Pictures from Lydia's birth

WARNING: Some of these pictures are a little more graphic in nature.  If that's going to freak you out, you probably want to skip this post. :)  Also, there are a ton of pictures.


 I finished up Lydia's birth story -- you can read it in the post below, but I wanted to get these pictures on here too.

Before Lydia's birth our doula, Kay, let us know that she had a photographer who wanted to do some birth photography and wanted to offer a birth for free to one of Kay's clients to help build up her portfolio.  Luckily we were that couple!! :)  We don't have those pictures back yet, but as soon as we do I will get them up.  Unfortunately, the birth went so fast that we have no pictures of me in labor OR the birth.  I hate that.  I was so looking forward to some amazing water birth pictures, but Lydia had different ideas.  SO, all of these pictures are right after she was born.  Thank you Andrea for taking them for us!  They are so precious to me!

Here we go:

Immediately after she was born with my midwife's gentle hand on my shoulder.  We did it!

My mommas first look at her second granddaughter.

Enjoying the first glimpses of our baby girl.

Well hi there! Look how much she had pinked up!  One thing people always ask me if is the water was really gross after delivering her.  As you can see it was still perfectly clear except for some of the vernix off Lydia's body. :)

This is one of my favorite pictures...just checking mommy out.

Her sweet little feet

She was so alert and when Justin talked to her she immediately turned her head to his voice.  It was precious.

Chloe's first look.  She wasn't too sure.  Mommy was excited though! :)

Nicole checking to see if Lydia's umblical cord was still pulsing.

Daddy cutting the cord.

First skin to skin with daddy. 

Meeting her Poppy for the first time...although Poppy was on the phone letting everyone know he had a new baby granddaughter! haha!

Feeding my sweet girl for the first time.  What a precious moment.

This picture makes me laugh so much.  Justin and Lydia are just enjoying each other and Lindsey is consoling Chloe as she has a meltdown in the background. lol!

Weighing the little fishie! ;)

Love this!

Smooching my first baby while feeding my second baby. I love this picture so much.

Lindsey feeding me. Ha! :)

Hi world!!

This one cracks me up.  I joke that this is Lydia's first Sears portrait...looking off into the abyss.

Just relaxing with our new bundle.

So happy!

Chloe holding Lydia for the first time.  This was the next day.

One of my favorite pictures ever.  My two sweet baby girls.

Our first moments together

You can read the first part of Lydia's birth story here and pictures are here.

One reason (among *so* many) that we chose homebirth is how sweet and gentle the time is immediately after giving birth. In the hospital often babies are swept away from their momma quickly to be weighed, measured, looked over, given shots, have their heels pricked, have goop put in their eyes, etc. etc. It's typically chaotic and frantic. This is not how things went for us this time at all.

Right after Lydia was born we sat in the water for a long time together just gazing at each other. She was so wide-eyed and alert. Her cord was very short so I wasn't able to bring her all the way up to my chest, but I held her sort if in my lap/close to my belly and in the water. I got to feel her squishy, sweet little body next to mine. Her little hands and feet were perfect with 10 little fingers and toes. I got to see her color amazingly change from bluish to pink as she took her first breaths. Her umbilical cord continued to pulse and deliver the last of the oxygen rich blood from her placenta. While holding her in my arms, I kissed her daddy and declared, "we did it!" It was the most amazing, gentle, precious first moments we could have asked for.

As her cord was done pulsing, Justin took off his shirt to get ready to hold her skin to skin. He cut her cord and I handed her to him and he brought her to his chest. Their hearts beating close for the first time. He then took her downstairs to see the family.

While they were downstairs, I delivered her placenta, and then got into my own bed where Suzanne looked me over to make sure everything looked okay. I had a small tear that she stitched and then I was able to get into my own shower and clean up a bit, which felt amazing!!

When I was done, I got back into bed and Justin brought Lydia back in so I could get her on my chest and start breastfeeding her. Suzanne told me to lay her face down on my chest and allow her to do the breast crawl. I had seen this done in youtube videos and read about it, but I could not believe how she wiggled herself from the middle of my chest over to my left breast and latched on. All by herself! It was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. She was literally like an hour old and knew exactly what to do! She was a voracious sucker and stayed latched on for quite some time. She was a hungry little thing!

After I fed her, Suzanne and Justin weighed, measued, and looked her over right there on the bed next to me. Justin joked that she used a fish scale to see how much Lydia weighed. Suzanne had Justin hold her up and call out how much she weighed. Our little sweetie was a perfect 7 pounds, 15 ounces. Suzanne then measured her at 19 1/2 inches. She and Chloe were almost exactly the same size with Lydia being a couple ounces more.

After Suzanne declared she was just perfect, I fed Lydia from the right breast as Lindsey fed me steak and potatoes (ha!) and Suzanne and Nicole (the birth assistant) finished cleaning up room. When they were finished Suzanne gave me a few instructions for the next 24-48 hours until they would be back, hugged me, and went on their way.

It was starting to get late at this point and all our visitors decided to go home and let us rest. Chloe went to her grandparents house for the night while Justin, Lydia, and I just laid in bed and snuggled the rest of the night. My best friend Andrea slept in Chloe's room for the night in case I needed her and it was so nice to know she was close just in case I needed some extra mommy hands. I had way too much adrenaline to sleep much that night and just laid in bed staring at our sweet little miracle and praising God for her life.

I was never nervous to have Lydia by ourselves. The only time I got a little freaked out was when Lydia was trying to get some of the amniotic fluid out and was gagging a bit. It was never anything to really worry about and we had an aspirator if we needed it, but she cleared it away and was just fine.

Our first hours together as a family were reason enough for me to homebirth again in the future should we be blessed with more babies. It was the most incredible thing to feel such peace and love and gentleness in the room for Lydia's first hours of life.

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As a side note: I realize I'm a horrible blogger. I really want to change that for a lot of reasons, but the main one being that I just really want to remember what was going on in our lives when I look back 5, 10, 20 years from now. I often use facebook as my way of telling the world what's going on around here, but I'm realizing that it's just not very easy to go back and see where we've been. So, I'm going to try to start chronically our lives here more often - even if it's just silly Chloe one-liners...which happen at least once daily. :)

Welcome Miss Lydia Hope!

When baby girl’s due date came and went I was really upset. I was getting very uncomfortable and was confused as to why I would have WEEKS of contractions and she still not be here. On Saturday the 12^th, I started having very regular contractions and by the middle of the night they were painful enough that I had to get up out of bed. I went downstairs and sat on the birth ball and timed the contractions. They were about 3-5 minutes apart and 45-60 seconds long. I KNEW this was it! I called Suzanne and told her we probably had a long time (judging from Chloe’s 21 hour birth), but that things were starting. Suzanne, having about a 45 minute drive, decided to come to the house and said that if things took a long time she would just sleep on the couch and if we still had a long time in the morning she would just go shopping – ha! She got to the house and put the tens unit on me and told me to go see if I could rest. I went back up to bed and the contractions completely STOPPED. By morning I was extremely discouraged and feeling like this child was never coming!

The next few days brought more contractions, but nothing to “write home about”. After the false alarm on Saturday night I decided I was not making a big deal of anything until I knew for sure that I was in labor. So, in other words, until I couldn’t really function through contractions. Suzanne told me from the beginning that she thought my labor would be fast and to not “wait too long” to let her know things were happening, but I never believed her that it would be fast since my labor with Chloe was so long and at this point I definitely wasn’t calling in anymore false alarms!

On Tuesday November 15^th, Chloe and I went about our day just like any other. It was gorgeous outside so we spent a lot of time outside. I of course was having contractions all day, but didn’t pay any attention to them. I lost my mucous plug about 3:00 that day and was SO excited because I felt like at least I knew my body was making progress in some ways and Lydia might really actually come!

The next order of events will probably be best told by a timeline. So here goes:

5:00pm: Justin called to say he was on his way home and asked if there was anything I wanted him to pick up for dinner. I told him I really wanted steak and mashed potatoes.

6:00pm: Justin got home and started dinner. Around that same time I began to notice that contractions were getting a little harder, but I still didn’t pay much attention to them.

6:30pm: My contractions were starting to get very uncomfortable and so I decided to time them. Justin was just finishing up dinner and sat down to eat. I told him I wasn’t going to be able to eat as my contractions were getting too hard and I needed to focus through them. I quit timing them about 20 minutes into it because they were getting too intense and I didn’t want to mess with it anymore. As the contractions came I leaned over whatever was close (the couch, bathroom sink, stair railing, etc), rocked my hips and breathed through them. They still weren’t completely unbearable, but they weren’t easy either. I called my mom to let her know that I would probably need Chloe to come over there at some point that night since I thought I was probably in labor now. During the conversation I had to put the phone down to get through one of my contractions. My littlest sister was leaving for volleyball practice and had told my mom to call if she needed to come home. I informed my mom that there was no way we would have a baby by 10pm when Kailey would be home from practice so not to worry about calling her.

7:00pm: I texted our midwife, Suzanne, to let her know that she should probably come to the house since contractions were getting longer, stronger, and closer together; although I thought we still had a lot of time left. She told me to have Justin get the birth tub set up and other supplies out. I also called the birth photographer as well as my friend Andrea who I had asked to be at the birth. As Justin finished eating his dinner he got everything set up.

7:30pm: During labor I need it extremely quiet and at this point Chloe was really starting to get on my nerves so I had my sister take her over to my mom’s house. Once she left I was able to really start focusing on breathing through my contractions and relaxing.

7:45pm: The birth assistant, Nicole, showed up at the house. At this point my contractions were becoming very uncomfortable and I was starting to have a hard time really relaxing. Nicole did counter pressure on my back and it felt SO good!

8:00pm: Suzanne got to the house and made sure everything was set up and ready to go. I had a few contractions and then she suggested I sit on the toilet and she would press on my knees to try to move baby down and see where we were at. I had about 5 contractions on the toilet and they HURT. I was really beginning to think that if this lasted much longer I was not going to be able to do it.

8:30pm: Suzanne could see that I was struggling and so asked if I wanted to get in the water. I thought that sounded great and we moved into the bedroom and I got into the tub. As I got back into the bedroom, I saw that our doula, Kay had arrived. I *very* vaguely remember telling her hello as I was kind of just “in the zone” at that point. As I was squatting down into the water I had an enormous amount of pressure and yelled “I’m pushing!!” and then my water burst. OH RELIEF!! I had about 2 more contractions and then the intense pressure returned. I really was pushing at this point! Suzanne told me to reach down and feel for the baby’s head, but I was so comfortable in the position I was in and did not want to move. I told her I couldn’t do it and that I really didn’t think we were that close anyway. I had one more contraction that I pushed through and she really urged me to feel for the baby’s head in order to help guide her out. I really was not convinced that the baby was coming yet, but felt for her anyway and I felt her head!! I could not believe she was almost here! I was seriously in shock that I was that far along.

8:49pm: I had a couple more contractions and she was HERE!! The pushing part of labor was SO much different this time. With Chloe I was on my back with people telling me when and how to push. This time my body just took over and did it. Seriously. It was somewhat of an out of body experience for me this time. With Chloe I also don’t remember feeling the “ring of fire” that everyone talks about. This time, I definitely felt it! Luckily, baby girl was quick to relieve me of that feeling. She made her entrance first into the water and then into my arms. It was so amazing! Her cord was very short so I wasn’t able to bring her all the way to my chest, but I held her lower in the water and we just gazed at each other. She was so content and alert and barely cried. When Justin came over to meet her he spoke and she immediately turned her head to his voice as if to say, “I hear my daddy!”. It was so sweet.

Miss Lydia Hope was here and we could not have been more excited and in love!!!

The birth was so fast that my mom, my sister (who was sitting on our living room couch), Andrea, and the birth photographer all missed it. I can’t believe how in denial I was the whole time that I was actually in labor and things were progressing. I guess my nonchalant attitude threw everyone off. Luckily our midwife has done this a time or two and knew to get to our house quickly!

Not long after Lydia made her entrance my dad brought Chloe over to meet her new baby sister. They rushed over so quickly that Chloe still had pudding on her face from a snack she was eating at my parent’s house. Haha! Chloe was very unsure about the whole thing and had quite the little meltdown. Her sister didn’t look like her and was bald and she was “so disappointed!!” LOL! I just had to laugh. Chloe slowly came around to her new sister and now loves her very much, although she still thinks she’s boring!

The whole experience was so incredible and having her at home was one of the best decisions we could have made! It was so peaceful and beautiful. I am so grateful to have the amazing midwife I do and felt so safe and well taken care of in her hands.

We waited so long for Lydia and she did not disappoint!! ;)

I will do a post about our time after the birth and of pictures soon!

Oh! And just for the record, I *did* get my steak and mashed potatoes that night and even better: my sister fed them to me! ;)

You can read about our first moments together and a big reason why I chose home birth here: http://lovejoyandlaughter.blogspot.com/2012/02/our-first-moments-together.html

The next few weeks....

To say a lot has happened since the last time I blogged would be a HUGE understatement. Haha!

So, to get caught up:

At 32 weeks, on a Tuesday night, I had a bought of contractions (not painful at all) that were about 2-3 minutes apart and lasted a couple of hours. Of course I never had any contractions prior to Chloe’s labor so I was a little scared and confused about what was going on. I knew in order for them to be “real” labor contractions they needed to get longer, stronger, and closer together, which they weren’t really doing. I called my midwife and she told me to take a bath, drink lots of water and pregnancy tea, lay on my left side, etc. – all things to try to get them to stop. She also called me in a prescription to try to get them to stop. After I talked to her she decided to come to the house and just check things out. Can I just interrupt and say how AWESOME it is to have a midwife that comes to you when something is amiss!! Anyway…the meds got the contractions stopped and I carried on my merry little way….until Thursday when they started again. This time I decided I probably should go to the hospital and get things checked out and make sure these were Braxton-Hicks and not contractions that were causing any dilation. At the hospital everything checked out okay, but I was officially put on bed rest until 37 weeks.

You would think bed rest would be really awesome, but when you have a 4 year old to entertain, and a house to clean, and a family to cook for, it really pretty much sucks! Luckily for me, I have an awesome younger sister who came to stay with us and helped out with all the things I couldn’t do, especially entertaining Chloe.

I came off bed rest at 37 weeks and had lots of contractions pretty much every day – they were very sporadic and usually didn’t hurt at all. We were okay with Lydia making her entrance after this point, so I didn’t really pay much attention to the contractions and figured they were helping prepare her lungs and my body for labor.

At my 38 week appointment my midwife, Suzanne, told me she thought I would be going over my due date and to just enjoy our time until baby was here. I’ll be honest, I was really bummed after that appointment. Having had contractions for so many weeks, I thought for sure Lydia would be here earlier than my due date. I kind of prepared myself that she would be early and when I was told she would likely be “late”, I was a little discouraged.

Fast forward to 40 weeks. 11/11/11. Nothing. Baby girl was holding tight and her momma was getting VERY anxious for her to make her arrival!

28 Weeks!

I can not believe I'm in the third trimester already! The second half of this pregnancy has FLOWN by! It's really so very bittersweet that we're getting closer to end of the pregnancy. On the one hand I'm so incredibly excited to meet Lydia and to have her in my arms. On the other hand, I love being pregnant and feeling her move in my belly. I'm trying to cherish every minute of being pregnant with her!!

Chloe is getting more and more excited by the day to have Lydia here and often says things like, "I wish it would get colder faster so my baby would be here!" She is so sweet and is going to be such an amazing big sister. Seeing the two girls together is something I can not WAIT for!!

Now for the fun pregnancy questions:

How far along: 28 Weeks

Total weight gain/loss: Yeah, this question was still fun when it was like 8lbs...now, let's just say my booty will most likely have it's own zip code when this is all said and done. ;)

Body Changes: I'm pretty much just getting big everywhere. The joys of pregnancy :) One thing Justin and I noticed though is that my belly has gone from really round to sticking straight out. I think it's how baby girl is positioned in there. I'm hoping she's head down or at least headed that way in the next few weeks!!

Sleep: Sleeping is okay. I wake up A LOT to go pee in the middle of the night. I didn't really have to pee more than usual with Chloe so I always thought those women who talked about having to pee were just making it up (lol), but holy cow, this time that is not the case. I have to pee ALL. THE. TIME!!!

Best moment this week: Being able to actually feel her foot poking me from the outside and know what it was!!

Gender: Girl!! :)

Food Cravings/Aversions: I don't really have many cravings or aversions. McDonald's could probably be put in the aversion category.

What I miss: Sleeping on my belly

What I am looking forward to: My midwife appointment on Thursday as well as our little family vacation to St. Louis next weekend!

Milestones: I can tell she's getting bigger in there and have started to very distinctly feel little feet, knees, and elbows poking me. She is extremely active and I LOVE that!! I think she knows her mommy needs the extra reassurance. ;)

Chloe's Summer (so far) in Pictures

A trip to the lake

Royals Game

Playing at the Park

Rockin' her shades

Fishing with Daddy on Father's Day

She got really bored and annoyed that she wasn't catching anything...

Zonked after a long day!

Playgroup trip to Independence to ride the trolley. She LOVED this!

A visit to her best friend Loreli's house

Picnic time!

4th of July at the lake

Fireworks at Poppy and Nanny's. She was*so* good at catching the parachutes! Maybe she will be daddy's little softball player afterall ;)

Playing in the fountains at Zona Rosa

Home Management

My house being organized and clean is so important for my sanity. When everything has a place and everything is in it's place I am so much less stressed and so much nicer to my family! I think I've said before, but I'm a REALLY great planner. I make lists and beautiful plans and then 2 days later it all flies out the window and my house is in shambles and I feel like a failure once again. It's an ugly cycle.

Recently I came across moneysavingmom.com. She is a blogger who posts about great deals as well as lots of great homemaking tips. I have just started using her daily docket and cleaning lists and can I say how AMAZING I feel and what a wonderful state my house is in MOST of the time. It's a miracle really.

Here is the link to her home management forms: http://moneysavingmom.com/downloads/household-management-forms.

I follow her daily docket pretty much exactly and there are just a few changes I made to the cleaning lists for our own house.

I just wanted to pass this info along in case it helps someone else out. I know it has been such a blessing to me!