It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

It's twelve days later, and I'm finally feeling up to blogging again. Actually, I've been dying to blog. But as all mommies out there know, finding the time to do anything other than take care of baby, sleep and occasionally eat is quite a challenge at first. So finally, here is the story of Chase Michael Webb's entrance into the world. (Minus some of the more disgusting details)

May 18th at 5:00pm, I checked into the hospital to spend the last few hours of my 27th birthday being induced.

It started with the IV (I am not a fan). Then my doctor came to check on me and place Cervadil (which was supposed to start the dilating process). Again...not a fan. After that, it was just a waiting game. We hung out with family until visiting hours were over, and then I tried to get some sleep.

I woke up at 3am with mild contractions. Nothing major, but they were consistent every 2-3 minutes, and never let up. Needless to say, my sleeping ended at that point. Five am started the Pitocin, and then the fun really began. The contractions got consistently stronger, and by 8:30 I was ready for my epidural. Let me just give a big shout out right now to anyone who gave birth without one...you are my heroes...I could not have done it! I was feeling great after that, in spite of the four bags of stuff now dripping into my arm and the catheter that followed the epidural. I had a little nap, and then spent a few hours visiting.

At 2:00 my Doctor came back to break my water. Things progressed very quickly after that. I went from 2cm to 5cm to 7cm to fully dilated. And despite the epidural, when it was time to push I knew it. For those of you who haven't experienced it, I will simply tell you what I told my nurse. I felt like I had to take the worst poop of my entire life.

When the Doctor finally got back, it took about 20 minutes of pushing, which was completely exhausting. We were making progress, but at some point we lost Chase's heartbeat. So my Doctor informed me that, contraction or no contraction, I was having that baby now. So snip snip pull, and sweet baby Chase was free!

This is my "Is it over?" face.

Six pounds, thirteen ounces and nineteen and a half inches long. Perfect, handsome, and looking just like his Daddy. Not that I had any idea what he looked like. I will be completely honest, right after the delivery I was in such bad shape I don't even think I looked at him. Plus, I was not about to hold him until he was cleaned up. And unfortuntely, I was shaking so bad it was quite awhile before I was even able to hold him. But let me tell you, it was worth the wait.

A big shout out to my mom who spent 3 nights in the hospital with me, took all the pictures (at the expense of being in any of them!) and even watched the delivery (even I had my eyes closed). And another one to all of the friends, family and friends who are really family who came to see us in the hospital. I couldn't be more grateful for all of the love and support we have received!

What A Day

I'm trying to enjoy my last few days minus baby as much as possible. I'd say today I did a pretty good job.

Had to wake up early to let the carpet cleaners in. But the upside to that is...the carpets are clean :) While they were doing that, I did a few more things in the front of the house. Straightened the kitchen, vacuumed the couches, swiffered the floors. (My motto for the moment is "Swiffer daily.") The house is clean, the stuff is together, and I'm ready for baby!

After that, mom and I went for Peluso's (our favorite pizza) and pedicures. I decided to pamper myself one more time before Chase gets here, and figured I wouldn't feel like painting my own toes for a couple weeks after anyhow. Okay, there was a visit to Dunkin Donuts snuck in there as well. And I would personally like to thank Dunkin Donuts for the "Spring Munchkin." A cake donut, glazed, and rolled in sprinkles...what could be better???

After that, I took a nice nap outside by the pool...warm temperatures + overcast skies = great nap!

Then I came inside and caught up on Glee (Love this show!) and Grey's Anatomy (What a finale...can't wait to hear what Little Grey decides!).

Topped the day off with yummy dinner at Atlanta Bread. A pretty good day overall, I'd say. Now I'm off to watch the Private Practice season finale. Hope everyone else had a great Friday as well!

Confession

Thirteen days from today (at the latest) I will be holding my baby boy. There are a million decisions that come along with being a parent...and that's before the baby even arrives! One of the biggest sources of contention in our house long before we even got pregnant was breastfeeding. Kevin has always been 100% for it. I agree that breast milk is best for baby, but my first choice was to pump and bottle feed.

We each had our own reasons to back up our way of thinking. We definitely agreed that it was the best source of food for baby, and obviously the economics are a plus. I guess we really just differed on the actual administering of the food.

I've decided to be the one to compromise...Chase will be a breastfed baby. I think I've made the right choice for me and my baby. I know he'll be getting good nutrition. We'll be saving tons of money. And selfishly, I'm looking forward to everything I've heard about dropping the baby weight (and there's a lot of it) a little faster. I have invested in a small pump and a few bottles so that he's not exclusively dependent on mommy. But, God willing and as long as there are no medical complications, he'll be a breastfed baby.

Can I be honest? Breast feeding has always given me the heebie jeebies! And it still does. Even now, 13 days from D-day, I find the idea absolutely revolting. Yet I've decided to breast feed exclusively. I've done quite a bit of reading, and I'm happy with my choice. Particularly after reading about all the time I could waste pumping milk and then having to bottle feed. I just don't know how I'm going to go through with it. Even reading about it grosses me out. And the diagrams and pictures...gag. So although I've made my decision and I'm happy about it, I'm still a little (ok, a lot) uncomfortable.

So I thought I'd throw this out there for all the mommies who just love to share. Did anyone else feel the same way before having kids? Any advice or suggestions or reassurance? I'd love to hear some thoughts on this one!

A Moment of Introspection

Tonight I am going to do something that is pretty rare for me. I'm going to share some personal information in a rare moment of introspection...while I still have the presence of mind to do so. :)

For the past two months, I have been participating in a class at church called "Discovering Your Unique Design." We have taken several different personality/spiritual assessments which help us to determine what our strengths and weaknesses are. The goal of the class is to learn about ourselves and learn how to improve on both our strengths and weaknesses, to maximize our potential in our home, work, and especially in ministry.

Because blogs are more fun with pictures...here's my notebook from the class :)

We have learned about our Motivational/Spirtual gifts, Meyers Briggs Preferences, Conflict Resolution styles, and Gallups StrengthsFinder Themes. A couple of things that I have found very interesting up to this point, although they came with very little surprise, are that I am an introvert, and that my conflict resolution style is avoidance. Introversion in this sense means that when I am overwhelmed or at the end of my rope, I recharge my batteries by spending time alone. Like I said, neither of these things necessarily surprised me, however they definitely gave me a lot to think about.

Right now, we are working our way through the Gallups StrengthsFinder themes. This has been my favorite part of the course so far, and I thought I would share my top five themes with you.

1. Deliberative - You are careful. You are a private person. You know that the world is an unpredictable place. You are a fairly serious person who approaches life with a certain reserve. You select your friends cautiously and keep your own counsel when the conversation turns to personal matters. You are careful not to give too much praise and recognition, lest it be misconstrued. Life is something of a minefield. You identify the dangers, weigh their relative impact, and then place your feet deliberately. You walk with care.
2. Adaptability - You live in the moment. You don't see the future as a fixed destination. Instead, you see it as a place that you create out of the choices that you make right now. This doesn't mean you don't have plans. But adaptability enables you to respond willingly to the demands of the moment even if they pull you away from your plans. You are, at heart, a very flexible person who can stay productive when the demands of work are pulling you in many different directions at once.
3. Harmony - You look for areas of agreement. In your view there is little to be gained from conflict and friction. You try to steer people with differing views away from confrontation and toward harmony. You can't quite believe how much time is wasted by people trying to impose their views on others. When people start to argue about their pet theory or concept, you steer clear of the debate, preferring to talk about practical, down-to-earth matters on which you can all agree.
4. Restorative - You love to solve problems. You may prefer practical problems or conceptual ones or personal ones. You enjoy bringing things back to life. You may seek out specific kinds of problems that you have met many times before, or feel the greatest push when faced with unfamiliar problem. But what is certain is that you enjoy bringing things back to life. It is a wonderful feeling to identify the undermining factors, eradicate them, and restore something to its true glory.
5. Intellection - You like to think. You like mental activity. This need for mental activity may be focused, like trying to understand another's feelings, or unfocused. You are the kind of person who enjoys your time alone because it is your time for musing and reflection. You are introspective. This introspection may lead you to a slight sense of discontent as you compare what you are actually doing with all the thoughts and ideas that your mind conceives. Or this introspection may tend toward more pragmatic matters such as the events of the day or a conversation that you plan to have later. This mental hum is one of the constants of your life.

I think my favorite part of this particular assessment is that it focuses on strengths instead of weaknesses. It specifically tells us what we are good at, and encourages us to nurture and improve upon those things even more. Good stuff. I am also enjoying seeing how my results from the different assessments work together and create my ultimate personality profile.

If there's anyone who made it to the end of this blog, congratulations. Or should I say thank you? Obviously you are interested in learning more about me. Any observations from what I've revealed about myself?