My daughter H Frances Reeve was born on March 15, 2012 at 1:11am. She was 8 lbs., 8 oz. and 19″ long. It took 52 hours to get her here. I spent a full week in the hospital from beginning to end, but I wouldn’t change a single thing.
Category: Pregnancy
So we checked into the hospital the night of Monday the 12th so I could be induced for medical reasons, the doctor didn’t want to wait too far past my due date (which was Friday the 9th). We’ve now hit the 40 hour mark of waiting here at the hospital. Day One of induction didnt take and Day Two isn’t very eventful yet, either. Except lots more pain and discomfort. But H is perfectly happy where she is and has shown no signs yet of wanting to come meet everyone.
It’s 5pm on Wednesday, and I have been cooking pretty much every waking hour since Monday around 10am. I’ve prepped and frozen about 30 dinners, canned 6 jars of homemade marinara sauce, frozen 2 more of bolognese, and gone through somewhere around 30 pounds of meat from our weekend at Costco and Whole Foods. Our freezer is full to bursting, and I love it. This is all to prepare for the arrival of H Sprout and the expectation that neither Adam nor I will have it together to do much cooking for the foreseeable future. But we can throw things in crockpots or stick things in the oven!
But let’s not talk about how I’m feeling physically.
Yesterday I had my 33rd birthday, and I also hit my 36 weeks pregnant mark. Needless to say, this particular birthday has been unlike any other I’ve had.
I feel strong. Yes, every inch of my body aches, my feet are unrecognizable, and I basically need a pregnant lady crane to get upright these days, but I can’t stop looking at my bump. I feel like that bump is one of my best accomplishments in life. I’ve managed to grow a really big, perfect, incredibly wiggly kicker of a bump. I’ve avoided all the stretch mark remedies because I want to see the full progress my skin has made growing that bump–they are my own growth chart. I’m already starting to miss being pregnant even though I can’t wait for this H sprout to get here. It’s going to be strange not to have my constant companion this close. Kicking my iPad off of my belly when I’m watching TV, wiggling like crazy when I’m (she’s) hungry or reading a really great story to the kids at school. In complete honesty I can say that I’ve loved every single minute of being pregnant, even the far from glamorous ones.
It’s February 1st, a month and a day from the start of my maternity leave. And things at school have kicked into high gear since New Year’s while I wind down my school year and try to fit everything in with the kids before I go. I’ll be back for 2 weeks in June, but really this is my end-of-year in a lot of ways.