We are on the way to Disney World.  Baby Girl has been chewing on Mickey Mouse’s ear in anticipation.  She just decided she has had enough of the car and is going to sleep (hopefully) the rest of the way.

Last night we drove to Jacksonville in the hopes that Baby Girl would sleep all the way.  She was happily snoozing away until Daddy got pulled over for speeding.

Sleeping Baby Girl

Some moms live blog their babies birth.  I took 5 months just to post again after the birth announcement.

While the birth stories of my boys were auto-posting, I was busy giving birth to their baby sister.  Here she is -

Born April 16, 2008
6 lbs. 15 oz.

Since she was in a hurry to get out into the world, she wasn’t quite ready.  Please pray that she will be off oxygen and ready to come home soon.

Yesterday I posted Little Man’s traumatic entry. In comparison, Moo Moo’s birth was easy.

We now live in my hometown, so I needed a new doctor when I discovered Little Man was going to be a big brother. We asked around and was recommended to Dr. E’s practice.

My first visit went something like this:

Dr. E - How big was your first baby

Me - 9 1/2 lbs

Dr. E - I can’t believe you gave birth to a 9 1/2 lbs baby. I am not letting you do that again.

I love him.

Although their are 3 OB’s in the practice, it is their policy to see their own patients and deliver all their babies. No “you get whoever happens to be on call when you go into labor.” I’m sure it can happen that your doctor might not be available, but it is so reassuring to me to know who is probably going to be there when my baby is born.

No gestational diabetes this time. Woohoo.

Still got up to about 170 lbs again. I was about the same when Little Man was born but I didn’t start out as skinny so it was probably “only” a 50 lb weight gain.

This time we wanted to know what we were getting. He was clearly a boy.

At around 38 weeks, Dr. E said let’s go and scheduled an induction for March 15. It got pushed back one more day to the 16th because the hospital was busy that day.

We went in a 4am so that we would be finished with the paperwork and other preliminaries by the time normal people got up.

They hooked me up and gave me pitocin (I think that is what the used) to get started. Later they broke my water to make sure I kept progressing.

I had those lovely “take the edge off” drugs when I was getting beyond handling the pain, followed soon by my epidural.

I took a nap, I woke up, they checked me, I was ready to push.

I didn’t feel a thing.

And there he was. An itty bitty (relative to his brother) 7 1/2 lb baby boy.

I’m inspired by Jenni @ One Thing to write the birth stories of my first two babies as we prepare to welcome the third.  It will take me much fewer posts than she did.

Over 9 years ago, Little Man made his debut in the world and looking back it seems much more traumatic than it did at the time.

I am only five foot tall and I was so large enormous with child, The Man kept taking photos telling me that he had to get lots of pics so everyone would believe him.  I posted a photo Monday of Baby Girl - that belly is small my friends.  Unfortunately, we were not digital yet 9 years ago, so I will have to find (not so good at putting the photos in books) and scan a picture first to prove it.

I didn’t really seem (to me) like a difficult pregnancy, although I did gain about 60 lbs and had gestational diabetes.  The OB practice that I went to have 5 doctors and they had their patients rotate among them during visit since you would be delivered by whomever was on call when the day finally arrived.  I don’t like this philosophy.

Little Man was due Dec. 28.  Just before Christmas, my blood pressure shot up so the doctors decided to go ahead and induce me since I was already full term.  They gave me an ultrasound and estimated the baby (we let his gender be a surprise, so we didn’t know yet he was a boy) weighed about 7 or 7 1/2 lbs.  We went to the hospital that evening, expecting to go home with a baby.  It didn’t happen.  After having only mild contractions all night and not progressing, they sent me home still pregnant, on bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy.

It was almost 3 weeks before they decided maybe my baby might be getting a little large so perhaps they should try inducing again.

We went to the hospital on the evening of Jan. 3.  Little Man was not born until Jan. 5.

As with the first try, they weren’t very aggressive in getting labor going.  I stayed at 2 cm dilated for, oh, about 20 hours.  I’ve never done drugs, but after they gave me whatever medicine that is they put in your IV to “take the edge off,” I understand why people like to get high.

Little Man was facing the wrong way (back labor) and had not dropped.

Finally I made some progress.  Suddenly I was 7 cm and could get my epidural.  But first the doctor had to go deliver another baby.  So I waited some more.

I love epidurals. Even though it was really weird and only one side of my body was numb at first.

They took me off the epidural to push.  The baby still had not even dropped, much less crowned, after 30 minutes of pushing.  They got out a vacuum.

Everytime I’ve watched a birth video, when the baby finally crowns and the head comes out, the rest of the body slides out moments later.  That’s not how it happened.  They got the head out, his shoulders were stuck.

After much stretching, tearing, and cutting, Little Man was finally born.  9 1/2 lbs.  With a pointy head.  He was beautiful.

When he was stitching me up, the doctor suggested maybe he should have given me a C-section.  When I look back I realize that without modern medicine, neither me nor my son could have survived.  I am continually grateful to God for providing this miracle.

Little Man was the ring bearer at my brother’s wedding a few weeks ago.  I can’t believe how big he hasn’t gotten since he was the ring bearer at my sister’s wedding almost 5 years ago.

I had great plans of making weekly updates on our house building. We usually visit every Sunday. So much for my plans. The foundation is done and the framing is nearing completion. The Man is serving as his own general contractor instead of paying someone else to do it and I’m so proud of how hard he has worked and everything he has learned. Its amazing how many changes have to be made from the original plans as we go along. But our framer says that is common - house plans are not as accurate as you think they would be.

Our house is being built on a “family compound.” My sister is building next door, our youngest sister will be next door to her when she is ready to build, and our brother is a little farther down the road near his horse barn.

My dad is a farmer and you would think it would be easy to give his children a plot of land to build a house. It has taken over 8 years since we moved back to my home town for my father to work out a plan acceptable to the county’s regulations.

This is the front of the house.

This is the view from the breakfast room/kitchen area. You can’t quite see the water/marsh through the trees.

Kitchen - That’s the counter top right in the front