A family of five!

We're back home with a little boy- Sami Salem. He's enormous- 8 lbs. 6 oz. and a 141/2 inch head- lots of room for all the brains he's got.
He was born at 10:10 last night after a short but difficult labor. He managed to tie a knot in his very long cord, but right at the end of it all. He came out looking blue but quickly gained a great color, and he's very healthy looking with a healthy cry. I have to wake him up to feed him (I know! but just till my milk comes in) but he likes sleeping. Sometimes he'll cry- I think he has a lot of gas to burp up. He really likes to be held, of course.
Leila and Ali spent the night at our neighbors/friends and E brought them by on the way to school this morning. They were so happy to see him, giving him kisses. "I love you, Sami," Ali said as he said goodbye.
This afternoon he was having some trouble remembering his name, but when I let him think of it for a moment, he remembered.
Leila said something very sweet but I'm having trouble remembering it exactly- something about never having seen something so small and precious.
Ali wants to know if I'm still pregnant- he means the belly!
Leila went for a walk with me yesterday after my last post when my midwife told me to take a powerwalk for half an hour. I lasted 4 blocks and back. Then she said to lie down and see if they slowed down- they didn't- so we went in to the birth center. We beat her down there, so had to wait on the porch, and it got rather painful. Then things got better for a while- I got in the tub. Another walk afterwards, this time in the park next to the birth center with Habib, and then I walked around the room for a bit. I spent some time on the exercise ball (egg) with Habib rubbing my back. After a while the contractions got pretty bad and I wasn't dilating quite enough, so we decided to speed things up some. His little head wasn't coming down into the birth canal, so I had to push it down. Habib was a big help, holding me as I squatted and made the "angry cat" pose (arching my back) to force him down. Once he crowned it was pretty easy to push him out. (relatively! I think I pushed about 4 or 5 times.  He came out about 10:10 p.m.
The funny thing- Habib had a dream yesterday morning before I woke him up to tell him I was in labor. He had a bug in a bottle. The bug had food and everything in the bottle, but when Habib opened it up, the bug got out and didn't want to go back inside. And he thought it was a male bug.
(I've tried to avoid TMI- you didn't get ALL the gory details!)
The older kids are off to dinner and trick-or-treating with friends, and I've got this one dressed as a duck burrito. (Almost all gender neutral baby clothes are ducks!)

A little early

This morning I woke up at 9:15 with some pains (I'd woken up an hour earlier with no pains). I decided to make coffee because that would get me through the day, but I wasn't hungry, which is unusual for me. I've had pains off and on for a while all day- every ten or twenty minutes, lasting from 30 seconds to one minute. But lately they are slowing down, perhaps because I'm taking it easy.
It is a whole week and a half too early for this!
The kids said if the abby is born tonight or tomorrow they would rather go to school then leave early to see the baby. I said I'm making them leave early!

Trying to get a grasp

I've had almost 8 months to get my head around being pregnant. Now it's time to really work on getting it into my head that we will have a little person in our lives in two weeks. I was watching The Rachel Zoe Project on t.v. last night. Her latest project was pushing out a baby, and I got a funny feeling in my tummy- butterflies, really- watching her with him, and realizing that'll be me soon.
Help!
At least I've ordered the car seat and it should be here tomorrow!

Still waiting

Here's something I posted several years ago about new mothers growing a third arm. There are no signs of one this pregnancy either, but I'm hoping Ali and Leila might function in much the same way.

Your Body is a Sports Arena

Barbara Kruger has a famous work called "Your Body is  Battleground."  Lately, my body is feeling more like a sports arena. The baby is doing somersaults and other tumbling moves when he/she isn't practicing for Tae Kwon Do. It's weird enough when the kicks are on my outer stomach, but when the baby is kicking on the inner side, it's even stranger.
Yesterday I had a big migraine come on right in the middle of class. It's hard to teach grammar when I can barely see because of the migraine aura. Today I thought one might be coming on- and it still might- but at least I'm in my office and not in class today.
Yesterday we broke a record in Texas- the most days of over 100 degree weather. Some people were disappointed when a cold front a few weeks ago interupted the record for most days over 100 in a row. Now they can celebrate that this is officially the hottest summer on record. It should break with a cold front coming through tomorrow. I'm certainly ready for it. This was the wrong summer to be pregnant and stuck in Texas the ENTIRE summer. Usually we escape to cooler climes for a week or two at the least.
Oh well, it's over now.

bulls eye

Leila thinks its really fun to make people she's just met guess her age. The other night at our group show opening, her victim of choice was Diego, who is doing his medical residency with my friend Jenny.
"How old do you think I am?" she demands.
"11?" "No."
"10?" "No."
"9?" "No."
"7?" "No." Finally he guess "8". (My upward gesturing hands may have helped.)
Then Ali gets in on the action-  He's a little easier.
"5?" "No."
"6?" "Yes!"
The other Ali wants in, too. He's a little shorter than my Ali, so Diego thinks he MUST be 5, but no, he's 6, too.
Then Ali says- "How old is the baby?"
Immediately, Diego and Jenny both guess "32" (weeks, of course).
Those med students are good!

Random bits and pieces.

I did some sewing this summer and finally added a towel to the bottom of Ali's bath towel so that he wouldn't need two. I'd done Leila's a couple of years ago. She wasn't such an enthusiastic model.

I know I've said this before, but it bears saying again- this baby is the kickingest baby ever! I think s/he is trying to exit the womb with a yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do.

The sibling rivalry has already begun.

Part of the test involved breaking a board with a kick- you can see the two pieces in their handds. (Luckily there are no boards in my womb!)

Also, I've finally figured out why women are so keen on marrying "Greek gods." It isn't the sculpted abs, golden tans and beautiful faces- it's their ability to birth children, fully grown, from their foreheads!

Tummy time

Yesterday Leila told me that my growing belly doesn't seem that big or that odd to her. "Maybe it's because Baba's belly was that big for a while!"
Good thing she didn't say my belly was already big before I was pregnant!

The daily grind

Every morning when I grind my coffee, I worry it's waking up the household- but it doesn't, really.
This week was back to work for me, and back to school for the kids. (I thought last week was back to work, so I actually had a nice week of vacation- no online classes even!)  It's tough getting up early and dragging myself in. I'm back to having headache/migraines (with auras) and I think it's partly from sleep schedules being messed up. If I wake up in the middle of the night and get out of bed as pregnant women are wont to do, I have trouble falling right back to sleep.
The kids were excited about school, and Leila comes home every day with a new reason her teacher is great. Ali has had a harder time. The first day he got frustrated because he wasn't able to finish his work and his "brain hurt." They were writing sentences, and that's hard for him. I talked to him about his teacher- he seemed to think she was upset by him not finishing. The next day went well because it was math work, but yesterday was hard again, and this morning there were tears that he didn't want to go to school. He doesn't like writing, but he says math is easy for him. Finally I asked if he wanted me to write a note to his teacher, and I did. I hope he gave it to her. I think he likes his teacher, though. Yesterday before we went home he went up to tell her something.
Monday I face my students- 8 weeks of face to face classes, and online classes that continue all 16 weeks. I need to work on an assignment schedule this weekend that gives me some breathing space in November!

Pregnancy photos revisted

I have to repost this link, because I wasn't preggers (or didn't know it) when I first posted it, and because they've added some new pics.

Weird Pregnancy Dreams

I think I've had about one with every pregnancy, but I was wondering where the dream for this one was. I had it last night. I can't remember it in detail, of course, but I was traveling around with my baby. However, the baby hadn't really been born yet (I swear I had a similar one with Ali? where I decided he didn't need a car seat in the taxi because he wasn't actually born yet.) This time, the baby was out, but I was going to have to go to the birth center in a few weeks and actually go through the labor since I hadn't yet.
Where do these come from? Are they about the baby being reality?
This morning I "got" to do a 3 hour glucose tolerance test. I did the one hour last week before my 26 week visit. I had to drink a horrible drink and then have blood drawn an hour later. I wasn't supposed to eat for 2 hours before the drink. This time, I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight. Then I got to the center when it opened and had a baseline blood test drawn and THEN drank the horrible drink- over ice, luckily. An hour later they drew blood, then an hour after that, and one more time. I was really worried about not being able to eat or drink for that long since I wake up parched and ravenous in the morning, but it wasn't too bad. I slept on a comfy couch in the birthing room and read magazines between blood draws. But I think, now that I've had my coffee and lunch, that I'm going to head off for another siesta before my chiro appointment.
I'll get the results tomorrow. I'm not to worried about having gestational diabetes. I've gained a bit more weight than with the other kids, but really not that much. I think I lost a few pounds in the first 3 months- and I've gained about 18 lbs by now. With both L and A I gained 20 total, I think.

Love

"Have a nice day at school, Ali," I said as he headed out.
"I love you, mommy. And tell the baby I love it, too."
"Ali loves you baby," I say in the direction of my belly.
Sometimes, when he isn't in a hurry to get to school, Ali kisses the baby via my belly. He's going to be a very loving big brother.
Everything was great at the midwife today. I have to do my food chart still, but was glad I haven't since last night's dinner was pizza and the midwife was the same one I had when I did my food chart with Ali, and she's very strict.
My back is doing better now that I've done some exercises, and I saw the chiropracter today. She tells me she likes to see her "Preggos" throughout the pregnancy, and I've scheduled a massage along with my adjustment next week.

Good News/Bad News

The good news is that I finally tackled my closet yesterday and can now see the very dusty floor. The bad news is that I threw my back out- probably by sitting on a stool instead of just squatting. I was afraid my legs would be sore today if I didn't use a stool, but now I'm thinking that would be better than this.
I have history of lower back pain that leads into sciatic pain, and it seems I'm headed in that direction. The midwife told me on my first visit that I shouldn't do my core strengthening exercises, which are what I usually turn to in this kind of situation, but just visit a chiropractor. Luckily my primary care physician agreed to give me a reference without my having to go in, but I couldn't get an appointment till tomorrow. So, since I'm not sure how much that will help, and tomorrow is busy, I googled back exercises while pregnant and learned I could do a couple while pregnant. I also found a heating pad and got that on today.
Tomorrow night I'm shooting 6th grade graduation (Leila seemed to think that very violent, but really, they asked me to!) I have to be able to move around a bit for that. I'm hoping the chiro is a miracle worker!

I laughed so hard I cried

A friend sent me this hilarious link. If you are pregnant, have been pregnant, or know anyone who has ever been pregnant, you've gotta look. I'm still laughing.

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