Baby picture.

As Brian said, we have a baby!

Everything happened so fast last night, everyone got a picture of her but us. I snapped one with my phone so I can show you guys a quick peek. I'm sure we'll have better pictures later.

I'm recovering and wide awake. Husband and baby are both sleeping in the room with me. Life is beautiful.

She's here!

At 11:45 p.m., Aug. 28, 2008, Eliza Jane Smith entered the world via C-section, as Janie's induction failed after more than two days.

Janie developed a slight fever from her water being broken around noon, and that, combined with her cervix not moving at all in about six hours, led Dr. Hodges to take her back for a C-section around 11:20. Janie had fortunately gotten an epidural earlier in the evening, so they were able to crank it up for the section.

Janie's recovering right now, and apparently everything went well when they closed her, so she should heal pretty well.

Pictures to come once I've actually got some (I was in the OR and then took Eliza into the nursery, so I couldn't get any myself.)

Sentenced to hard labor...

No, Janie isn't swinging a pickaxe on a chain gang, but she is laboring like a junkball pitcher late in a game.

Doc was kinda forced to put her on a magnesium sulfate drip to reduce her seizure risk because her BP is high and staying high. We were both kind of apprehensive about that move, but Doc told me herself that our only other option was to turn off the pitocin and have a C-section, and neither Janie nor I want that if we can help it.

Janie's eating a popsicle and watching Ellen on TV. Eliza's heart rate sounds good on the monitor, and the contractions are strong but not completely regular right now. Janie's not in a lot of pain, though.

Our little girl is set on making this difficult on all three of us, it appears.

Any minute now. No, really!

Water is broken, so we're leaving here with a baby one way or the other. Brian's having Chick-fil-A and I'm checking in with the internet. I'm still pretty comfortable, but the contractions have gotten slightly more painful. Updates as events warrant or we have a baby to show you.

Or not.

Change in plans, folks: Eliza's debut was pushed back a day so her midnight release receipts count toward this weekend's box office total. :D

Seriously, though, Janie's cervix hadn't progressed enough for the esteemed Dr. Hodges to break the bag this morning, so we're in a holding pattern for the moment. The plan as of now is to take Janie off the pitocin at 6 and let her eat and shower (and walk.) Then she'll go back on the starvation diet at midnight and they'll restart the pitocin at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

Dr. Hodges thinks that maintaining the pitocin all day, plus restarting it tomorrow, should dilate Janie enough to get things moving. That's preferable to the alternative, which is a C-section that'll keep Janie down for a while and complicate things for a couple of weeks at least.

Everyone's gone home for the day now, so we're at Baby Defcon 5 for the rest of the evening.

Meanwhile, Janie and I are planning to try and get as much sleep as possible tonight, since she'll be off the monitors and able to get comfortable. I, on the other hand, will again try to get comfortable in a recliner that barely reclines.

Also, I have bubble-gum cigars to hand out now, plus a real cigar (a La Gloria Cubana Serie R #6) to enjoy when we get home.

It's EARLY.

It's 6:25, I've barely slept, Janie slept less and we are DOING THIS.

The Cervidil doesn't seem to have done much, but they've got the pitocin started and we're rocking along. Janie's chowing down on ice chips, I'm waiting for my breakfast to arrive and my mother is already making pictures.

So the waiting game begins.

You are LOOKING LIVE...

Apologies to Brent Musburger for the subject line, but we are safely ensconced in the delivery room at Western Baptist Hospital.

Right now, Janie's lying on her back, playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the Game Boy held over her head. They have given her Cervidil, which is the reason she's flat on her back, and she can still eat until midnight.

They're planning on starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

In less good news, we don't have MSNBC in this room, for some reason, so we're watching the Democratic National Convention on CNN instead. We prefer NBC's coverage, but I guess we'll make do.

On our way...

I'm about to pack up the laptop. In just about 30 minutes or so, we'll be heading to the hospital.

We're taking the laptop, so we'll keep you guys posted as events warrant. Keep us in your thoughts.

The nursery is done!

I know I just posted nursery pictures, but here's the nursery with the new art! We have some Classic Pooh wall hangings and this awesome poster we just got in the mail today. If you'd like to see it up close,
here's the link!











As Brian said earlier, we head to the hospital at 5PM tomorrow night. Wish us luck, everyone!

T-minus one day...

So, we're about 24 hours away from going into the hospital as a couple and leaving as a trio.

Janie's spent most of today coming down from a panic attack, while I've been a weird combination of tired, excited and a little unnerved by the whole endeavor.

Tonight, we're going to repack the bags to make sure we're ready, get some snacks at the grocery and then try to enjoy our last night of sanity for the next two decades. :D

We will update as events warrant tomorrow, and then we'll keep you posted Wednesday.

Another close call...

Eliza flunked her ultrasound today, so that bought me a ticket directly to L&D (sounds like a Monopoly railroad, doesn't it?). After some careful monitoring, it was decided that Eliza's in good shape and we're still on for induction Tuesday night. Good thing 'cause our doctor is out of town 'til Wednesday!

Straightening out the elbow...

Good news on the elbow front for Betty, it appears.

She's avoided surgery for the moment, although it may have to be done down the road. It was better this morning after resting overnight, and the surgeon is willing to let it heal some on its own before cutting.

So she will be here for next week's festivities.

In other news, my sister Lee moved in at Bellarmine this morning for her first year of college. I hope everything turns out to be a piece of cake for her.

Elbow Macaroni

Yesterday my mother managed to fall on her way out of a drug store and break her elbow. Well, break isn't so much the word. Shatter is a better term. She went to the surgeon today and elbow replacement surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.

I need positive vibes, prayers, chi, and what have you that she'll not only have a safe surgery, but that she'll recover in time to be here for Eliza's birth. She's having general anesthesia, which is dangerous for someone with the medical conditions my mother suffers with. Fingers crossed for her, please.

Eliza's (almost entirely) finished room.

Now that we have our new changing table (thanks, Cheryl), the baby's room is almost finished. We're just waiting on the bed skirt for the crib and some art for the walls.

New furniture!

The new changing table, which is supposed to match the crib, has arrived!

I had an e-mail waiting in my inbox this morning telling me it was ready for pickup, so I'm probably going to see if my truck is in running order since it's already in town and go pick it up this afternoon.

Pictures once I have it assembled, naturally.

This is the last piece to have the nursery done, and not a moment too soon.

8 Days.

Everything looked a little TOO good at the doctor today. I'm happy to report that the baby put on 5 oz. They were a little worried because she hadn't really gained much since 34 weeks. If she hadn't gained any weight, we would have induced this Wednesday for sure. My blood pressure also looked pretty good while we were there. As it stands, I have one more doctor's appointment and bpp on Friday with induction planned for the following Wednesday, August 27th. I'm a little disappointed. I'm entirely ready to get this over with. However, the nurse practitioner/midwife made Brian a little nervous when she mentioned that the baby could still be prone to breathing problems at 37 weeks. I think Brian's relieved. I, on the other hand, am over it and I was ready to get this show on the road.

Still, one more week and we'll have a baby!

Counting the days...

Doctor's appointment again tomorrow afternoon. We're hoping we get the news we want and Eliza will be here soon.

Janie's BP has been weirdly lower the past two days, though, so we're not sure what that means. It was 120/70 all day yesterday, and it's 130/90 today. Fasting blood sugar has been down both days too.

To try and speed the process along, Janie took down an entire container of fresh pineapple with supper tonight. Nothing yet. We're open to other suggestions. I thought about tapping on Janie's chest like a bottle of ketchup, but I'm told that doesn't work.

Adorable baby, never leave home without her.

Never has a child been a more perfect blend of two parents.

Upon further consideration, I decided to go ahead and scan the 3D pictures of the baby from yesterday. Since I'm a larger gal, zooming in on the baby in 3D is a little more challenging than it is for some. She's a little blurry here. I hope you can make it out.



This is the picture where you can make out her awesomely blended features. As you can see by the picture below, she has my nose and Brian's lips. Her lips and Brian's lips are almost freakishly similar. He makes this exact face in his sleep. As for my nose - poor kid.

See what I mean? Of course, I also think she looks a bit like Karl Malden.

I guess we'll see when she makes her debut!

Here are a couple more.

Beautiful Baby. Finally in 3D!

We've had a very hard time getting 3D pictures of our little girl. Today during our bpp the ultrasound tech. switched it over to the 3D so we could get a look at our baby girl's face. The pictures were still pretty blurry (or else I'd scan them for you), but she's adorable. She certainly has my nose, but she also has Brian's lips EXACTLY. She was even holding her mouth like Brian. So far she looks like a good blend of both of us.

As for the doctor part, looks like I'm just barely dilated at all. The doctor upped my blood pressure meds (Aldomet) from 250mg twice a day to 500mg three times a day. That makes a little nervous 'cause this medicine already made me feel a little loopy at first and sometimes still does late at night. I guess we'll see how that works out tonight. I'm supposed to come back and see them next Monday for another bpp and exam.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think they were discussing possible induction for next Wednesday. She was discussing how far along I'll be next Wednesday for sure. 37w2d, to be exact. Trust me, if she wants to induce I shall not complain.

Otherwise, one of the nurses looks like somebody. She kinda looks like Cameron Diaz, but it's somebody else, too. I hate when this stuff happens 'cause it drives me nuts trying to figure it out!

Another week, another doctor visit.

This afternoon we head off for our weekly biophysical profile (aka how big can this baby possibly get? appointment) and visit with the doctor. My blood pressure has been staying mostly reasonable, but I've had a couple of pretty intense spikes. The stress of worrying about the blood pressure is probably worse than the actual blood pressure. According to me, the baby is officially being evicted. Do you think it would be creepy to have a sheriff come and escort her out? Anyone have any good labor induction tips or tricks? Someone mentioned a full moon on Saturday and that could help get things rolling.

I'm hoping the doctor will have a plan for baby delivery. If she even hints that she might let the baby go to term, I'll probably cry big, weepy sitcom tears right in her office. I don't think I can handle four more weeks of bedrest and bp meds.

At the moment, I'm planning to spend my day watching many episodes of Entourage (have to get my Ari fix) and once again trying to force myself not to want to clean the house. My nesting instinct has kicked into full gear and it's taking every ounce of will I have to keep me in the bed. If I'm still stuck in the bed next week, it'll probably take actual straps to keep me down.

Playing the waiting game...

The hardest part of this whole thing is waiting for Eliza to get here.

I hadn't really realized that until last night, when I started to actually get angry that I couldn't play with her yet.

It was spurred by finding a tiny Kentucky cheerleader outfit in the UKAthletics.com shop while I was looking at the new football jerseys. I just want to have my daughter here so I can start forcing her to watch sports and play games with me.

As I told Janie last night, "I can't wait until she's about 5 and watching a game with us. She'll be the only 5-year-old on the planet who will be screaming 'Fundamentals!' while watching basketball."

A quiet weekend...

Pretty calm around Casa Smith this weekend, which is a welcome change from last week.

Saturday, Dad and I got a cable line run off the DirecTV box to the bedroom so we at least have some sort of television in there, which helps Janie sleep.

We've had a lot of trouble with the landscaping around the house, especially between our house and the neighbor's, so Dad helped me with that as well. He ended up cutting down the two holly trees in front of the house because they were tearing the gutters up, so the house looks a lot different from the front now.

Sunday, even though we probably shouldn't have, we went over to his house for a cookout, where I got stung by a bunch of wasps on the leg and we had some really good hamburgers.

In other news, I've had someone predict that Eliza will be born by this weekend because of the full moon Saturday night. We shall see.

Home safely...

Janie was sent home without incident this afternoon.

Dr. Hodges wanted to run a couple of tests to determine if the pain Janie was feeling under her ribs was a sign of something worse, and so that necessitated sending her to L&D for the bloodwork and to be put on the monitors.

She's home safely with instructions to add a dose of BP medicine if it spikes in the evenings again, and we have an appointment Wednesday afternoon to check up on things again.

Breaking news...

Janie is at the doctor right now, and because she's experiencing some pain and seeing spots, Dr. Hodges has sent her to labor and delivery for labwork and possible hospitalization.

My sister Lee is with her at the moment, and if Janie is hospitalized, I will be on my way there. If they don't find anything on her labs, she will be released to come home.

I will be taking the laptop with me in the event she's hospitalized, so we will keep everyone posted.

Sofa bed and rainbow sheets.

Right now I'm camped out in the living room on the sofa bed. We set it up with some 80s retro rainbow sheets so I can rest comfortably w/DirecTV. Right now the absolutely underrated Dead Again (starring and directed by Kenneth Branaugh)is on HBO. I'm recording it so Brian can watch it with me later. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you do so!

Last night I slept fairly well, but I took my bp in the middle of the night and it was in the 190/100s range again. I took my medicine at 7AM and it seems to be sticking in the 130/80s range for now. Unfortunately, this bp medicine makes me feel slightly drugged and a little "off". I'm hoping that wears off after a couple of days.

I'm not feeling stir crazy yet. Hopefully my trip to the doc. tomorrow will keep me from feeling too trapped. The baby is, as always, extremely active and kicking constantly. She reminds me why I'm here and why I have to keep my wits about me and make solid decisions when things get scary.

A late night visit...

So, if you haven't heard yet, we spent last night at the hospital.

Janie and I were doing some work on the house when she got a headache. She checked her blood pressure and it was 180 over 109, which as you might imagine is bad. It wasn't going down very quickly, so we loaded up and headed for the hospital.

After about three hours of monitoring in the birthing room, they moved us to a postpartum room for what was initially going to be a 24-hour stay to check for signs of preeclampsia. I got about three fitful hours of sleep, while Janie got even less as they kept waking her to poke and prod.

Dr. Hodges looked at Janie's chart this morning and decided she could come home, but she's on strict bed rest, a blood pressure medication and we're apparently just trying to make it another two weeks before delivering Eliza.

So 14 days from now, we will probably be holding this blog's namesake. EXCITING, people.

Doctor update: Week 35

I had a bad migraine yesterday, but it cleared up enough that I was able to accompany Janie to the doctor yesterday afternoon for our weekly checkup.

Eliza measured about four ounces heavier, which is apparently what normal growth is, meaning she's not on pace to be as huge as we initially feared. Her torso is measuring full-term already, but the rest of her is within about a week of her actual age.

Janie has a cardiologist appointment tomorrow morning to get another 24-hour Holter monitor because she's having a lot of heart skips and palpitations. Tressie doesn't think anything's wrong (in fact, she couldn't even hear Janie's heart murmur yesterday) but she wants to be sure.

In other news, the house is almost completely together, save putting up curtains and blinds in a couple of rooms and getting the changing table for the nursery. As soon as the den is finished, I'm taking pictures because I want to show off the really nice rug we got at Lowe's the other night. It changed the entire room. Eliza got a new rug too, which ties the room together nicely and is incredibly cute.

The rest of the nest, part 2

Here's our living room, dining room and bedroom (with freshly painted walls) now that they contain furniture!

Living room before:

And after:


Dining room before:

And after:

The rest of the nest, part 1

Back in April, we very oddly and unexpectedly found ourselves in the market for a new place to live. Our two bedroom duplex in Murray just wasn't going to accomodate our computers, toys, guitars, AND a baby. We started cleaning out the office in an attempt to make a bedroom for the baby. Alas, it was not to be. We ended up with an office full of crap we'd pulled out of the closet. Luckily, around the time we started half-heartedly looking for a place to live, Brian's stepmother mentioned that the mother of a friend was looking to sell her house in Mayfield. It was the perfect location (near Brian's job), the perfect price, and the baby could easily have her own room. Because of the time constraints, we ended up having to move fairly quickly. We had about a week to get this place entirely together and in move-in shape.


The biggest undertaking was the kitchen/breakfast nook area.



We knew the breakfast nook had tongue and groove walls underneath the hideous grandma wallpaper. The original plan was to paint over the existing wallpaper and put up a chair rail to cover any seams. Well, that plan began to fail almost immediately. As soon as work began in the breakfast nook, it became clear that wallpaper would need to come down. We knew there were layers of wallpaper, but we were unaware that there were 7 or 8 layers of wallpaper. You could see the decades tick by as we stripped each layer. Once we stripped the walls, they looked a little something like this:


Once we saw the walls, the age of our house became apparent. We found St. Louis newspapers from the 19020s stuffed in what appeared to be an old stove chimney in the ceiling. It also became clear that we'd need to drywall. Brian's grandparents took on that task, and within a couple of weeks, we had an adorable little breakfast nook. Today it looks like this:




We also did a bit of work to the kitchen. We did have to paint over the wallpaper there, but it went much more smoothly. We also painted the cabinet, replaced the cabinet hardware, and installed a new washer and dryer and dishwasher. Here's our kitchen today:





View from the breakfast nook into the kitchen and Brian looking both insanely happy and slightly demented:

Nursery Progress

We've made some progress on the nursery this week. I've had some sort of pre-baby anxiety about Eliza coming home to an unfinished bedroom, so any progress is good. The furniture is in position, with exception of the changing table we're still waiting for. I'm very unsure about having to mix cherry furniture with white furniture. Still, I think it's coming along nicely. My sister Susan bought us the cherry crib and we couldn't possibly love it more.

Here's the before picture of the baby's room:


Sponge painted walls and a leopard area rug! Yum!

And here's Miss Eliza's room in progress as of tonight:


The crib is my favorite part of the room. You can see my Raggedy Ann's head sticking out from under the Boppy:


I'm entirely in love with that chair. We're going to have to find an area rug for this room because the rockers tend to slide backward on the wood floors. Also, this dresser is a hand-me-down from Brian's Grandmother. As much as I didn't want to mix white furniture with the cherry, I think this dresser is really cute!:


We painted the back of her door with chalkboard paint. If she finds herself tempted to break out the Crayola and draw on the walls, we can point her in a more productive direction: