Our sweet baby girl, Clare Elizabeth McPherson, was born on July 14th at 5:30 p.m. at Oregon Health Science University in Portland, Oregon. She’s a perfect 6 pound 10 ounce, 20 inch long bundle of joy. Jeremy and I are completely smitten with her.
41 Weeks
Yep, still pregnant. We are now officially a week late – not that long in the scheme of parenting, but I assure you it feels plenty long is the scheme if being large, uncomfortable and counting down the days. My relaxed attitude is disappearing quickly and a whiny, cranky, teary attitude is replacing it. For the most part I’m able to stay fairly positive and upbeat, but I have my moments. Yesterday I felt bad before I went to bed, didn’t sleep well and when I woke up and realized I was still pregnant I started to cry. No one has ever said pregnancy hormones make a woman rational – I’m not quite sure why I was surprised I was still pregnant, but I certainly was not happy about it. The upside to pregnancy mood swings is that they pass quickly and within half an hour I was up, eating muffins and talking about how cute it will be to see J with the baby. That’s one of the things that gets me through my frustrating times – picturing J with the baby. He’s sooooooo excited and can’t hardly wait to finally have the baby here and, in his words, “get to DO something.” He’s been a champ in the ‘supporting actor’ role (e.i. supporting me) but he’s very excited to finally graduate to ‘lead actor’ and get some of his own part. When I think about how much he is going to love this kid, and how sweet it is going to be watching him hold it and fall in love with it, I get teary (in a good way) and it gives me a light at the end of the tunnel. In the mean time he’s been taking very good care of me and hasn’t been to freaked out by his emotional wife. I think he knows it’s the hormones not me (at least that’s what we all hope 🙂
40 weeks + 4 Days
Still on the wait… No sign that Baby Mac is interested in the outside world. I don’t think it’s to bad out here, but apparently the kid has other ideas. So far the baby is still fairly active (though squished) so I’m not so concerned. I have an appointment with my midwife this afternoon though and if my online research is accurate they will probably start doing stress tests on the baby in the next few days to make sure that everything is fine. Or they might wait until next week – the midwife practice is fairly hands off. One thing is certain, they won’t let the baby go past 42 weeks. I have an appointment scheduled next week (just in case) and if we get to that point we’ll probably start talking about what my friend Jennilyn calls “the I word” (induction).
40 Weeks + 1 Day
Nope, no baby. Please don’t call Jeremy and ask him about it – he’s fielding phone calls while working and it’s adding to his stress. Feel free to call/e-mail me if you want to, since I have more time on my hands. However, in the words of Jeremy, “we promise to let you know when the baby is born. Really.” We probably won’t call people when I go into labor but we practically have that “We have a new baby” email written (or at least we have the draft saved with all of the addresses) and we have a list of people we’re going to call. We have some time on our hands, so this is something we can do in advance.
Another view of the crib. The blanket on the truck was made by my cousin Tracy and the lamp is one that JP and I had as kids. A note about the color: yes, the room is blue. No, it isn’t a subliminal message that we’re expecting a boy. We could be, or we could not, regardless of the color of the room. When we bought the house the room was Mountain Dew yellow (not even kidding), so Mom and I painted this room about 3 years. I happened to choose blue because, well, I like blue. That’s also why the bouncy chair is blue. I heard good things about this particular bouncy chair and it only came in blue and pink (don’t even get me started on how I feel about baby stuff only coming in blue and pink…grrrr…). I like blue better than pink so I registered for the blue one. (Yes, I know that some people actually re-paint their baby’s rooms. J and I still have it in our heads that we’re going to be moving before this kid is very old so I’d rather just wait until we have a new room and paint it the pretty yellow with white trim that I want).
The swing and the changing station. I might replace those curtains this week with something bright and yellow or red. To the left is the messy desk/office part of the room. The picture over the changing table is JP’s old Curious George picture.
My favorite part of the room – Gramma’s quilt on the crib.
40 Weeks
Jeremy greeted me this morning with “Happy Fifth of July.” Why is today such a big day – because it’s the baby’s due date. This means about nothing, but this is the day that we’ve been counting down to with the baby. We kind of hoped that the baby would come on the Fourth of July (fireworks for birthdays…) but that was not to be. Frankly, I’d be surprised if the baby came today… I just don’t feel like today’s the day. But, I’ve never done this before so it’s entirely possible I could be wrong. I still think it’ll be sometime next week.
Week 39
We’re at Week 39 in Project: Grow Baby Mac. I’m getting bigger by the day and both of us are getting very ready to meet the baby. Every time I start to think the baby has run out of room I get a little bit tighter, the little feet find a new corner of my ribs (ouch!), and the little baby bottom sticks out a little farther from my diaphragm. Eventually the kid has got to stop growing, right? Or maybe that’s when it’s birth time.
Progression of Tummy Growth
I know there are lots of Mom’s out there who are religious about taking belly shots each week to watch the progress of their tummies grow. Â Well, I’m not one of them. Â I was very aware of my growth, but I didn’t particularly want to capture it until halfway through pregnancy. Â I felt like I just got thick during the first half… not exactly the ‘pretty pregnancy tummy’ that everyone thinks about. Â However, now I feel like I’ve suddenly grown to be huge all of a sudden so I figured I’d post a few pics of the pregnancy to check out the progression. Â
I held a baby!
My friend Mandy came to visit tonight for dinner, bringing along her son George. Â Little George is two weeks old now and very, very sweet. Â Seeing Mandy was great – she looks great and is a natural mother. Â I LOVED holding little George too. Â In fact I probably should’ve given him to J or my friend Leah who was also here, but I didn’t want to give him up. Â At one point I held him while I was eating – I told Mandy “I’d better get used to the one-handed eating.” Â In reality I didn’t want to give the little guy up. Â
35 week ultrasound
We had our last (hopefully) ultrasound today. Â No pictures, unfortunately, since Baby Mac is a little bit to squished to be very photogenic. Â Seriously, all we could see on the screen was wiggly limbs – no cute little face or anything. Â The important news, though, is that the baby is very healthy looking. Â The heart, head, kidneys, and leg bones were all examined, in addition to measuring the babies head and tummy size. Â They estimate the kiddo weighs in at 5 pounds, 12 ounces right now – but take that number with a grain of salt since ultrasound weight measurements are notoriously inaccurate (up to 2 pounds off sometimes by 40 weeks). Â J and I both thought it was funny though that right now the baby weighs more than he did when he was born. Â We’ll see if our baby takes after the McPherson side of the family and is born small but ends up growing to be huge. Â Seriously, at 6′ J is the runt of his Dad’s side of the family.
Do they have a class for that?
FYI – I think I’ve now made it so that you can leave blog comments. I’ve tested it a few different times and think I found the right settings. Sorry if it messed anyone up at first.
I’ve now started my 35 week in pregnancy, so we’re in the final countdown to Baby Mac. I’m trying not to get to excited about the end (still five weeks to go until my due date) – but I’ll be honest that I have my moments where I start to wonder if premature labor is really such a bad thing. I suspect that isn’t going to happen though – for whatever reason I have a feeling that Baby Mac is settled in and won’t be leaving any time soon. The kid seems to be quite comfortable.
I’ve decided the whole 9 months of pregnancy thing is to help the parents get prepared. Sure, Baby is growing and developing but J and I have had a chance to grow and develop from “seriously? We’re having a baby? What do you need for a baby?” to “OK, I think we’re ready.” Of course I suspect we’re not really ready, and won’t be until the baby is here, but at least we have some stuff and have taken some classes. I imagine it’s like driving, you can read the manual, watch videos of people driving, maybe even go and buy new tires, but you can’t really drive until you have a license and are in the car.
Oh the classes! J and I could be accused of being overeducated and, just maybe, nerdy. Our birth class experience is a case in point. I’ve always leaned toward natural childbirth (in theory at least), so I found midwife group who supports natural childbirth and started researching classes to take. Our friends David and Jennilyn recommended The Bradley Method, and after doing some research about the alternative birthing methods, we decided on Bradley. I guess we didn’t investigate Lamaze that closely, but other methods we looked at seemed a little to touchy-feely for us (J is an analytical engineer after all). Bradley isn’t overly touchy-feely (there isn’t any emphasis on creating ‘birth art’ as a way of exploring your feelings about birth, for example) and there’s a lot of time spent understanding what happens physically during labor and delivery so it isn’t as scary for Mom and Dad. It’s called ‘Husband Coached Birth,” which appealed to us. The Bradley Method gives him a specific role and I know he’ll be great at it. He’s a natural “coach.” (Funny story though – when I first told him about Husband Coached Birth he said “I can’t coach! I don’t even know the game!”) Bradley emphasizes relaxing during contractions and letting birth happen instead of fighting it. Like I said above, it’s all theory at this point but J and I have liked it and gotten a lot out of it. My favorite part so far is practicing the relaxation where my job is to breathe deeply and J’s job is to rub my back and whisper encouraging things in my ear J However, not to leave well-enough alone we’ve also taken the birth class through our hospital, a breast feeding class, a newborn care class, and a waterbirth class. I tell ya, if grades were given for parenting preparation I think J and I would at least be A- students. I don’t think I prepared this much for the GMATs or SATs!
As much as we’re getting all prepared for a natural, unmedicated waterbirth (a friend called it “an ethereal waterbirth” – ha!) I try to keep in mind that the main goal is to walk in our front door with a healthy baby. All of our big plans and desires are second to that. Besides, then the real work begins, the stuff they don’t have classes for and that we can’t really prepare for. Until then, however, I’m on the hunt for an Infant CPR class.