welcome to spiceland.

Heidi’s hospital picture is up. You can see where the photographer let her suck on her gloved finger while she was taking the pictures! Heidi would close her eyes every time she took her finger out of her mouth. The photographer had to yank her finger out quickly and snap the picture before Heidi had a chance to react, which is why there is a perfect finger-shaped hole in her mouth!

Also, more pictures here.

We got home from the hospital on Thursday. Heidi has a slight case of jaundice, but nothing that a little time in the sunlight won’t fix. We had her first doctor appointment this morning, at 4 days old, and she is 6 pounds 1 ounce, up 2 ounces from her discharge weight of 5 pounds 15 ounces. She’s sleeping most of the day right now, waking about every 2-3 hours to feed. Michael and I are exhausted, so forgive us for being scarce!

There are a few more pictures here.

Today has been quite a day.

I dropped Tru off at preschool at about 9 AM. This is her last preschool session before my maternity leave starts. I met Mike for lunch at O’Bryans at 11 AM, where we listened to Madison mayoral candidate Paul Finley talk about his plans for Madison. Our friend Jonathan Heath also attended. Nothing looked good. I thought that it must be my whimsical pregnancy cravings and aversions acting up again. I ordered chicken tenders and fries, but couldn’t eat more than a couple of bites. I left early and got home at about 12:30. At about 2, I noticed I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions again. I didn’t think anything of them. I’d been having very strong Braxton-Hicks contractions since I was 13 weeks pregnant, which is extremely early. I ran myself bath at about 3 thinking that a warm, relaxing bath might stop them. It was just a normal day.

I realized at about 3:15, after a short soak, that I could be in labor and I needed to get to the hospital. As soon as I hopped out of the tub, the contractions got so strong so fast that I couldn’t even speak. I text-messaged Mike with as much of a message as I could muster: “labor 911.” I put on whatever clothes I could find on the floor and headed to the car to wait on him, stopping every 2 minutes along the way to brace myself on a wall, a door, or the car and moan through another contraction. I wasn’t outside waiting for him for more than 5 minutes when the pressure got extremely intense and I started feeling the ring of fire. I made my way back inside and waddled through the kitchen, thinking, “I’m about to make a big mess all over this tile! The blood will never come out of the grout! But I can’t have her on the carpet either.” I thought I should go into the bathroom to give birth on the linoleum, but I didn’t want to mess up the bathroom rugs either. I stripped off my bottoms and hopped into the tub. It would, after all, be the easiest place to clean! I squatted on my knees in the bathtub, leaning over the side. After the first contraction, I reached down to see if I could feel her head. I did, and I felt my water bulging as well. It felt like a water balloon. I grabbed it with my fingers and twisted it until it broke. Amniotic fluid flowed all over my legs and down the drain. I had two more excruciating contractions that I screamed through, and her head came through. I reached down, felt her head, and pulled her out into my arms at 3:31 PM, after about 15 minutes of active labor.

I sat down in my own blood and wrapped her in the bottom of my shirt, umbilical cord still attached, knowing Mike was on his way. I thought that it would be less effort and less mess if I just waited for him. I went into a very calm, cold trance-like state. I don’t remember much about it now. I waited about 4 minutes, and heard him coming through the house, yelling, “Erin! Erin!” I said, “I’m in here…” My words came out much more weakly than I expected them to. I was shaking and in shock. He walked into the bathroom with the phone pressed up against his ear. He was on the phone with a 911 operator. “There you are!” He said. “Whoa, what’s all that blood!?” He exclaimed. “Whoa! There’s a baby!” The 911 operator was trying to give him instructions to cut the cord, but he was so freaked out that he couldn’t process them. He was relaying to me the instructions as if I could just hop up and perform them myself. “Find something to tie the cord off!” He ordered. I kept trying to tell him to get a hair barrette of the drawer, but I couldn’t seem to make myself heard. He was listening to the operator tell him to use a shoelace. He picked up his foot and looked at his shoe. “I don’t have any shoelaces!” He put his foot back down on the floor. He looked around for a shoelace and then back down at his feet. “I still don’t have any shoelaces!”

The paramedics walked in as Mike was willing his shoes to produce shoelaces. The first one whipped out his birthing kit and found a plastic clamp. He clamped and cut the cord and took the baby from me. The second one wrapped her up and took her away. The first one called a firefighter in to help me up. I protested, “I don’t have any bottoms on!” The first paramedic laughed, “That’s the last thing you’ve got to worry about!” I knew I was just dripping with blood, but they couldn’t fit the gurney through our bedroom, so I had to walk through the bedroom, leaving bloody footprints behind me. They loaded me up, strapped me down, and wheeled me out to the ambulance. There was a firetruck outside, and all my neighbors were out looking at the commotion. I waved to them. “I’m fine! We’re fine!”

In the ambulance, they told me that my blood pressure was only 90/25. They started pushing lots of iv fluids, and they wouldn’t let me hold Heidi. They turned up the heat so much to keep Heidi warm that I thought I was going to pass out. I delivered the placenta somewhere between my house and the hospital.

When we got to the hospital, my OB was already there. She said she’d never had a single patient deliver at home by accident before. Heidi was 6 pounds 2 ounces and 18 inches long. She looks EXACTLY like Tru did when she was born, except for the shock of black hair on her head. She’s much quieter than Tru as well.

Her name is Heidi Annora.

Pictures will be uploaded here as we get them.

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Here are some pictures we took today (Mother’s Day) at the park. Mike’s mother and sister Jessica were visiting and we spent some time at the park next door to our church.

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This is day 0 with our new Robomow, the robotic lawn mower. This video shows me unpacking it and then an overview from the DVD that came with it. We’ve run the permiter wire and Robomow is now charging. Tomorrow I’ll post a video of it mowing the yard.

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Tru is doing better. Her fever is gone now, and she’s slowly learning that it’s better to cooperate and take her medicine than to be held down and force-fed! Her rash is completely gone now, which is a big relief. We have ordered her a MedicAlert bracelet with her allergies on it, just in case she ever has to be treated for something when Michael and I aren’t present or are incoherent. Her allergy isn’t life-threatening right now, because she doesn’t experience an anaphylactic reaction to these medications. However, her doctor said that allergies can switch types, so the next reaction she has to one of these could be an anaphylactic one. Better safe than sorry!

I am sick now too (Erin). I tested negative for strep, but I’m still waiting on results from the culture to come back from the doctor. Luckily, I can take penicillin, so I have a prescription to get filled as soon as I hear back from my doctor.