December favorites

So, this is the last day of December (and of 2012!), so I figured that I would do some Mommy and Baby favorites! I've planned on doing these for a long time (mostly in video form, but my system is too outdated, so I can't upload until I update), but just never have. But now I finally am! Considering I have a sleeping baby on me right now, I'm not going to get up and take pictures of every single thing that's my favorite. SO, instead I'll just include stock images (aka, I don't own any of the product images, and I would like to thank Google for leading me to them). In the future I plan to take photos of the objects myself, but we'll see how that goes. :) Anyway, let's go ahead and jump in. By the way, these are in no particular order.

Factual Friday

I'm starting a new trend, where every Friday I plan to do one of these surveys, just to keep me on top of blogging more often (one of my resolutions!). So here is number one of many to come!

Picture day :)

Just a quick post showing off her pictures from today. :) Every Thursday I'm taking pictures for her future book featuring photos of her once a week. She already looks different from her week one pictures! And I was lucky enough to catch her in a happy, alert state. Love my sweet girl!

Happy day after Christmas!

Six days old.

Can I just first start out by saying that time is absolutely flying by? Sophia will be two weeks day after tomorrow, and it feels like I just had her yesterday.

Well, anyway, she's doing great. Breast feeding is going pretty awesome I would say. I'm having to use a nipple shield with her for now, but with it she's doing great. With Blake, not even the shield would really get him to breast feed all that well. And let me tell you, she is all about that nursing thing. She eats so much! Which is great, because I want to make sure she's getting enough. It's so funny when she's done, because she will usually have a little bit of left over milk trailing out of her mouth. :) Got to love when babies are milk drunk! It feels so great knowing that I'm able to provide for her in such a way. Makes me realize even more what I missed out on with Blake (can't say I didn't try though), but it also makes me appreciate even more what I CAN do for her. This time around just feels like it's going so much more smoothly. I guess that's part of being a second time mom though, too.

Sophia has arrived!

Sophia is here! And what a story I have to tell about how she came. :)

So where to start. Well, my due date came and went on Wednesday (12/12/12 for those who forget). I had an appointment the next day, and my midwife agreed to perform a membrane sweep the next day after clinicals (so that way, if it worked, I would have the weekend off). So after clinicals I go in, and she checks me first. At this point I was about 80% effaced and 3-4 cm dilated, although she said she could stretch it to a 5. She also told me that Sophia was very low, which I knew already, and that she's ready and was probably just waiting on me. So, she did the sweep and there was a decent amount of blood after. She said she thinks that it would probably work, and the contractions usually start to pick up in 3-5 hours.

39 weeks

And still pregnant! I think I am definitely making progress though. Right before I turned 38 weeks I lost my mucus plug, but no bloody show. Not that it really means anything other than I'm dilating, which I kinda figured anyway. I'm still getting whole lots of Braxton Hicks contractions, many of which are uncomfortable, some even painful. Nothing regular though, and nothing that progresses. And she is very low in the birth canal. From my own checking, I would say somewhere between a 0 and +1 station. That, again, is just my guesstimation, but yeah, VERY low and engaged.