The Birth of Jack Oliver

I know I've fallen behind horribly on the whole blog thing, and did zero blogs throughout this pregnancy, and I apologize! Sophia killed the charger to my laptop (again), and we just haven't bought a new one yet. And before that, Nate would bring my computer to work since it was our only laptop and he needed to have one for the job, and before we moved his desktop would never connect to the internet. BUT, now we're in a new place where it will connect, so I'm going to attempt to get back into it, because I've really missed it! Even the last post I made with the tutorial was done from my phone, and it was a bit of a pain to post from there!

Anyway, moving on, our family has grown! I'm pretty sure that I mentioned on this blog that we were trying to conceive, and after five months of trying we found out I was finally pregnant again! I really wanted to have a home birth, but in the end we just couldn't afford it (the ones here are all out of pocket), so I opted for the next best thing, and that was a natural birth at a birthing center. At 19 weeks, we learned that I was carrying a healthy baby boy, just as I had suspected. My pregnancy was completely uncomplicated, so always a good thing!

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.

11 weeks

Wow what a day! So I had my first prenatal appointment today and was so excited going in. Well, when it got to be the good stuff, you know listening to the baby and such, we couldn't find the heartbeat. I've heard that's normal, so I tried not to freak out. The nurse practitioner (the midwife didn't see me today) said that many times the doppler won't pick up babies until at least 12 weeks. But then, when the she checked my uterus, she told me it felt like I was only measuring 8 weeks. She commented that maybe I wasn't as far along as I thought. There was NO way that I was only 8 weeks; I've known about the pregnancy longer than that and I know exactly when I became pregnant, no doubt in my mind. The only reasonable thought for me at that point was maybe I had miscarried. I knew last week I had spotted a tiny bit, but it stopped and never came back. I also hadn't been cramping, and I threw up the past two mornings. I hadn't today, but I was nauseous slightly. Regardless, I was so close to breaking down in tears right there on the table. She said that she would set me up for an ultrasound so we could make sure everything was fine and date the pregnancy.