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June 30, 2006
Brothers
Posted by laini at 12:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2006
4 years and still going strong
Today is our 4 year anniversary. Four years! Wow. Time sure does fly. But what a blessing these past years have been. I thank God for such a wonderful husband. It sure would be nice if I looked like I did in that picture still! Instead, if you were to see me today, you would see a woman 20 pounds heavier, with a bandana on her head, wearing a stained shirt from her kids bodily fluids, tired bags under her eyes, and a stretched marked, wrinkled stomach (thanks boys!). Of course, Ben looks the same! It’s a good thing Ben didn’t marry me for my looks (I’m not sure why he married me, I’m just glad he did)!
Posted by laini at 01:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 27, 2006
Quit the Habit!
I don't intend to say that smoking is any worse than other addictions, but this one hurts more than just yourself. If you don't care about how smoking affects you, do you care about how it affects others?
Posted by laini at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 24, 2006
Life as a Mom of Two
I am slowly adjusting to life as a mom of 2. It has been 2 1/2 weeks now since Elias was born. It feels like a lot longer than that. Not that it has been a terrible couple of weeks - it just feels like Elias has been in our family for a lot longer than has been. Jaron is getting used to life with a baby brother. For the most part, he ignores him. But sometimes he will come up to him and grab his hand or "pat" him on his head. Most of the time, these are not very gentle gestures and I have to remind Jaron to be gentle with the baby. Jaron also likes to hold Elias sometimes, but he usually gets tired of it pretty quickly. Jaron's biggest adjustment has been being stuck in the house all day with minimal entertainment. Before Elias was born, I would try to make it a point to go somewhere every day just so that Jaron could get out of the house. Even if that meant just playing outside in the yard. So Jaron has had to learn to play by himself more, which he is actually doing pretty well. He gets really excited though when people come over who he thinks are going to play with him!
Elias is doing well. He had doctor's appointment yesterday and he is one growing boy! He now weighs 11 lbs. 14oz., which puts him in the 95th percentile. And he is 22 1/2 inches tall, also the 95th percentile. I guess I am just destined to have big boys! He sleeps most of the day, but only in my arms. He has a hard time sleeping when we put him down because he jerks a lot, which always wakes him up, usually screaming. So nighttimes have been rough, but he is slowly getting better. Interestingly, I have found that he sleeps better when the light is on. So if I hear him waking up, I turn the light on and a lot of times this will help him to drift off back to sleep. Normally, having the light on would bother me, but when you are sleep deprived, you can sleep through anything. Ben just sleeps with the pillow over his head!
I would post more pics of our little boy, but we haven't really taken any! Poor second child! So for now, these pictures of Jaron getting to know his bro will have to do.
Posted by laini at 03:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 12, 2006
The Birth Story
Ben mentioned in the previous post that more details of our son’s birth would be coming, so here it is (for those of you that care). So find a comfy chair, pour yourself a tall glass of coke, if you are in the south, or a pop, if you are up north, or a soda, if you are anywhere where people say things the right wayJ, cuz this story may be a little long. Don’t worry – there will not be any gory details!
On Monday, June 5th, I went to see my midwife for my weekly visit and she said that I was 3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced. I was shocked by this news because I was not expecting anything to be happening yet. With Jaron, nothing happened until the day he arrived. Plus, my due date was not until Wednesday, June 7th, and seeing that Jaron was 10 days late I was not planning on a baby anytime soon (however I must admit that I didn’t expect to go as far past my due date as I did with Jaron). There was only one day that Ben and I had said that we didn’t want to have the baby, and that was Tuesday, 6-6-06, for obvious reasons! I was excited about the progress, but at the same time I started to think that there was a good chance that our baby could actually come on that unfortunate date. So I decided to take it easy on Tuesday and not do anything to progress labor at all. However, I woke up early Tuesday morning around 4am for my usual bathroom trip, and was having contractions. Nothing major, but they felt different than what I had been experiencing with Braxton Hicks. I had intense pain in my back and was unable to go back to sleep because the pain was so great. When Ben woke up at 7:30am I had him start timing the contractions and they were pretty irregular, anywhere between 5 minutes apart to 15 minutes apart. But they didn’t get any stronger. In fact, as the morning went on they got less intense and more irregular. By the afternoon I was only having an average of one an hour. So I figured it was false labor and went on with normal life.
But at 10pm the contractions started up again and this time they were really strong. They were still pretty far apart – more than 10 minutes – so we went to bed. As soon as I lied down the contractions just got stronger. I couldn’t get comfortable and they seemed to hurt more when I was lying down, so I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back to the room, I woke Ben up and told him that I was going upstairs so that I could sit on the exercise ball and be able to move around without waking Jaron up, whose room is right next to ours. He joined me upstairs, by the time he realized what I was saying, and by then the contractions were really intense. But they were still only 10 minutes apart, for the most part. At around 2:30am I decided to call my midwife’s office and I talked to the midwife who was on call. I told her that my contractions were only 10 minutes apart but were pretty painful. She told me to wait to go to the hospital until they were 5-6 minutes apart. So we waited. At 3:15am the contractions were still pretty irregular, but there were a couple in a row that were 6-7 minutes apart. The big thing was that the intensity of the contractions was only getting worse. So I called my mom, who was bringing my sisters to come watch Jaron. They didn’t get to my house until a little after 4am, at which point I could hardly walk to the door.
The car ride over the hospital was terrible. We live only 8 minutes from the hospital, but I had at least 3 contractions during that time and they were worse than anything I remember having with Jaron’s labor. I told Ben, while he was running a red light, that we had better be close to delivering the baby. I really didn’t think that I could take any more. It took us probably 10 minutes to even get up stairs to the labor and delivery ward because the contractions were coming right after each other and there was no way that I could walk when having one. They checked me right away and found that I was 8 cm dilated. They told me to change, put me in a wheelchair, and took me to the delivery room. They worked on hooking me up the IV and monitors, but all that I could think about was pushing that baby out. So they checked me again and I was ready! Like I needed for them to tell me that! I knew my baby was coming soon and I told them that I needed to push. So all the nurses left the room. I was like, “where is everyone going? Didn’t they hear what I said? This baby is coming!!” So my mother-in-law ran to get the nurses back in the room. In the meantime I tried to hold on as best I could without pushing. My midwife wasn’t there yet and the nurses kept asking me if I could wait. Wait??! They weren’t the ones lying on the table! The nurses worked on the getting everything ready, but I was pushing whether they liked it or not! So after only pushing 3 times, little baby Elias was born at 4:59am, only ½ hour after arriving at the hospital. I learned later that he was born with the sac of fluid still intact around him. Apparently, this is rare and considered a special birth – my midwife called it a “veiled” birth. It was providential that he was born this way because I had tested positive for Group B Strep and so I was supposed to receive to antibiotics before the birth to protect my son from getting it while he was being born. But since I had gotten to the hospital so late, they didn’t have time to give me the antibiotic. Elias being born in his sac protected him from coming into contact with anything as he passed through me.
Ok, this is getting way too long! I am just so thankful that everything went well and that my little boy is now with us. I’ll post more another day about how things have gone since Elias has been with us, and of course there will be more cute pictures! Thank you to everyone for your prayers, support, and encouragement.
Posted by laini at 01:05 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
June 07, 2006
Introducting Elias Jabulani Huffine
Well, after the false alarm yesterday I'm pleased to announce that Laini gave birth to a very healthy baby boy at 4:59 this morning, June 7, 2006. He's 9lbs. 9oz. and measures 22 inches long. Details will come later but everyone is doing well, though quite tired.
The quick version: It was an exciting delivery that took place less than half an hour after we arrived at the hospital. Our midwife didn't arrive in time, since everything went so fast, and Elias was delivered by the nurses at the hospital. By the grace of God, there were no complications and mom and baby were doing quite well after the delivery.
There's a couple of pictures in the extended entry.
Posted by Admin at 09:47 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
June 06, 2006
False Alarm?
Well, it looked like today was going to be the day my baby was born, but it is not looking that way anymore. I woke up around 4am to use the bathroom and had terrible back pain when I was back in bed. I tried every position (there are not many when you are pregnant) to get comfortable in bed, but nothing worked. I also started having contractions. I don't know how far apart they were because I was trying to sleep and I didn't want to wake up Ben until I knew something was really happening. Jaron woke us up (or at least woke Ben up!) at 7:30am at which point Ben started timing the contractions. They were pretty irregular, but somewhat strong, about 5-8 minutes apart. But by 10:30am or so, they had slowed down and were starting to get further and further apart. Now, they have pretty much stopped. I'll get an occasional one here and there, but that is it. So we will see what happens. I went to the midwife yesterday and she checked me and I was 80% effaced, the baby was at a -1 station, and I was 3 centimeters dilated. It was kind of cool to hear that something was actually happening because with Jaron, nothing happened until the day he was born (which was 10 days past his due date). So progress is definitely being made. But who knows when this baby will actually decide to come out and meet us. So keep us in your prayers. As you can see above, my due date is tomorrow, so it would be cool to have the baby on its due date. But we will see. Maybe something will happend tonight. I would not be depressed about not having the baby today, though, seeing what today's date is!
Posted by laini at 05:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack