Thinking:
I am completely amazed that my bladder has remembered how to retain more than .25 ounces of pee. I don't have to pee every 5 seconds anymore!!!

This is me...

I am not an artist by any means but I had nothing to blog about today so I drew me instead. Hope you like it.

Rhea managed to projectile vomit up my nose yesterday. I was sitting in bed, feeding her and talking to Erik, when all of a sudden. Blaph!!!

right handed interneting

I slept a ton today and last night. I mean a shit load of sleep (measured using newborn-baby-in-the-house standards) so like five hours.

It honestly isn't horribly bad. I think I remember being more sleep deprived in basic training but then I got to sleep in somewhat solid chunks of sleep. And there was always that one blessed night a week when I didn't have fire guard duty.

I have had a couple of crying jags where I beg Rhea to just go to sleep but I think my count for those is around two. This is working fine right now. I'm already worrying about events in the future though. I have a long, long test series I have to take on January 15 and I have no clue how I will survive it without my boobs exploding on my chest.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like breast feeding but I can't go much longer than 2.5 hours without becoming painfully full.

Ok I have to burp Rhea now so I'll get back to this later.

Thinking: how do I teach a one week old that nighttime = sleep time.

You're all awesome

and so am I.

I feel great today. Rhea woke up twice to eat during a six hour stretch so I've gotten a ton of sleep compared to the past few days. AND I PUT ON PRE PREGNANCY JEANS TODAY!!!

So what if they used to be my fat jeans and now just barely fit over my thighs? Eventually I'll get to where I feel comfortable in my own clothes again. I'll be super happy to burn my freaking spandex jeans. A giant bonfire of celebration.

My boobs have morphed into two rock which just sit on my chest. I'm still getting into the swing of how to use these puppies so engorgement is a bit of an issue. Rhea has been most helpful with keeping them empty. I have yet to put cabbage in my bra but I wouldn't hesitate if I thought I needed it.

So yeah, I feel pretty damn good and hope that it continues for a little bit. Good luck to everyone and have a Merry Christmas (and Happy Holidays).

And now the rest of our lives

December 17th, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. was the start of the rest of our lives. Rhea was born and now is already three days old. I'm not sure how much of my life is going to be altered but I have a sneaking suspicion that nothing will ever be the same.

Now for the birth story:

On Thursday evening I started have some stupid contractions that I figured weren't going to get any worse so I went to sleep. At around 1 a.m. I woke up to some stronger contraction-cramps that were about 3 minutes apart. Erik called the hospital and asked what they thought we should do. They told us to come in anyway because when your 40 weeks along it's better to come in.

We got to the hospital at around 4ish and they put us in a room. I wasn't convinced at this point that we were going to have the baby but the contractions kept coming and my back was killing me. At about 7 in the morning the nurse managed to get the Doctor (not mine but one of her partners) to sign off on my epidural. The epidural process was so easy and quick. The most painful part of the whole process was the Dr rubbing my back with his knuckle to find the right spot. (I have to include that next part but I want to emphasize that Erik was awesome during the whole process.)

While I was getting set up for the epidural the Dr. said, "OK now don't move for this next part." and as soon as he said it Erik kicked the table as he got up to walk away because he can't watch other people get stuck with needles. Nothing horrible happened and I finally had my blessed epidural. The Nurses told us, "we'll be back in to check you and we'll probably have this baby around 11:30."

Finally I managed to get some sleep. At around 8:30ish I woke up feeling the contractions more and I had a moment of panic. What if the epidural wears off and I can feel everything?!!! I sat there for a few contractions (still not really believing that today was the day) and tried to decide what to do...

Finally I made Erik wake up (he was sleeping on the pull out bed) and go tell the nurses I was feeling pressure. They came in, checked me, then Dr. Samale came in and checked me and it was game on!

I had to call my mom and tell her to hurry up because if she didn't she would miss all the action. She got there right as they were coaching me on how to push. It's pretty easy once they show you where to tense your muscles. I was able to laugh at some of the nurse's jokes during delivery, that's how good the epidural was.

Once Mom got there it was pretty much push, push, push. The epidural didn't wear off but I could feel when I needed to push. I'm going to have Erik write up his experiences and I'll post it here because I was pretty focused at this point and I'm sure I missed a lot.

At 10:00 Rhea entered this world. It was amazing. I couldn't get over how big she was and that she was actually there. I had spent all this time waiting for her to show up and finally she was here!

So far everything is going relatively smoothly. I haven't gotten much sleep because Rhea is a voracious eater so I'm sorry if this post is scattered and riddled with grammatical errors. Hopefully once things settle down I will be able to go back and organize my thoughts so that I can write about how incredibly moving this whole experience was and continues to be for me.

You really can not be prepared for how awesome the whole process is.