I'm having no problems sitting (except for the sitting trouble I was having before Baby was born, and that's slowly getting better).

I'm exhausted thinking about 4 kids, but we're all healthy and safe. I'm so grateful for a merciful Heavenly Father who knows what is best for me and my family. I'm also grateful that He allows us to choose our own path. I'm grateful to have been entrusted with another beautiful spirit. I hope I can love her as much as she needs and as much as He wants for her.

It's a girl

period

still going...

So we're still here. My sister had her baby, and I'm wishing it were me...You know I've never experienced prodromal labor and I think it's really nice as long as it happens to someone else. I know I don't have it nearly as bad as some others, but it's bad enough. This baby is sitting in a weird position that makes moving anywhere very uncomfortable. I didn't know they could sit this low and not fall out. :-)

Enough birth whining. I know I've been pretty emotional his past week, so I'll try not to be today.

I got back from Colorado a little over a week ago and it was amazing. I learned so much. I got a little brain-fried, but it was so refreshing to be in a safe place where people hold relationships valuable and feel it important to be respectful and genuine. Everybody was treated with respect and courtesy while everyone was expected to get their own needs met in the same way. There were only four of us involved in the training, but many LLL Leaders helped to make the few days comfortable for us. The only meals I ate at a "restaurant" were at the airport. It was wonderful.

When I got home, I stayed at moms' as Buggy was coming to SLC for a sedated MRI the next morning. We went all the way to the hospital and they informed us that since Buggy uses a CPAP, she cannot be sedated for this procedure. She has been sedated before, but not with "this drug". Blah, blah, blah, we had to make a new appointment for the following Monday (for which I had *no* babysitter) to go under general anesthesia. Intubation for a "routine" MRI/MRA. Let's just say that no one was particularly thrilled with this development. HeaterBoy was able to go with us and my wonderful visiting teacher took the olders. they tell you that they will be back to normal in 12-24 hours. miss Buggy was the most cranky I have ever seen her. It did not end in 12-24 hours. She is still crankier than I have ever seen her. She is yelling, pulling hair (both others and her own), scratching faces, and throwing in even more yelling for good measure.

When I was lamenting the poor week we had had to her speech path, she was afraid to tell me that for kids with neuro impairment can take weeks for general to totally leave their systems. Lovely. At least we have a reason for the crankiness. I was afraid it was something else, and I would have to figure it out.

Of course, Friday night, she got all snotty, and we have been doing extra "jiggly vest" treatments and lots of extra suctioning, and then last night the rest of us came down with it. I was actually hoping it wasn't a bug, but just residual from the anesthesia, but apparently not. :-P

It's in my chest now and heartburn along with sore throat is not so much fun. (sorry, little pregnancy whine still) We slept most of the day away and my sister made a wonderfully nourishing soup for us.

the garden is slowly getting worked for the Spring. It's so exciting to have such a big plan for the summer. I hope we can continue it.

That's us for now. Frodo is reading up a storm and he's gotten Rapunzel hooked on the same series. Good thing that we can continue school into the summer. It makes me feel not so bad.