It's over three months since I've written a post, and there is an adorable baby girl in dinosaur jammies in a bouncy seat in front of me. So I'm going to try and get caught up for those past months, just give me a couple of days, and I'll break it down into months.
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The big thing that happened in November was the combination Baby Shower / Man Party. The parties were on the fourteenth and the night before them a couple of friends came up from Wichita and met us for dinner with a couple of other friends and one of their friends. Most of us had never met the girl before and we tried to make her feel comfortable, but she seemed to want to pick a fight with the guy who had brought her and then proceeded to pout after dinner when we went to the liquor store to pick up things for the drinkers before we headed home. (I had a case of IBC root beer from Sam's Club for me.)
Once we got home the guys ended up outside for most of the night for cigars with their alcohol, and my friend and I were amazed at this girl's level of self-absorption. She started talking and then never shut up. She talked about everything and asked a lot of questions, but never wanted an answer. It was a one sided conversation and she didn't care. I even put in a movie that she said she adored and she talked right over it. She was annoying, but we just shrugged her off and let her have her one woman party until the boys came back in.
When the boys were there she began making statements about what a boyfriend should do. "A good boyfriend should sit with his girlfriend." "A good boyfriend would care if his girlfriend was tired." At one point when she had had too much to drink and told him that she had thrown up, his response was, "Well, don't drink so much. You should know your limit." That really peeved her off and she started being belligerent and outright rude
Bryce went and sat next to her and told her to lie on the couch and go to sleep, asked if she wanted something non-alcoholic to drink, and offered to get her a pillow and a blanket. She told that she wanted to go home and it was obvious that our friend didn't care about her and commanded Bryce to go ask our friend for his keys. Bryce very gently told her, "No, you've had too much to drink you don't need his car keys." She replied she did them, and Bryce repeated that she did not. She then said that she didn't want them to drive, just so she could go wait in the car. Bryce said that she needed to go talk to our friend herself and she shouted at Bryce that he needed to go talk to the guy right then and get his car keys for her. Apparently pregnancy made me bolder than I usually am because before Bryce could respond I shouted at her, "You WILL NOT yell at my husband! You have been bitch all night and if you're going to continue to be rude you are NOT welcome here and I WILL have my brother-in-law escort you out of his house."
The girl looked shocked and then started to mutter "You're right, you're right, I'm a bitch" and "I'm leaving", and stomped up the stairs and out the front door and Bryce sent our friend after her to take her home. Everyone else held their breath until she was out of the house and then started laughing and Bryce's best friend looks at him and asks, "Can I marry your wife?", while everyone else was telling me how shocked and impressed they were by my sudden confrontational skills. After the chick left, everyone had a few more drinks and a lot more jokes and laughing in the much, much lighter atmosphere.
The next day was the shower and it was a lot of fun, but not as eventful. We made dinner rolls in the shape of baby feet, and we painted wall decals for the baby's room. We had a lot of talking and laughing and joking, especially about the chick from the night before. The man party was fun for the guys also, but it had complications with paintball guns not wanting to work and the men were smoking the meat for dinner, but it was WELL smoked since the smoker caught on fire. No harm came to anything but the brisket, which ended up delicious, but about half the size it should have been.
The other things worth comment that happened are that Bryce started his new job with the Kansas Department of Revenue on the 16th, and then on the 21st as he was driving to work the head gasket on his car blew out.
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The big thing in December was obviously the baby!!!!! (This section will talk about labor, so if it makes you uncomfortable play hopscotch and skip onward.)
At the beginning of December I started my weekly OB appointments, at the one on the 2nd the Dr checked my cervix for the first time and was noticeably surprised at how soft it was and that I was barely effaced since I wasn't due until the 31st. I also had a third sonogram to check how the baby was positioned because the Dr thought she might be sideways. She was head down, and just stretched out. I'm not sure that she ever curled into a fetal position. I always had a prominent bump on either side of my stomach; one was feet, the other was her butt, and her head was down.
The next appointment on Wednesday the 9th the Dr checked my cervix again and it was softer and I was a definite one centimeter effaced. I asked her when I should go in and do the pre-registration for delivery, and she told me that I could do it any time, but I shouldn't worry about getting done in a hurry because I wasn't due for another three weeks and there were no apparent signs that I would deliver early.
Then in the early, early morning of Monday the 14th like around midnight early my right shoulder started to hurt really badly and woke me up. Bryce tried rubbing it and it was a little better and we managed to go back to sleep. I woke up again a couple hours later with the pain stronger so we got out the heating pad and that seemed to help and I got about another hour of sleep, when I woke up to go to the bathroom. At that point I was 98% sure that I had lost my mucus plug, but I didn't feel like I was in labor, so I went back to sleep with the heating pad for another couple of hours. At about 4am I woke up again; my shoulder didn't hurt but my back did slightly. I got Bryce's watch and I started trying to track the ache, but I couldn't find a definite pattern, so I went ahead and called the OB on call at the hospital to ask him if I should be worried about anything and if there was a guess about what was going on. The Dr said that it sounded like it was just the bloody show, and that it wasn't uncommon for it to happen a few weeks before delivery and since I wasn't having definite contractions the slight back ache was probably just from it releasing. I was comforted, so I went back to sleep for another two hours when my shoulder woke me up with a stronger pain then it had been. I took a couple of Ibuprofen and then called in to work, which I had been trying to avoid since I thought it would be rude to miss any days of my last week.
I spent most of the day hanging out on the couch watching movies with Bryce, but around 2:30pm I called the OB's office and talked to them about I should do because I pretty sure I wasn't in labor but I had a small doubt that I was so I wanted to know the Dr's opinion. The nurse asked me if my water had broken and if I was having contractions and how far apart they were, and I answered that my water had not broken and that I wasn't sure if I was having contractions. They asked if I was having pain and was my stomach visibly tightening. I said, “This is where it gets confusing. My low back aches and my stomach tightens, but not always at the same time. Sometimes my back hurts, but my stomach's not tight. Sometimes my stomach is tight, but my back doesn't hurt. Sometimes they happen together, but I can't find a pattern in any of the three options." The nurse said that it sounded like I might be in the early stages of back labor, and she would hate for me to have to drive out and back home for nothing, but that she would recommend coming to Labor and Delivery just to get checked out and at least get something to help with the backache.
I had planned on getting a hospital bag packed the next weekend when I was done with work, so Bryce and I scrambled to get things together in case I was going to deliver, and we tossed the bags in the back of the car with the carseat not even strapped in yet and we headed to town, driving through McDonald's on the way there to grab something to eat since the hospital was likely to deny me anything to eat once I was checked in and we weren't sure how long we would be there if I wasn't admitted.
We got to the hospital at about 3:45pm and I got changed and hooked up to monitors and the Dr (who was my regular OB) came in and talked to me about what was going on, and then checked my cervix. I was 4 centimeters dilated, and definitively in labor and had been for awhile. We talked about whether I wanted her to break my water since it hadn't done it on its own, and I wasn't going home. I voted to speed things up and she left to go get things set up and get the epidural arranged. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:30, and thought that since the office was still open I should call in. I got to Don and he said, “Amy, I see you're calling from St. Francis." And I said, “Yes...I won't be back in to work, but I'll call tomorrow with the details."
I'm kinda fuzzy on the rest of the times, but the main points are that I was given pitosin since my progression stopped after the epidural, things started back up at an average pace and then, once my Dr assured me that I had time before I delivered and that she would be back from the OR in time; I moved really fast. The last three centimeters in an hour and a half. They had me hold off on pushing for what felt like an eternity. And then I could push a little bit and then, finally, after they called the midwife to come in, my Dr came back and I could deliver. It wasn't fun but it was happy that at 1:43am on Tuesday the 15th Chani Vera Klumpe was born. The nurses went to weigh her and asked me to guess before they did and I said, "Six and three-quarters." And they asked Bryce and he said, “I’ll go with hers. She's pretty good with knowing things." And then the nurses weighed Chani and they were pretty impressed with my guess because she was six pounds ten ounces and nineteen and a half inches long.
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There is more for December and obviously the other months also. So look for another post coming soon!
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