12 days old

ian had his first doctor's appointment today! i took him in this afternoon for a 2-week checkup to make sure everything's going well. i wanted the doctor to take a look at his belly-button...the stump fell off on saturday, and without going into too much (disgusting) detail, it's been looking a little, um, weird since then. she says that he may have a small umbilical hernia, or possibly an unclosed vein in there somewhere, so we go back in a couple of weeks to have her look at it again and make sure it's healing a little better. the big news from the appointment, though, was the weight check. i wasn't sure how much he'd gained...i knew he was back to his birth weight at least, and probably a little bit more as well. well, definitely more than a little bit. his birth weight was 8 pounds 12 ounces, his discharge weight from the hospital was 8 pounds 3 ounces. his weight now at 12 days old? 9 pounds 10.5 ounces. this is an INSANE amount of weight gain in 12 days. so, yeah. future linebacker, i think.

abby's 3rd birthday is this friday. as you can see from the picture, we had her party up in appleton this past weekend. but, we'll go out for dinner on friday and give her her presents from us. i don't know where we're going to go yet, though.

turkey time

so, yeah. we've been out of town the last couple of days, so that's why i haven't updated the blog. we're celebrating thanksgiving up in appleton at my parents'. yes, you read that right. we traveled with ian being less than a week old. so far everything's gone pretty well...it's nice to have the extra hands.

we got up here on wednesday afternoon after an uneventful trip. ian slept the whole way, and abby behaved herself reasonably well. john, mary, kim, matt, and derek all arrived around suppertime and we ordered takeout from koreana. abby once again ate her body weight in chicken katsu, and ate most of brian's salad as well. she got to bed pretty late that night, but was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, which wasn't cool. that night went pretty well with ian, but we learned some things that needed to be different for the next night.

thursday morning was spent pretty leisurely for us...my parents were busy setting everything up for having 14 people over. kim's group got over here again from the hotel mid-morning or so, and we all watched the macy's parade. abby enjoyed it, but not enough to stop her from running around like crazy too. then at 11:30 we switched to the packer game. lunch was around noon or 12:30 when everyone else got here, and everything was excellent. i ate WAY too much, of course, but it was totally worth it. turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry relish, a vegetarian casserole, veggies and dip, fruit salad, matt's homemade bread, corn muffins, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and birthday cake for kim's birthday. it was awesome. :) then we all just sat around pretty comatose for the rest of the afternoon. we headed over to menasha around 5, and i couldn't even fathom being able to eat any more. but, i did. we had beef tenderloin, homemade mac and cheese, hashbrown casserole, and some other stuff that i honestly can't remember. it was a very food-intensive day. abby got to play with james and hayden, and had a blast, of course. ian did pretty well too. came back to my parents' and put abby to bed over an hour later than her usual time. but, she was up at the crack of dawn AGAIN the next day.

friday was a lazy day. just hung out here and snuggled ian all day, pretty much. darlene called mid-afternoon and asked if we wanted to come over for fish for dinner...knowing how much brian loves his perch, i said sure. i had thought there was something weird about her voice, but didn't think much of it till later. we got over there at the agreed-upon time, got in the house, and i was unbuckling ian from his carseat, and i hear brian say, "what are you doing here??" i was puzzled, but engrossed in the unbuckling process...so i wondered who the heck would be there that wouldn't normally be. after i got him out, i turned around, and there was brian's grandma! she had driven all the way down from webster to see her newest great-grandchild and to surprise the living bejesus out of us. :) she also gets the bonus of getting to come to abby's birthday party. so, she got to hold ian, and we all got to eat fish. all in all, a good night.

today is abby's birthday party. we're just doing a small thing with the grandparents, great-grandma, and uncle alan. so, more on that when it's done.

hopefully you all have checked out the pictures of ian's first few hours on snapfish. if you can't access them for some reason, or don't want to register, email me and i will send you some. there are a LOT, so i can't email them all to everybody, but i'll pick some good ones. we will be back home tomorrow afternoon and i can send things then.

hope everyone had a good thanksgiving!

picture time!

snapfish album of ian's birth

ta-da!

introducing: Ian Dale Rogers!
born November 16th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
8 pounds 12 ounces
20.5 inches

sorry this post is a day late...i'm sure you all understand, though. we came home from the hospital this afternoon around 4:30 or so.

birth story:
we went in for the induction on the morning of the 16th at 11:30 am. we got admitted and all the paperwork filled out, and things got moving around 1:00 when they started the pitocin (after 5 IV attempts). i started having contractions pretty much right away, which proved my suspicion that it wouldn't take much to get things going. i decided i wanted to walk around to aid the process, but baba ghannouj wouldn't stay still so they could keep the monitor on his heartbeat. so, 45 minutes of the nurse trying to get him to stay on the monitor, and we both gave up. i decided that i'd wait a little bit to walk around and get back in the bed so they could monitor him a little better. i laid back down, the nurse got him back on the monitor, and my water promptly broke as she walked away. :) things REALLY got moving at this point (2:30pm). the contractions got much stronger, and i quickly lost my ability to deal with them. i requested the epidural at 4:30, and i'm very glad i didn't wait any longer because it took an hour for the epidural man to show up. so, got the epidural at 5:30/5:45ish, and was 5cm at that point. baba ghannouj got picky at this point and only wanted me to lay on my right side...every time i switched, his heart rate would go down. the next few hours passed relatively uneventfully, and at 9:00 i was 10cm and supposedly ready to push. well, i couldn't feel anything, but i tried anyway. after about a half-hour of "pushing" i was finally feeling enough that i started making some progress. but, around 10:30/10:45, serious frustration and discouragement was setting in. progress was very slow, and i was having a LOT of back pain (FORESHADOWING ALERT) which led me to ask my doctor to check and make sure he was faced the right way (faced down toward my back). she checked and said, "yep, faced the right way, you just need to push harder." sigh. close to 11:40, his head had been partially out for quite some time but wouldn't come the rest of the way, no matter what i did. so, she cut a little episiotomy, and with the next push, he blasted out like he was fired out of a cannon. and it ended up the doctor was WRONG. he came out "sunny-side up", facing straight up to the ceiling with his eyes wide open. this is a bad way for the baby to be faced because it means the biggest part of the head has to come through first...it's much more difficult to get a baby out this way. it would have been nice to know, but i suppose it wouldn't have made a huge difference to know it beforehand.

ian's doing really really well. he's a champion nurser and a champion pooper already. abby approves of him so far, although she initially wouldn't say his name at all, and today has called him lily several times (after auntie jenny's 7-month-old daughter), and also "baby dale rogers." so, we're working on that. we're also working on remembering to use "inside voice", but that's been an ongoing project anyway. but, she's been a big helper already with diaper changes since we've been home.

i am uploading all the pictures to snapfish and to flickr (for those of you who don't want to register with snapfish) now, and will post the links as soon as they're done. he's super-cute...enjoy the pictures!

last-minute

i know i said that the next post would be the birth announcement, but i lied. :) we're headed for the hospital in a little less than an hour, so we're taking care of some last-minute things. we both got good sleep last night, so i think we're good to go. brian will be coming home every so often in the next couple of days to feed kishi, so he will dump pictures off the camera into the computer and post the big birth announcement and pictures here. he'll also send email to those who don't check the blog. so hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, everyone will know the big news!

wish us luck!

the light at the end of the very very long tunnel

so, i saw the doctor this morning for the last time before the baby comes. no progress since monday, but hallelujah! we've scheduled the induction! brian and i are due at the hospital at 11:30 on friday to get this show on the road. abby is safely tucked away with grandparents as of this morning, so i actually get some time to myself before friday too! woohoo! so, hopefully baba ghannouj's birthday will be either november 16th or 17th. the next post will be the birth announcement, and will include a multitude of pictures.

overdue

well, baba ghannouj is officially late to the party. brian and i keep trying to explain to him/her that there's much more room out here, there's food, all sorts of good stuff. but, no dice. we all went to the doctor together this morning for the fateful appointment. i'm up to 3cm now, which is definite progress. she seemed to think i have a good chance of going on my own in the next couple of days, so we tabled the induction discussion for now. i go back in first thing wednesday morning if the baby's not here yet, and then we'd most likely go ahead and schedule the induction. i got all excited this morning after my appointment because i was having some pretty good contractions, stronger than the ones i'd been having. but, after a long walk and a nap, they faded out. this whole thing is all very discouraging...i KNOW that i'm only one day overdue, i KNOW that i won't be pregnant forever, i KNOW that the baby's coming very soon one way or another. but, it doesn't make the waiting, the anticipation, the buildup and letdown any easier at all. i can know something intellectually, but not be able to handle it emotionally. between the pain, the hormones, and the general feeling that i've been beaten by a baseball bat, it's hard to be objective.

hopefully my next post will be a birth announcement.

eviction notice

well, the day is here. today is baba ghannouj's due date. has she/he seen fit to arrive? of course not, because that would be too easy. we go in first thing tomorrow morning to see the doctor, and then we will decide from there what we're going to do. one way or another, baba ghannouj will be here by the end of the week because i'm the mom and I SAY SO.

so, we watched the packers massacre the vikings today. abby enjoyed the game, as usual. her favorite thing to yell? "get the man with the ball!", a saying passed from grandma schultz, to me, and now to her. she hasn't quite learned yet that you should only yell it if the opposing team has the ball, though. :) after the game, we went to borders to do our pre-shopping for the extra discount weekend coming up after thanksgiving.

sigh

well, wouldn't you know. as soon as i called the on-call doctor last night to see what i should do about these contractions? they stopped. stupid uterus.

so, a pretty laid-back day today. abby and i just chilled out, and then brian finished with his jury duty around 2 or so, and then we went to the library and hung out there for a while. then a nice supper together, and that was about it. tomorrow we'll head over for our weekly playdate.

not much to say tonight.

39 weeks 3 days

so i had my weekly doctor's appointment today. no progress since last week, so still at 2 cm. i was feeling pretty discouraged and frustrated, obviously. but, the doctor and i talked about options, and decided that i would see her in the office first thing on monday morning, and depending on what (if any) progress has been made, we may schedule an induction. i've spent this entire pregnancy, in fact the entire 3 years since abby's birth, hoping to avoid another induction. so, that's another source of frustration.

the good news is, i've been having some actual regular contractions tonight! this is a very good sign, and i'm hoping it means the real deal is close at hand. think contraction thoughts for me. think non-induction thoughts for me.

lethal weapon

yes, that is actually how big my belly is. be afraid. be very afraid.

in case anyone's wondering, NO, the baby's not here yet. how does it look like i feel about that? this is now officially the longest i've ever been pregnant.

and to add insult to injury, brian has been chosen for a jury trial that started yesterday (monday) and runs through thursday. apparently they only excuse you if the imminent birth is your first child. or if you're a high school volleyball coach whose team is going to state. because you know that's high-priority stuff. not like a second child...you can pop one of those out like nothing. what? am i bitter? what would make you think something like that? just because i threatened to go down to the courthouse and do some damage with my ginormous belly? no, no, i'm fine, really. :)

in non-baby-related news, on sunday we were doing a bunch of errands, and abby was in the backseat singing a song that had something to do with eyeballs, but we couldn't understand anything else. turns out that she was singing, "moisten my eyeballs, moisten my eyeballs" over and over again. then she stopped and said, "blinking keeps your eyeballs wet and clean!" i think she's receiving alien transmissions. then her song moved on to, "eardrums, eardrums, eardrums! tastebuds, tastebuds, tastebuds!" woo!