beth_leonard

We are happy to announce that Amber Lynn Leonard was born yesterday, Friday June 1st at 8:28 pm. She is just over 24 hours old and we are now home from the hospital.

She was 7 lbs 15.7oz (should I just start rounding that to 8? In the hospital they kept saying 7-15, but when we looked it was 7 lbs, 15.7 oz.) She was 20 inches long. I think both of these are just a little bigger than average, but close to 50%. Head circumference was 34 cm, which is 10.8 cm in diameter if it were round.

I think I'll put the details and commentary in a friends-locked, longer, post. Hopefully to be completed tonight, but maybe tomorrow.

Many thanks to my parents for taking care of Peter during all of this, and to friends who have loaned me maternity clothing.

--Beth

PS. She's just stirring now so the details may have to wait.

We have a scheduled induction for Friday sometime after noon. We have to call the hospital at 11 am to find out when it will be. It's possible we'll be bumped to Saturday if they are busy. Jon and I have both done much reading about this, and we're getting comfortable with it's medical safety. It seems that as long as they don't use too much pitocen we should be just fine.

I searched and searched the internet for an actual copy of the "No Episiotomy" article by Thompson that Henci Goer mentions in her book which describes a technique for reducing the need for episiotomys and increasing the rate of intact perineums. It doesn't exist on-line as far as I can tell, but I finally found a service (Infotrieve Online) and ordered it. The cost for them to fax it to me was going to be $31 plus "unknown copyright fee" that their little info box said usually ranged from $5 to $20.

They faxed me the article -- total cost: $79!!

I am not pleased.

Let me know if you want to look at my copy.
--Beth

I've got my Contraction Timer up in the other window. After waking up from my 2 hour nap at 6 pm this evening, I had a slew of strong Braxton Hicks contractions. I've been getting these for months (starting around week 22) but the ones this evening, while still not being painful were certainly stronger than normal. They can last up to 3 minutes and there were 6 in 40 minutes. We started timing them, and they're not that regular yet, but given the pep talk my doctor gave me last week about coming in early and often rather than missing it, I thought I'd call her just to see how early is early.

It turns out she's not on call tonight, her backup doctor is, although she is in town if I go into real labor. She just gets to have a nice evening without answering first-round questions.

The on-call doctor told me to lie down for an hour and see if they stay the same, get worse, or go away. So I did my best to do that while reading Peter stories for family play time on my bed. They seem to have slowed down to about once every 15 minutes. That's not enough to call in my parents and go to the hospital yet, but it is enough to continue keeping track of these things.

My parents are called and available, as is Peter's godmother Wyn, should we decide that this is it and that we need to go to the hospital in less time than it takes my parents to drive here.

Sigh. I wish it would be real labor so we could just do it and get it over with (although next Friday is more convienient than a Tuesday from Jon's work and my parents' work perspective.)

With Peter my water broke and labor didn't start so it was pitocen induced in the hospital. I didn't have to worry about what the early contractions felt like.

--Beth

If I was nesting Monday, I'm vegging today. I have no energy. Keeping Peter quiet so Jon could tutor this afternoon was a very big challenge, but I didn't have enough energy to even consider going out. I decided Jon's students would live through a session with toddler hammering on his hammer toy in the background. If we didn't have clients over all the time I think I really would have just let him tear the place apart. I hear that's common behavior for toddlers after siblings are born.

One more symptom that I could deliver from hours to weeks from now is that I think I might have passed the mucus plug, but it's hard to be sure. I did go for a walk/waddle with my covenant group this morning.

I'm not sleepy anymore. I just lack energy. And it's hot. I think I'll go eat a Haagen Daas bar.
--Beth

At my appointment this morning my doctor declared me to be 3cm and growing. Baby is currently just over 6 lbs. She expects labor to be around 4 hours, but we should start our going-in process as soon as we're fairly sure it's labor because our going-in process could take over an hour. (We have to wait for my parents to arrive and take over care of Peter.)

Unfortunately I'm Group B strep positive. I wasn't with Peter, I wonder how one gets this or prevents it? From the article it looks to be fairly common. What it means to me is that if my water breaks and labor doesn't start (like for Peter) then I have to go to the hospital right away as opposed to waiting for a while and trying home remidies to get labor to start. It also means I'll have an IV during labor regardless of desire or lack thereof for pain meds.

I wonder how accurate my doctor's guesses will be. For Peter's weight she was spot on.

--Beth

On Monday I had the first of the weekly internal exams at the end of the pregnancy. The baby is head down, likely about 6 lbs now. I'm already at 2-3 cm dialated and 75% effaced. For those that aren't into pregnancy terms, normally a woman is not dialated or effaced at all, and the painful part of labor is to get her to 10 cm dialated 100% effaced. After that there's enough space to start pushing the baby out.

For Peter I think I was at almost 4 cm and 50% the week before my water broke, and I had been at 3 cm for a few weeks before that. So this one is running a little bit ahead. Many women walk around for weeks at 4cm dialated, but this was a wake-up call that we're nearly done baking this baby now and I need to get a few major projects done this week because I'll be full-term next Tuesday. It's also a reminder that this labor could go really fast, given that so much of it is done already. I need to pack for the hospital, get Peter packed, etc.

I think I'll start by taking another nap.

--Beth

Assuming all goes as expected we're 3-6 weeks from delivery of a brand new baby girl. We've spent a lot of time thinking about names and we're basically set on Amber, unless someone comes up with a really good reason not to use it and we come up with a better one that meets all of our criteria.

Jon and I are not terribly up with current pop culture however, so if there is some famous Amber in the news who has just been busted for public disturbances, we probably shouldn't name our newborn after her. The only popular usage of the name Amber we could come up with was with respect to Amber Alerts for kidnappings and while it is a drawback, it's not enough to make us decide against the name.

Our name criteria:

#1 - the name must be easy to spell. To give you an idea of how easy, the name Benjamin was rejected for Peter because I couldn't spell it consistantly. Benjamine? Benjamen? etc. There should be one commonly accepted spelling and pronounciation in the US that 99.5% of adults would pick if they heard the name aloud.

All other criteria are secondary to #1.

#2 - The name should be clearly a girl's name, but not too girly. For example "Barbie" is clearly a girl's name, but a bit too fru-fru and pink for me. We know 4 teenagers named Lauren, and they span both genders. I don't tend to like names like that because one is going out in terms of popularity while the other is rising usually, and people from different generations can get the wrong gender, and that can lead to being picked on in school "My mom says Lauren is a boys name!"

#3 - The name should be popular enough to sound "normal" to the American ear, but not so popular that there will be multiple students in her class year in Elementary school with the same name. On the SS website, names below rank #50 are good, but not below #300. Amber is currently at #102, after having peaked in the 1980's at #13 and it's on it's way down.

#4 - I'd like to minimize being picked on in school. Yes, children will pick on anything and everything, but there's no need to antoginize it. The worst example of this is a story I've heard of a friend-of-a-friend who would always say loudly "It's pronounced SHI-thead" when the teacher would pause upon getting to his name while calling roll.

Our full idea for a name is "Amber Lynn Leonard" unless there's a good reason not to use it. That's why I'm writing, just in case there's something we haven't thought of yet.

--Beth

I am now officially in the third trimester. Two weeks into it in fact. I have about 3 months (12 weeks) to go. I've also been technically pregnant or in the first 6 weeks following a miscarriage for over a year now. Ugh! I'm already having "get this baby out of here" feelings and I'm not even full term yet. I know caring for the new baby gets harder once it's born, but hormonally I'm tired of being pregnant. Generally speaking I have fairly easy pregnancies compared to others so I shouldn't complain... but I can't help myself even though I try to keep it to a minimum.

One of the side effects of third trimester for me is that I can't sleep more than 6 hours at a stretch, yet I still need about 10 hrs of sleep daily. With Peter this wasn't much of a problem because I just let my clock free cycle, but with this pregnancy it is a difficult schedule. I've been getting up with Peter first thing in the morning instead of Jon lately and taking him to visit his pre-school every morning. This has been good for Jon's sleep schedule, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Jon's tutoring load is very heavy I don't get anywhere near enough nap time and I'm feeling it.

--Beth

Tonight was a two-Snickers bar night.

I hate doing taxes, and the sales taxes for my business were particularly tricky this year.

I think I need to find a healthier alternative to Snickers bars that is just as convienient for my late-night snacks however. Of the things I looked at this evening, Snickers had 4 g protein for 14 g fat. Compared to icecream's 2 g protein for 12 g fat. Getting enough protein while pregnant is always a challenge for me, although I usually do ok on the other requirements/suggestions**.

My late-night snacks must be:

* Instant -- If I can't just pop it in my mouth, possibly stopping to unwrap and/or serve, it doesn't count. The snickers bar ends up playing interference and saying "I'm here, I'm easy, you can just eat me" If I didn't want instant, I'd probably make a hot chocolate (8 g protein, or a cup of Ramen)

* Mess-free -- I'm eating by my computer and granola and associated dry foods are frequently too messy and jam up my keyboard/attract ants.

* Yummy. My mother tried to feed me a choco-protein bar last summer and I nearly puked.

* Of equal or greater nutritional value to a snickers bar.

* Non-spoiling -- fresh fruits tend to go bad unless refrigerated, and if they go straight from the refrigerator to my mouth, they frequently fail the "yummy" criteria. My teeth don't like the cold unless it's ice cream.

* Non-constipating -- Bananas fail this criteria, sadly.

( ** TMI )

Maybe this is just my way of trying to justify to myself eating Snickers even though it's technically "candy". Or maybe I'm stuck in a food rut and my friends have good ideas for other things I can eat. We're nearly out of dried apricots, those are good too, but I don't think they have much protein.

--Beth

I'm at that stage of pregnancy where we've taken the blood for the AFP test, but we don't have the results back yet. In other words, the worry stage. Will my baby be healthy? The question that echos through every mother's mind.

Jon and I, being cerebral types, tend not to view missing limbs, heart abnormalities, etc. as seriously as mental issues, in particular Down's syndrome. For those who haven't gone through pregnancy this decade, the AFP test measures alpha-fetal-protein and compares it to your due date to determine if it's in a specific range. If it's high it indicates one class of disorder is a potential issue, and if it's low it indicates another.

The false-positive rate is very high. So for example, while only 1 in 400 women my age may be carrying a Down's Syndrome baby (0.25%) , the test yields a positive rate in 2.8% of women having the test done.

If the test says you're positive, you can go ahead and do a test of the baby's chromosomes using either CVS or amniocentesis. Those tests take another week or two to get the results back. If those tests are positive, then what would you do? If you choose to abort the baby, you're destroying a life inside of you that you've noticed the kicking for more than 6 weeks. It's had a heartbeat for more than 14 weeks.

There's one genetic abnormality, trisomy 18, that results in an infant usually born dead, or if it survives birth seldom lives more than a few weeks and almost never more than a year.

The most common abnormality though, trisomy 23, is Down's Syndrome. Down's Syndrome kids tend to live to adulthood and range from mildly retarded to severely mentally retarded. The link above indicates that about 92% of pregnancies diagnosed with Down's Syndrome chose to abort. I had no idea it was that high. Abortion at 20 weeks is a tricky medical procedure, I think abortion is only legal until 24 weeks of pregnancy. So if you find out you have a Down's Syndrome baby, you have to decide fast. You don't get a month to think it over.

After a pregnancy termination at this point, you're supposed to wait for a while to try again. At this time I can't seem to figure out how long. I know for miscarriage, you're supposed to wait as many months as you were pregnant for, so 20 weeks = about 5 months before trying again, and then another 9 to have another baby.

What would I do? With Peter at this point in his pregnancy, we just hoped we wouldn't have to cross that bridge. With this one, we hope the same thing. For this pregnancy even more than the last I think Jon and I would disagree about what to do.

If you and your sex partner were ever pregnant with a wanted child, what do you think you would do in that situation? Why?

Feel free to post anonymously if desired. I'll try to figure out how to turn off IP address tracking.

--Beth

Edit: Spelling and I think I've turned off IP address logging now.