It's the 4th of July and I'm hanging out by myself with our new baby and our 1yo while the family is out at a picnic. It was really hard to stay home when I feel good, but I figured it was best. So with the quiet I took the time to type out my birth story. Here it is!
I was due June 30th with our baby and as the time approached was hoping to go early with the 4th of July coming up and all. We also have a town celebration that was scheduled June 28th and 29th so I kept wondering what I would be able to make it to and what I wouldn’t make it to. I typically have my babies right around my due date with my latest being one day overdue and the earliest being 6 days early (except for my twins who were a little over 2 weeks early). As it got closer and closer I wondered if I would end up going overdue for the first time as I didn’t have major signs of impending labor. I would have an occasional contraction but nothing major and no losing the mucous plug or anything.
On the 28th I still had no signs of labor but that was ok because of our town celebration. I figured I could keep busy with that. We went to some garage sales in the morning and to the playground in the afternoon. That evening there were fireworks to go to. The fireworks were really fun so I was glad that I could enjoy all of that. We came home late from the fireworks and went to bed. I did a tiny bit of nipple stimulation in the shower before going to bed but didn’t do it enough to start contractions or anything. I went to sleep pretty well around 11:15 or so.
I woke up at 1:30 A.M. with a contraction that felt fairly strong and soon had another one about 3 min. later. I could tell these contractions felt different than the Braxton hicks I occasionally had earlier. I kind of vaguely had this feeling like I had been having occasional contractions in my sleep but wasn’t quite roused by them. I typically have contractions that are close together from the start but they aren’t that strong but gradually get stronger and more intense. I decided I’d better get up and call my midwife since she’s an hour and a quarter away from our house. She said she’d be on her way when I called her. I also called a friend of mine who was coming over to help out with the labor so she could come over and then came back to the room and woke my husband to let him know. He got up and started making a few preparations in the room as I continued in lighter labor.
I did a little walking with some contractions and tried different positions. I ate a little yogurt as my midwife stresses trying to eat and drink some while in labor. The contractions were definitely getting more intense and took more work to relax through them. When it was getting close to 3:00 I had a few more intense contractions and felt like I might throw up but didn’t. I laid down on the bed on my back and for a bit the contractions eased up a bit. During this time the midwife had arrived and checked me and I was at 4cm. I was a bit disappointed and was hoping to be a bit farther along. I wanted to get into the tub sometime but wasn’t sure when the best timing for that would be as I didn’t want to slow things down. The midwife suggested I wait some as she didn’t want me to be in too long and have to get out. Then I started having some really strong contractions in bed that were pretty tough to relax through. The midwife said she could check me again if I wanted – it had been about ½ hour since she had checked me before. I was then 5 cm. I was glad to have progressed to that in ½ an hour and knew there was a good chance once getting that far that I would progress faster the rest of the way.
I talked with my midwife about getting into the tub. She was hesitant – must not have thought I was in as tough labor as I was but I had a sense I should get in and decided to go ahead and get in. It was then 4:00 A.M. The first contractions after getting into the tub, I threw up several times. It was not fun, but good to get it over with as then I wasn’t as queasy. Then I had some REALLY tough contractions and promptly commented on the fact that the tub certainly hadn’t slowed labor any! It was hard to tell if the water helped. It was good to relax between contractions in the water but I was in transition so the contractions themselves were still pretty unbearable. My midwife and friend would say encouraging things during the contractions like how I could relax and get through them and all and I would say, “no I can’t” but their words did help me get through them anyways. They kept trying to have me slow my breathing and I kept thinking that I needed to use the faster transition-type breathing.
My midwife had commented that I was probably in transition and I asked her how long it would last and she said, “maybe an hour”. I was surprised she would say that long and promptly said, “I can’t do this for an hour!”. My husband told me afterwards that it was kind of funny seeing the look on her face of “oh no, what do I say now”, and watching her try to go back on what she had said some. I don’t think she realized how hard of labor I was really in and that when I’m at that point, it’s really pretty close. I had had a little ****** pressure but not really strong. I commented on it but didn’t ask to get checked right away. I never really did get strong urges to push so I wonder if I was actually complete earlier but didn’t really realize it.
Around 4:30 I realized I hadn’t gone to the bathroom for a while and felt like I should go. I got out of the tub and went and was able to get my system all “cleaned out” which was a blessing. My midwife suggested she could check my quickly before I got back in. She checked me and said I was complete and the baby was in the birth canal, only an inch or two away from being born! I was so excited and relieved that I would be able to push and have the baby! The first pushes got her so her head was right there. The 2nd contractions of pushes I was able to have her head delivered, and the 3rd set of contractions I was able to push her the rest of the way out! It was definitely painful with crowning and delivery of the body, but all in all I think the water helped it be less painful than it was last time out of the water. She was born at 4:40 A.M.
She was brought to my chest and was in great health right away. For some reason I had a really short cord so she had to rest a little down lower on my abdomen until I cut the cord. Dad was video taping so I went ahead and cut it. Right after she was born, I checked to see if she was a boy or girl and made the announcement. I was excited about having another girl to even our numbers out a little more (3 girls, 4 boys). We had already decided to name her Lindy Mae.
After the cord was cut, I encouraged her to nurse. It took a while to get her to open her mouth to get her to latch on. After a little while, she finally did latch on and nurse. It was pretty quickly after that that I was able to deliver the placenta. I hardly had any bleeding with it. One other odd thing that seems to be normal with me for some reason, is that I never seem to have much fluids or know when my water breaks. This happened with my last birth as well and also happened with 2 other babies of mine. We don’t know when the water broke and there never seemed to be much water but all went well either way.
My midwife got ready my herbal bath that she does for mom and baby after delivery and we had the herbal bath. My friend got me some food and gave me some grapefruit and a fruit smoothie to eat right away while I was in the tub. Then after the bath, the midwife did the newborn check on the baby and weighed her and all. She was 8lb 5 oz and 20 ½” long. She’s only my 2nd 8lb baby. My first baby was 8lb 11oz and the rest of mine have been mostly in the 7lb range. After she was dressed and all, I got out and got checked by the midwife and then got to bed. It felt SOOO good to be done! My friend had made me a big breakfast so I enjoyed that and then nursed Lindy again.
Soon after all was cleaned up the midwife and my friend left to go home. My husband and I relaxed and waited for the kids to wake up. Thankfully they had slept through the whole thing. We made a couple of phone calls to tell family about the baby. My 2 daughters (7yo and 1yo) woke up first and came in. My 7yo kept talking to the 1yo explaining everything to her and all. She held the baby and we took some pictures. Gradually the boys woke up and came in. They were really tired from being up late at the fireworks but seemed to be glad to see their sister. They were pretty quiet about it but then they’re boys! The family got ready for church and I was able to stay home and rest. My parents were staying an hour away at my brother’s house and they said they’d come after church to see us and stay with us. They agreed to take the kids to the playground so we could both get a nap in in the afternoon.
All in all it went very well! I didn’t have any tearing – just a teeny skid mark in one spot. Recovery has gone very well. Basically no pain other than the post-labor contractions and all. My milk came in right away (in a day or so) so I’m mostly over the engorgement stage thankfully. I feel quite good. The last 2 nights I’ve pretty much had 8 hours of sleep since I’m not up too long with the baby and have gone to bed early enough so that's been great. I’m so grateful to God for such a smooth delivery and recovery and a wonderful, healthy baby girl! Praise be to God!
Here are a couple of pics. I'll post a couple more another time.
Mom & Lindy shortly after birth
Lindy Mae the day she was born
Announcing the arrival of Lindy Mae! She almost evens out the boy/girl ratio so we're at 4 boys and 3 girls now. She was born this morning at 4:30 A.M. at home in our tub. All went great and she's nursing and doing well. She was 8lb 5oz. Her siblings were all excited to meet her in the morning when she woke up. I'm recovering well so far and am glad to have a laptop so that I can lie down and type. Anyways, I'll send a birth story and pics in a day or two! I am so grateful to the Lord for her safe delivery and to be on the other side of delivery! God is good!
The Kids have been having a lot of fun catching and watching butterflies. My 9yo ds goes off with his bug net and catches butterflies to give to all of the younger kids. Some of the younger kids can catch their own, although we need to get more bug nets. I found plans for making good bug nets but need to buy the materials and find the time to make them. Here are some pics from the kids' time outside today and a deer pic from near our house.
9yo ds with butterfly he caught for siblings.
5yo ds caught a little butterfly! Unfortunately it
escaped through a hole in the net. Below he's
holding a different butterfly big brother caught.
Just a quick update! I'm now about a week from my due date so any time this little one could be making an appearance! I'm starting to get more excited and ready! I've been having more sporadic bh contractions that make me think things are gearing up anyways. My earliest singleton baby was 6 days early and my latest baby was 1 day late so we'll see when this one shows up. In the meantime I'm continuing with life as normal. I got our garden watered tonight so at least that's done for a couple of days if the baby comes. All in all things are pretty well in order. Maybe my next message will be with news of our little one!
If anyone is like me and has a hard time finding decent modest maternity clothes, hopefully this tip will be a help! I had gotten some maternity clothes in a lot off freecycle this year and got some jeans that I didn't really need so I decided to try to make a skirt out of 2 pairs of jeans and it worked pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't take pics as I went along to give better explanation to doing it. Here's a pic of the finished skirt.
Basically, I just took a pair of maternity jeans with the belly panel in them that were comfortable and fit right, and ripped out the inner seam. Then I took the other pair of jeans (or you could use any other fabric that you think goes well with the jeans) and ripped the inner seam and cut them off from the crotch area so I had another long piece of fabric. This is the fabric that I sewed into the middle on the front and back to fill in between the legs of the other pair of jeans. It was a little tricky to get everything to lie right when I sewed it together so several times I needed to re-pin things and sew a little bit more to get it to look right. I could have gotten it to look a little better in the front if I were a bit more picky, but didn't have the time and energy. Here are a couple more pics.
All in all it went well and was pretty quick to do. I'm not a really great seamstress or anything so I'm sure others could do a better job. It was so nice to get a decent and comfortable maternity skirt without spending any $! Hope the idea helps someone out there!
I found this great recipe online for a dumpling cake with fruit that tastes similar to a cobbler or crisp recipe. I've done variations on the recipe with rhubarb on the bottom (mix about 1/4 cup sugar per cup of rhubarb and put on the bottom - need at least 3 cups of rhubarb for an 8x8" pan), cherry pie filling on the bottom, or a rhubarb/strawberry mix. I'm sure you could do peaches or whatever else you find!
Anyways, here's the recipe. This is for a 9x13 pan. I usually cut the recipe in half.
Apple Dumpling Cake
3 pounds apples - peeled, cored and sliced
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup vegetable oil
1 t ground cinnamon (I omit cinnamon if I'm not using apples)
Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9x13" baking dish. Place sliced apples (or whatever fruit you're using) in baking dish. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in eggs and oil. Pack on top of apples. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake in preheated oven for 40-45 min. or until topping is puffed and golden brown. Enjoy as is or top with whipped cream or ice cream!
Here's my baby of the house - only a baby for a short time more!
It won't be long now before the next little one arrives and I realize how big my "baby" has gotten and she won't be called the baby anymore! Hard to believe we'll be going through the adjustment again. Generally it goes well but it's change and change is still work!
Here are a few more pics of her at her most peaceful state! I could go for a little of this naptime position right now. My midwife has been telling me I should be taking naps in preparation, but it hasn't happened too often.
Nothing sweeter than a sleeping baby!
I'm praying for God's joy during delivery no matter the circumstances! It will be my 2nd homebirth providing all goes well!
We got our 7yo daughter a hummingbird feeder for her birthday this year. We finally got around to getting it up about a week ago. We were able to place it about a foot away from our living room window which is nice and low. All the kids can easily see it. It has been so fun enjoying watching the hummingbirds visit!
I wasn't sure if they'd find it right away, but within an hour we had birds visiting. They're ruby-throated hummingbirds. The males have the red on them and the females are all green with white on their breasts/throats. When they're getting ready to fly up to the feeder, they sit on our garden fence. Sometimes we see them chasing each other off as well.
Here are some pics I took of the birds. How neat it has been to enjoy these amazing creatures that God made!
Male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
I've been gone too long these days! Mainly it's because we have only had one computer and now that my husband works from our home, he's on it most of the time. I must admit it's been good for me to not have a computer to use much. I lean towards spending too much time online so it's been good for me to see how little I really need it. So now that I have a new computer that I can use regularly, hopefully I'll not go overboard with my computer time. Anyways, it will be good to be back here a little more!
Otherwise, we've been doing well. I'm 36w pregnant now! Can't believe I'm getting down to the last bit of being pregnant. It doesn't really hit me until about the last month that I'm really getting ready to have another baby. Hard to believe I'll have 7 little kids! It sounds like a lot! The kids are starting to talk about it more now. We still need to pick a name. My mom has been on me about making sure the baby is named by the time it's born. My brother had a baby in April and they waited a day before they decided for sure on the name and boy did everyone bug them about it for that day or so! Then today I heard about someone who has a baby who is 5 weeks old and still isn't named. It's between 2 names and they can't decide! So I'll have to tell my mom that!
We got our garden mostly put in even though it's been a pretty cool spring here. It's still only made it into the 70's a handful of days and last week it frosted twice. I'm excited to see plants growing all over our garden. We also put up some fencing to hopefully keep the critters out more. We'll see...!
Well, I'd better go for now, but that's my update for the time being. God bless!
Just when almost all of our snow was gone and we were thinking gardening thoughts, we got hit with 12" of snow and high winds over the course of 2 days! It was quite the storm! We lost power from around 6:00 A.M. until 11:30 A.M. Thankfully we have a fireplace so we got a fire going and hung out by the fire for the morning and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows to eat. The power came back on just as we were getting mostly through roasting the hot dogs. I kind of enjoy a good storm like that - makes some good memories! So we're back to snow piles, mud puddles, and lots of water as it starts melting. It's supposed to be in the 50's by Tuesday so I'm sure it will be melting fast!
Friday night of the storm (when it wasn't quite done), I brought some snow inside for the kids to play with (and eat). They enjoyed it quite a bit! I used some food coloring and made it different colors and they made things out of it. We also mixed up some milk, sugar and vanilla to eat some "snow cream" which did taste quite a bit like liquidy ice cream that's really cold. You basically use 2 parts milk to 1 part sugar and a little vanilla (I just guessed on the vanilla). It was quite good and the kids enjoyed the treat! Anyways, that's the latest here! I'm really looking forward to real spring!
Here's some pics of our indoors snow party!
Our 3yo's creation
One of our 5yo's is obsessed with fires. The red is his bonfires.
9yo ds with butterfly he caught for siblings.
5yo ds caught a little butterfly! Unfortunately it
Our bug catcher wanna be!
"These are for you, mommy!" 
Attentive Deer
Nothing sweeter than a sleeping baby!
Male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Our 3yo's creation
One of our 5yo's is obsessed with fires. The red is his bonfires.
Our 1yo just loves to eat it!
