The Labor Story

I know some people have been anxiously awaiting to hear my side of the labor/birthing story and though it was already 2 weeks ago I'm finally getting around to writing it up. It was a pretty exciting labor that I know will be quite the story to share with our little girl when she is older. If only I was better at sharing stories this probably would have been written 2 weeks ago (or maybe not, since I'm a bit more busy these days). I will warn you that this will probably get pretty long and for some reason blogger is not allowing me to post pictures so if you want to see pictures check out my facebook page.

I woke up Tuesday morning excited because Tuesday's are play-date days and I look forward to them every week. Just like any other typical morning I got Josiah dressed for the day while I stayed in my PJ's right up until we needed to head out the door. I would love to blame this on being pregnant and though being pregnant did not help I must admit that I stay in my comfortable pajama pants even when I'm not pregnant because hey, they're comfortable!

Anyway, Josiah and I headed out the door and enjoyed a quieter than normal play-date with one toddler and 5 month old twins (the other mom's and kiddos couldn't make it). I debated putting Josiah down for a nap and hanging out for the afternoon with my dear friend but opted out, feeling the need to take a nap myself. Once we got home I put Josiah down for a nap and headed to the couch myself to nap. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who can just fall asleep when I close my eyes so I decided I would snuggle in to a good chick flick...the Bachelorette which aired the night before. Shortly after I got the show up and playing on the computer and began to snuggle in (about 1:00pm) I felt my first contraction. I was certain that I wasn't going to have this baby early since Josiah was two days late. At this point it was still another 4 days until my due date so when I felt my first contraction I was trying to figure out what was going on. After I felt a few more I thought that maybe this could be the beginning of my labor but not wanting to get my hopes up I decided not to call Brett and wait it out a bit more to make sure. I began timing them and with them about 15 min. apart I decided I had plenty of time before we would need to leave for the hospital. During this time it began to downpour really hard and after my contractions started getting a little closer together I called Brett. When he answered I asked him where he was, assuming he was over at the farm a few miles away. He told me he was in Selby at a meeting and so not knowing how to tell him I told him very non-nonchalantly that I was in labor but that he didn't need to come home because I still had a lot of time. He told me he would be coming home because he was done with his meeting anyway.

Fast forward to when Brett arrived at home.

It was still raining but not near as hard anymore. Brett was home and Josiah was now awake from his nap. I still didn't feel like we needed to leave anytime soon so I was just kind of hanging out getting a few things together in between contractions. Brett was standing in the kitchen getting something to drink, looking out the window when he says that I need to come look at this. I was thinking the dog was doing something stupid but then as I looked out the window we see water coming up to the barn and heading towards our house. I was shocked and suggested that maybe we should move the van so it wasn't in the line of fire for the water. Before we even had a chance to talk about whether or not we should move the van the water was already up to it and rising quickly. At that point, Brett opened the door from the kitchen to the entryway and we could hear the water coming in. Wanting to see it for myself I walked into the entry way and saw the water pouring in through the door and the walls. Standing there I started another contraction and once it was done I began to panic a bit. There was no way we were going to be able to open the front door with all that water and when I looked out the living room window and saw the water rising now on the truck and flooding over the road I really began to panic.

At this point Brett is getting his waiters on and hauling anything of value out of our basement where the water was building up. I kept myself busy with getting our hospital stuff together and playing with Josiah who thought it was fun to see all the water out the windows. The next thing I knew we had about 10 people outside our house ready to help where ever they could. Of course everyone knew I was in labor at this point...this made me a bit self conscious as I didn't want a bunch of people seeing me going through contractions. I laid low inside the house as Brett went out the window to talk to people and would continually come back to the window to see how I was doing and how far apart my contractions were. I got all of Josiah's stuff together and handed him and his things out the window to Brett who gave him over to the Perman's (we consider them honorary Grandparents) who would be watching him while we were at the hospital.

To anyone who has ever gone into labor you know that during labor you are feeling a lot of pressure down below which can cause you to need to use the bathroom frequently. Because of the flooding happening our toilet had been overflowing with water and had filled the bathroom floor leaving us with no bathroom to use. I had informed Brett of this problem in which he responded with, "just go in the sink". Yeah like it's that easy to climb up onto a counter and go into a sink when you are pregnant and in labor, not to mention disgusting. His other option which still did not excite me but was much more manageable was to use a bucket (don't worry everyone the bucket is in the trash now).

As time went on and contractions were getting closer, Brett and I talked and decided that we probably had enough time to wait until the water would go down enough that I could get out the front door. Though Brett and Josiah had gone out the window I was quite sure that I wasn't going to be able to fit out the window even if I tried. Brett assures me that I could have gone out a different window but I am thankful that I didn't have to try.

Around 6:45pm I was able to walk out the front door (wearing my rain boots) and made my way to our pickup. We made our way over to farm to drop off the dog with my father-in-law and clean out the tires on the pickup so it wouldn't shake so much from all the water and mud that had built up from the flooding. Around 7:00pm we were on our way for the hour drive to the hospital. This is where everything really went quick. Upon arriving I signed a few papers and then was brought into the delivery room where I was given the most beautiful hospital gown (can you sense the sarcasm). The nurse checked me around 9:00pm to see how far dilated I was. She seemed a bit shocked to realize I was at a 6 at this point. About a half our later my midwife came and checked me only to find out I was now at a 9. Upon remembering that I only pushed for 10 min. with Josiah she told me she better go get her scrubs on. Now, with Josiah I was stuck at a 9 for a long time and I never felt the urge to push, my doctor suggested that I try pushing to see if it would help things along. Needless to say we were shocked when he came 10 minutes later. This time around though things were a bit different. There was no way around it, I felt the urge to push this time and 9 minutes later she was born. I couldn't believe how fast everything had gone. Before I knew it I was holding our beautiful baby girl (who looked identical to her brother when he was born) and getting stitched up. Don't get me wrong, pushing her out was not an easy task and of course extremely painful. It may have only been 9 minutes but it felt like hours of the worse pain imaginable.

This delivery went so well, I really could not have asked for it to go any better. My midwife was amazing and made the whole experience perfect. Now, two weeks later though I have been going through some pretty up and down emotions my body physically is feeling great. With Josiah at this point I could still hardly sit down without feeling the pain but this time I hardly feel like I just had a baby (except for all the extra baby weight).

I shaved off 6 hours from my delivery with Josiah to my delivery with Brynn and Brett tells me that we can't wait around with our next one, especially since we have an hour drive to our hospital.

Hi everyone. We finally had our new baby Brynnly Rae Huber. She was born June 14, at about 10:30 PM. She was 6 lb 6 oz and 20.5 inches long. Both Tanna and Brynnly are doing well and we are preparing to head home to our recently flooded house. Before we left for the hospital, we had a flash flood at our house from the 3+" of rain that fell in an hour. The water was 18 inches up the front door. Tanna started having contractions at about 1:00, the rain started at about 1:30, I got home at 4:30, the water started rising at about 5:00, it was up on the door by 5:10. We were able to open the door at about 6:30, and we were on the way to the hospital at 6:45. We arrived at the hospital at about 8:00 and the baby was born 2 1/2 hours later. It was crazy couple of hours, but everyone is doing well and most of the water is out of the basement thanks to some help from Tim and Clint. We will be heading home in couple of hours and start adjusting to the new normal. Tanna has lots of pictures that she we will put up soon. If you can't wait for picts, stop in and say hi.

Nesting

Today marks 39 weeks prego for me and as you would know it Brett has been finding much humor in my (what he says) "constant nesting". This may or may not be true :) I feel as though I have to get everything deep cleaned before this little girl comes and I then don't have the chance or the energy to do it. Well along with all of this "constant nesting" I turned the guest room into a nursery/guest room and redecorated Josiah's room. I had plans of painting both rooms but only got the nursery/guest room done. This is also the only bedroom in the house that has had any paint put on the walls! This girl is pretty lucky.

For some reason it is not allowing me to upload pictures. If you want to see pictures of the rooms check them out on facebook under the "spring 2011" album or just come and visit us :)

38.5 Weeks

Today marks the day of being 1.5 weeks away from being completely full term. Although I have mixed emotions of our little girl arriving in what could be any day now, mostly I am just excited to have her join our family and to not be pregnant anymore.

On another note (still pregnancy related) I had my weekly check-up today and my midwife told me that she has to be at a conference (5.5 hours away) on the 20th (she will be leaving the 19th). I am due on the 18th and if there is any indication from my first pregnancy of when I will actually go into labor I will be in labor when she is gone (I was two days late with Josiah). All this to say I am really sad about this and really praying that I will go into labor either before or after the dates my midwife is gone. I know it really shouldn't be a big deal because either way our little girl will be born but after spending the last 9 months with my doctor I don't want some stranger there instead. At my appointment today I was told that if I really wanted to she could strip my membranes and hope that I go into labor within 24 hours (she wasn't saying that I have to do this just giving me another option as she realizes the importance of having your doctor there). I don't know what to do about that? I really, really, really want her to be there to deliver our baby girl because I have really loved having her as a midwife but I just don't know what to do.

I'm beginning to ramble now and am probably not making sense because I am tired and ready for bed but I just needed to vent for a moment. I would appreciate any and all prayers that I would deliver this baby when my midwife is here.

touch: my love language?

I've always thought that touch was one of my love languages and though I still do I'm beginning to rethink it as the last few days I have felt overly touched by a certain 2 year old. Don't get me wrong, I love the boy and I love when he wants to come and snuggle next to me but after hours upon hours of pulling on my arm anytime I sit down and the constant running and jumping into me, I've begun to feel that my touch quota has been far over reached. Anyone else ever feel this way? Although, I must admit I would love it if my husband came home early tonight and decided he wanted to give me a good foot rub (on my hugely swollen feet and ankles).

Washing Clothes

So today I went to throw a rug (of which I dropped a gallon of milk on yesterday) in the wash. Usually the first thing I do when I am about to do a load of laundry is set the settings and turn the water on, today was no different. After I cranked the knob to extra small and turned on the water I opened the washer only to find a large load of Brett's work jeans. Hmmmm...I don't remember putting those in there? Realizing that my dear husband was throwing me a little hint that he needed his jeans washed I changed the settings for a large load and now he will come home to clean work jeans. There really is nothing further to add to this story except that I found it to be a bit funny. He still makes me laugh :)

A few updates...

This will probably get a bit lengthy so I will bold letter the topics in case you are only interested in reading specific things. Topics: Farming, Josiah and Pregnancy.

Farming:

On April 12th (2 weeks ago) I made the first tractor lunch of the season for Brett. It was a bitter-sweet moment as I knew it meant we were getting in the field to plant the crop but knew that it was also going to mean hardly seeing my husband. Now let 2 weeks go by and I just made his second tractor lunch of the season. Yep, that's right we had two weeks in between our first day of planting until our second day of planting. Due to a lot of snow and rain we are finally just getting back into it (although we have a forecast of rain this week). We were blessed to be able to get into the first the first time as no one else was planting yet and we were able to get 300 acres done. Brett has already informed me that when we start planting again (which is today) that I can plan on him not being home including through the night as we are late getting our crops into the field this year. This makes me sad but I also know that this is what has to be done.

Josiah:

Josiah and Daddy waiting in the room before he got tubes

Two weeks ago Josiah got tubes put in his ears. He had been struggling with a chronic ear infection and was on his fourth round of treatments to try and get it to go away. We were thankful to be referred to specialist where we were told he should get tubes put in his ears. The specialist told us that with the amount of fluid that had been in Josiah's ears (probably most his life) it was decreasing his hearing by 30%. He said basically it's like having those squishy ear plugs in your ears all the time. Since Josiah is doing speech therapy we were excited (yet sad) to hear that news in hopes that it would help with his speech. Getting tubes went great, no problems at all. We were warned before he left with the doctor to get the tubes that he would wake up screaming and would most likely be screaming off and on for awhile after as he would be confused about where he was and have a bit of discomfort in his ears. We were expecting the worst since we have quite the screamer on our hands in the first place but were thankful that his screaming did not last long and was way better then we thought it would be. He was back to his normal self within an hour.

As for his speech...
I was half way expecting him to just come out of the procedure and be talking sentences to us (I know, very unrealistic) and as the next few days went on I was thinking that maybe his lack of hearing had nothing to do with his speech as I didn't notice a change in his vocabulary. Now 2 weeks later I am thrilled to see all the words he is picking up in just a matter of weeks! Of course what I am most thrilled about is that he is now saying Mama and Mommy (more like Mom-EEE). Brett is a bit jealous as he is saying mama and papa but still not daddy. He has learned the names of his favorite characters on Veggies Tales (Larry & Bob)...Larry being his favorite. Seriously, if we are watching Veggie Tales and Larry is not on right away he gets pretty upset. There is also a movie where Larry gets taken away by a bad guy and Josiah begins to scream at the tv and gets really upset until we reassure him that Larry will be ok. Some other words he has picked up in the last weeks: Rhino (his favorite stuffed animal), ball, movie, more, please, thank you, bye (before he would just say See-ya, now he does both), "it's ok", Pooh (as in Winnie the Pooh), baby, cow (and Moo when we ask him what the cow says) and again. I think there are more but that's all I can think of right now. As you can see his vocabulary is picking up and we are so excited.

Playing outside in our driveway that is a huge puddle most of spring

Loves: He loves to play in puddles (typical boy), enjoys wearing his new rain boots of which is was not a fan of at first, loves to wear his jacket around the house which is hilarious to us since he hated putting on a jacket most of winter, loves to eat and drink/ask for juice, loves Veggie Tales, loves to hold hands (unless we actually want him to so we can cross the road or something), loves going to the farm (Papa's) and knows exactly which roads will take him there and which ones will not, loves tractors, four-wheelers, and the gator, loves to swing, loves to read books and loves to be outside. Loves to have us sing to him and says "again" every time we finish a song.

Hates: Hates getting his diaper changed unless he has his blankie or rhino, hates sharing and really lets you know it, recently he does not like having water put on his head unless he does it himself (never had a problem with this before), also recently screams for about 5 seconds when we put him down to bed or a nap (another thing he did not use to do), hates being seat belted in the pick-up but is completely ok with it in the van, hates when daddy leaves in the morning.

Not sure that this is a hate for him but he now has started getting up crying usually once during the night. This started about two weeks ago and we can't figure out why. He has always been such a good sleeper. Some night we go into his room and rub his back or hold him for a min and then he goes right back to bed and other nights we just leave him and let him cry it out for a little while. I can't figure out for the life of me why he is doing this but I hope it ends soon.

(I apologize for the poor quality pictures of Josiah as they were from my phone)

Pregnancy:

This pregnancy has been different in a lot of ways yet similar in the fact that I still really dislike being pregnant, I had morning sickness (though a lot longer this time around), I have bad acid reflux, and my ankles are swollen. The main difference is how huge I am getting so much quicker this time around. Seriously, this is not a joke...I'm huge. I am 32 weeks pregnant and feel like I did (comfort wise and in size) when I was ready to give birth to Josiah. This is the first prego picture I have taken thus far for this pregnancy simply because I feel so unattractive, but to give you a comparison here you go.

34 Weeks prego with Josiah

32 Weeks prego with baby girl

Side by side shot.

I even tried to wear the same outfit to show the difference. Let me remind you that the most recent picture is two weeks earlier in the pregnancy (I didn't have a 32 week picture from Josiah). I'm large and in charge this time around. I am constantly worrying about having a baby that is really big. Josiah was 8.1lbs and I don't think my body can handle birthing a baby larger then that.

I've also been entirely into "nesting". I blame it on the fact that I didn't get to next when I was pregnant with Josiah because we were moving a month after he was born from Illinois to South Dakota. This time though I am in full force, for nesting that is. Brett laughs at me a lot about this but has been very sympathetic and supportive in me doing it though this is probably because he is afraid of the ever waving roller coaster of emotions that I am. Last week I painted what will be the nursery and bought another gallon of paint to paint Josiah's room since he never had a properly decorated room. Besides our living room these are the only other rooms in the house that don't have white walls and I'm not sad to see them go.