OK, so it's not perfect, but I thought I did a pretty good job making this cake from scratch. David said he wanted a Black Forest cake for his birthday, so I had to rush out and buy the ingredients. I was a very bad wife and forgot that his birthday was coming up so soon. He forgave me enough to eat some of my cake, though, so I guess I'm not in too much trouble.
On another note, I got to talk to my parents really for the first time since Emmaline was born. I got to talk to my mom on the phone the weekend after Emmaline was born, but the phone cut out after only a minute or two of talking. It was so nice to hear their voices and talk to them! Mom even sang a lullaby to Emmaline who was stirring in her sleep, starting to wake up. She went right back to sleep just as soon as she heard my mom's voice. I just broke down crying; it made me so happy yet so terribly sad to hear my mom speaking to Emmaline. It just broke my heart that my parents aren't here to hold her and cuddle her as I know they are anxious to do. I miss them so much, and I miss them on behalf of Emmaline. I struggled the rest of the day with a mild case of depression, yet I was elated to have been able to speak with them!
We have finally moved into our house. We moved in with the help of Luke and Erin Thanksgiving weekend; Amber and Ava helped too! While I have been busy with Emmaline, David has been busy fixing this and installing that. So far he has fixed the shower, toilet, and sink in the hallway bathroom, knocked down a brick column, installed our stove, added breakers, installed water lines for the washer, added wiring and installed an outlet for the dryer, built a cabinet for our oven, added new wiring and installed the oven, and installed a new water heater all on his own! I am so proud! Now the only thing I would really like is a furnace to heat the place!!! David thinks I am just a big wuss, but the house gets so cold. All we have are baseboard heaters, and he doesn't want to use any of them besides the one in our bedroom. I have been walking around in my thickest, warmest jacket, and have had to invest in some nice thick sweaters. Poor Emmaline has been mostly confined to our bedroom due to the cold. We have had some warmer days, though, so she has actually spent some time in the living room with us while she was awake. Woo hoo!!
So the past four weeks I have kind of lost my mind. I have been trying to get used to my new schedule and adjusting to the fact that my time is no longer all my own. Now that I have finally accepted that last fact, I am beginning to settle down. Things with Emmaline are going a lot better. I dreaded nursing during the first week or so, but now it's not so bad. Emmaline was a really sleepy eater, and it took her half an hour to forty-five minutes just to feed fully on one breast. Now she is actually timing in at ten to fifteen minutes. Thank goodness!
Emmaline is really starting to fill out now. I look at the pictures of her right after she was born and am amazed. Her preemie diapers were HUGE on her; now she has graduated out of those and the newborn diapers into a mixture of the disposable diapers Erin gave me and her cloth diapers. So far we have only tried two of the different cloth diapers I have purchased. We will see which one works best for her.
Emmaline's eyes are still a bluish gray, and she has broken out with acne which is now starting to clear up. She has smiled at me a couple of times; I'm pretty sure she wasn't gassy at the time. She has the cutest little half laugh/half sigh that she does when she is about to sneeze but doesn't. It almost sounds like a cooing laugh. Adorable!!
Emmaline is now almost five weeks old, and David and I were a bit taken aback at how quickly time has gone by. We are both thankful that there have been no signs of a GBS infection, as the critical weeks were the first four. We continue to pray that God will continue to watch over her health.
So, I'm a little late in posting a blog, but today is the first chance I have had to get to it. As many of you know already, Emmaline Grace Charlotta Farina was born Wednesday, November 7, 2007, around 9:43, give or take a minute. She weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. Labor lasted 42 hours, and by the end I was absolutely exhausted. David had been fighting off a gum infection around one of his wisdom teeth the weekend before. Unfortunately, he was not very good about trying not to wake me when he got up at night. Therefore, neither one of us got much sleep all weekend long.
Monday afternoon, right when the closing of our house was scheduled, I went into labor. However, I didn't realize it. I just thought I was having really bad gas pains. When I noticed that there was a pattern to when the pain came and went, it occurred to me that I might possibly be in labor. After the closing was done, around 5 o'clock, we drove to the house intending to clean it some. I never got to cleaning, though, since I was feelig a bit miserable and tired; David never got to cleaning, either, as he had struck up a conversation with one of our new neighbors.
I called Erin since my contractions were pretty regular and told her what was going on. She decided to go ahead and come over, not wanting to risk missing my delivery. It was really encouraging and reassuring to have her there. As much as I needed the strength and presence of David, it was just as important to have another woman with me, especially one who is my sister and has already gone through this. Anyhow, my contractions became stronger and closer together, and they kept me up all night. I spoke with my midwife and she encouraged me to get some sleep. Since my contractions were only in the lower part of my uterus, she wanted me to wait and see if this was truly the real thing. After going for a long walk around 3 o'clock in the morning, I was able to go to sleep; I didn't have anymore contractions after that.
I got up Tuesday morning and took a shower. After that my contractions came very randomly, so I just ignored them. Erin helped us move some things over to the house, we treated her to luch, then Erin headed home. Around 10:30 that night, I woke up having strong contractions. They started off about half an hour apart, but by 3 o'clock the following morning they were a minute or less apart and very painful. Amy my midwife told me to go ahead and come into the birthing center. I called Erin and told her what was going on, and she headed out the door for the second day in a row. David and I arrived at the birthing center around 4 o'clock that morning, and Erin made it there by 5:30 or 6.
Erin helped me walk around and deal with the contractions while David got some rest. Then David joined the party again in time for Emmaline to break my water around 8:45 or 9. After some really hard pushing, Emmaline joined the party around 9:43. Yay! It's over!
I gave birth to Emmaline in a birthing center called Blessed Births. It was a wonderful experience, and I could not have done it without the help of Amy. She was such an encouragement and help to me, especially in the hardest moments of my labor. David and I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere of the birthing center, as it was very calm, peaceful, and felt just like we were in our own home. We and our wonderful new daughter were left to rest and relax and just enjoy some time as a new family. We loved it, and I cannot imagine giving birth anywhere else now.
I will be 39 weeks pregnant this coming Sunday!! I weigh 144.5 pounds and my waist measures 40 inches around. How encouraging to think I started at 110 pounds with a 26 inch waist. The glories of pregnancy!!
I went for a follow up appointment this past Wednesday to get the results of the lab work they did at my last appointment. I have tested positive for Beta Strep, also known as Group B Strep (GBS). The doctor at my birthing center gave me some of the statistics regarding this bacteria, which made it seem to me that it really wasn't a huge deal. However, I have spent some time this morning looking up some information about the bacteria, and I have to admit that I am frightened by the things I have found. The doctor just kind of breezed over the consequences of a baby getting this bacteria; all she said was pretty much, "Well, the baby could get sick and may need hospitalization." That's it! She also said there is no threat to me as a carrier.
On the websites I have read Group B Strep can cause serious infection in those who carry the bacteria, who are also said to be "colonized", although this happens rarely. If a baby gets Group B Strep disease, it can cause meningitis, sepsis, and pneumonia, and, if the baby survives, he may have permanent mental and/or physical damage caused by the just listed problems. Slightly scary!!! Although the chances of Emmaline getting a GBS infection during delivery are small, the consequences can be HUGE! The CDC recommends but then doesn't recommend using antibiotics during labor. The thing is that so many bacteria are becoming antibiotic-resistant, and introducing antibiotics to a baby so early can create problems down the road. However, giving a laboring woman antibiotics can prevent most infections of babies, but not all. Also, the chances of the baby dying from an infection are not lessened by having been given antibiotics.
My midwife has me working on something right now that will hopefully eradicate the bacteria. I have managed to find online some suggestions for herbal remgimines that can be followed up until labor, and they supposedly also help get rid of the bacteria. The good thing about the herbal regimines, though, is that they prevent the bacteria from coming back until after the baby is born since you stay on them all the way up to going into labor. I plan on asking my midwife about those. The tricky thing about GBS is that it comes and goes. Some women can test positive for it and a day later, without having done anything to get rid of it, have a negative test result. That's why some women test negative for GBS. They still have it, they just don't know it.
David and I will be praying, and we ask anybody reading this to say a prayer for our little Emmaline; that God would protect her from this infection.
We had a lot of fun this weekend. Mom and Dad came up on Saturday; we took them to see the house we are trying to buy (Dad was a little dismayed at the amount of work we will be taking on) and we went to Anderson's second annual Greek Festival. There wasn't much to look at or do, but we did make sure to fill our bellies with gyros and plenty of baklava. The admission was free, so I would say it was worth it to go if only just for the food!! David bought a cookie called Finikia from the little bakery there; it was delicious. I am going to try to make some for our Christmas celebration coming up this weekend. I did think it was neat that there were some young folk in there teens and twenties there performing traditional Greek dances. It's always nice to see that there are other youngsters out there interested in their heritage and the traditions of that heritage.
Sunday night we went to the Anderson County Fair. That was really interesting, especially since this is the first time I remember going to a fair. They had contests there for photography, painting, quilting, cooking, sewing, crocheting/knitting, and gardening. Oh yeah, and contests in livestock, poultry and rabbits. We saw that someone had submitted squash pickles into the canning contest. Doesn't that sound yummy?!! I guess they can't be much different than regular pickles. Anyhow...David went on a ride called the "Fireball", which seats about twenty people. You get spun around in a circle (quite quickly might I add) while the long arm to which the seats are attached swings you up in the air. I got sick just watching it, so I turned my back and prayed David was ok. I don't know how people can ride those things!!
We wasted money on a haunted house ride, a caramel apple, funnel cake and large soda, but we both had a lot of fun! Although, I am extremely disappointed that David failed to play any games and win a prize for me...J.K.! As we were getting ready to go to bed, David expressed that fairs just weren't the same anymore now that he's grown up. I asked, "Why? Because you can't run around like a hoodlum spending a lot of someone else's money?" He said, smiling, "Yeah, pretty much!" Ahhh...how the responsibility of being an adult ruins everything! Wink, wink.
I took some pictures of the birds that were at the fair. I have never seen chickens or any other bird for that matter with feathers covering their feet. I hope you guys can make out some of the photos. I'm still learning how to properly use the new camera dad got for us.
Here are some photos from our camping trip last weekend. We all had a lot of fun, and it was really nice to be able to spend some "quiet" time with family. We went camping at the Stone Mountain Park campground and went to their little fall festival on Saturday. The girls had a good time making popcorn balls, silly putty, and painting pumpkins. Somehow, I managed to not get any pictures of the fun they had. Oh well... Erin has some posted on her blog.
All right, so here is the lovely couple!!! Judging by the pictures below you would never know that Henry can't stand her!! Personally, I think it is just a front.
All right, so I am now thirty-two or thirty-three weeks pregnant, depending on by which due date you are counting. David and I have been busy the past two weeks with our Childbirth Education Classes. They were interesting, but very, very, very long. David got a lot out of the classes that calmed his apprehensions about labor and delivery, so that was good.
I set up Emmaline's bassinet the mom and dad were generous enough to buy for us. (Thanks again, mom and dad!) It is beautiful, and I cannot wait to put Emmaline in it. I am becoming more and more impatient as time goes by. I was fine up until six months, but now I am just so ready for this to be over!!! Now it just seems like time is eeking by; like it wants me to savor every "precious" moment. However, I am of the impression that I am quite miserable, and Time should stop messing around and get a move on :0)
The past two weeks have been especially hard, I think mainly due to having some extra stress. The fact that I haven't been sleeping through the night doesn't help, either. I just feel exhausted, and it's hard for me to get motivated to get my daily chores done. Then this makes the day go by so much more slowly, and then the week slows down, then the month; I feel like I have been 32/33 weeks pregnant for a month! I look forward to my labor and delivery, no matter how painful, as long as this baby comes out and I can start sleeping on my back again! I guess it all makes sense; it's hard to look forward to hours of pain and discomfort when you are early on in your pregnancy. So far you are generally pretty comfortable, the baby doesn't feel like he is going to burst out of your womb at any moment. Your back doesn't hurt as much, you are able to bend over pretty easily, etc, etc, etc... Unless a woman has gone through a couple months of sleeplessness, being stretched out like a balloon, swelling, and exhaustion, not to mention being poked and prodded by whatever protruding part of her baby, she would be insane to look forward to all the hard work it takes to deliver a baby!
All right, here's the new photo with my new haircut. Doesn't look as good as when I first stepped out of the salon, but hey, what can you do?
Twenty-seven weeks have brought a larger belly, achy knees and feet, and the inability to sit up very quickly due to stretched out abs. Emmaline seems to be calming down a little bit. Her movements aren't as forceful, no more kung fu kicking and punching that I have been experiencing since week seventeen. I am not sure if that is due to her accomodations growing smaller or if she has just decided to be a little nicer to me. I think maybe part of it is that she has discovered how to move her entire body by moving her appendages. There are times when I am watching for movement when I will see something round poke out of my belly.
Henry and Sophie are loving the new apartment, mostly due to the carpeting throughout. They have started playing with each other, racing around and playing tug of war. Usually Sophie wins. I think Henry is being a gentleman most of the time, but the rest of the time he is usually just being a wuss. Having Sophie has really opened my eyes to how much Henry has calmed down since he was a puppy. Now he is more interested in sitting on my lap and sleeping than he is in rough housing. Whereas Sophie cannot get enough of playtime. Sophie is making a lot of breakthroughs. She has actually started playing with me, she will invite herself to sit beside me on the couch, she walks across streets now without the slightest hesitation, but we are still working on obedience issues. We have learned recently that Sophie has a grade two luxating patella, which means her knee cap pops out of place. Thankfully, it is just a grade two, grade four being the worst, so her knee cap only pops out occassionally. Unfortunately, when she gets older she is guaranteed to have arthritis in that knee. I still look forward to all the years we get to spend together in the meantime. She and Henry are such an added joy to our lives.
Doom and trouble are looming on the horizon!! Another "Johnson" girl is being born into this world!! Everyone don't panic, just find a place to hide for the next twenty years. Hopefully by then she'll have become a rational, independent person and we won't have to worry about her anymore! YEAH RIGHT!!!
I know technically my little daughter is a "Farina", but since the Johnson blood and traits, as we all know, are more dominant, she is going to be a "Johnson" girl at heart. And that means nothing but trouble! Poor David won't know what hit him.
The ultrasound experience was amazing. It was so neat to see my little baby moving around inside my womb, and for once in my life I could actually tell what exactly I was looking at. I have seen so many ultrasound printouts of my nieces and nephew, and of other babies, and all I have ever seen are black and white blobs. Even looking now at some of my ultrasound printouts, I have no clue what part of the baby is being viewed. Thank goodness for the 3-D printouts!!
David and I still haven't been able to decide on a name. I am still stuck on Addelaide, or as Erin suggested, Addeline, though I haven't been able to come up with a middle name to go along. (Any suggestions are welcome!) David likes Abigail (which I think is a very cute name, but I just don't get that "That's it!!" feeling, plus Amber, Ava, and Andrew already have a cousin named Abigail) plus he likes all those boring names that every other kid in America has. I just can't bring myself to do it. Growing up, I loved the fact that my name was pretty uncommon. Although it did annoy me that people could never pronounce my name correctly, I never wished my parents had given me a different name. Maybe my child will feel differently, but when she is eighteen she can change her name to whatever she wants!! For now, I would rather have a good reason for picking a not-so-often-heard-of name over just picking a plain Jane name because my child will be picked on, or no one will be able to pronounce it. I say, if people couldn't get Eva right, and that really is quite a simple name, even if it is unique, then anything slightly different is going to be hard, so I may as well go all the way!!
On another note, I was very excited on Monday that I got to see my brand new nephew Andrew. I was disappointed that I wasn't there for the birth, but I was still elated that I got to see him and Erin a couple of hours after the delivery. It was so neat to hold Andrew, who is incredibly tiny considering the amount of room he was taking up in Erin's womb. Thank goodness he came early! Andrew inaugurated me as his Auntie by peeing on me within five minutes of picking him up; he also had his first poop while I was holding him. Ahhhh...the things I get to look forward to!! Anyhow, welcome to the world little Andrew!!!
Well, it's official...sort of...We have sold our house!!! Yea!!! We have a few final things to do before the closing, but we should be out of here on the 29th of June. I am so excited. I can't wait to see my family again!!! Plus, it's always nice to have a change. Unfortunately this change is a little more complicated than all my other moves, considering I have a pack rat for a husband and I am pregnant. It has been hard for me to adjust to moving my body differently since I now have a belly that hurts when I bend down with my legs closed. It's funny the things we take for granted. Packing has been going more slowly than I would like since my uterus really starts to hurt after a while and my abs are sore from stretching out over a bigger belly. My body is not adjusting very smoothly to pregnancy. I guess no one's really does. David hasn't been too big of a help, either, as he is distracted by the computer he just put together himself. I have to say I am pretty impressed at his computer savvy.
This pregnancy has been somewhat bittersweet for me as I feel like I am experiencing way more than a pregnant woman should, yet not getting to experience all that a woman gets to experience with her first pregnancy. Maybe once we are settled in our new apartment we can start focusing on the baby and his needs. (I only say "his" needs since I refuse to call my baby an "it".) Hopefully in a couple of weeks I will have a post up of our baby's sex!! I am anxious to find out which we are having, so I can start calling the baby by name. Just a few more weeks!
So here is the long awaited photo everyone (actually, mainly Erin) has been begging for! I am into week seventeen by a couple of days, according to my midwife; I am not sure if that is actually true, but who cares?!! It's nice to think I am. I received two complements today from two different men. Both were surprised to find out I was sixteen weeks along and exclaimed at how little I was showing. That was nice after having two women tell me that my baby was going to be huge since I was already barely showing at twelve weeks.
On another note, Henry and Sophie seem to be getting along more and more as the days pass on. I am still having a huge issue with getting Sophie to sleep at night. She is up and down constantly. David isn't much help with enforcing the "sleep in your doggy bed" rule since he sleeps through the night pretty well. Sometimes I just give up and let the dogs sneak into bed with me.
I am also pleased to announce that Archimedes one of our koi is finally doing better. The fish store sold him to us with fin rot, though I didn't know that was what was wrong with him at the time. I thought another fish had taken a chunk out of his tail or that something had happened to him during transport. The bottom half of his tail continued to disappear as time went by until there was only about half of the bottom of his tail left. If the rot reaches the body of the fish it can die, so I was worried, considering he is my favorite fish. I am very happy to report that after just adding some aquariam salt to the tank, part of his tail is actually growing back. I am very excited about that.
We have a new addition to the Farina family!! Sophie has come all the way from Colorado to join our quirky group. Henry was ecstatic upon meeting her; Sophie was a little overwhelmed. Her flight from Denver to Chicago got delayed by an hour and a half, so she missed her connecting flight from Chicago to Tampa Monday evening. Therefor, she had to spend the night in Chicago (poor thing) and take the first flight out the next morning. She arrived safe and sound around 11 o'clock our time, and has been resting and playing since.
Sophie is an in tact female Italian Greyhound and just so happens to be in heat at the moment, making this a particularly awkward time to go flying across the United States in order to meet a new family. She is for the most part a very happy little girl, constantly wagging her tail. She is even more timid than Henry is about some things, yet unafraid of other things that petrify Henry. Sophie is a little bit bigger than Henry and weighs just a little bit more than he. She is at times a little snappy with Henry if he gets too close to her when she doesn't want him to, however, they play wonderfully together. She will even let him pounce on her while they are playing, so it is a little confusing, frustrating and hard for Henry to figure out when he can and cannot get near her. I am sure they will feel more comfortable around each other as the days pass on. We look forward to Henry and Sophie becoming best buddies!
Our midwife Karin Kearns came this past Saturday. We got to fill out mundane paperwork, then she drew my blood, did a urine test checking for protein or some other such nonsense, and most importantly we got to listen to the baby's heartbeat!!! Both David and I were amazed that a small handheld device can pick up a tiny little heartbeat that belongs to a tiny little child whom is only a couple of inches long! I am still amazed when I think about it. It was exhilerating to hear the little beano's frenzied heartbeat as it was the first official confirmation of my pregnancy and because it is a sign of life, a sign of something that is much more grand than I!
On another note, I woke up this morning at 7 o'clock and went out onto our back sunroom to do my devotions when I was greeted with the smell of a fire. The smell wasn't very strong, so I just figured it was someone down the street burning something. At 8:30 I left the house to run some errands and noticed that the air was still tinged with smoke; it looked like a light fog but smelled like smoke. As the morning went on the smoke got worse to the point that at midmorning it seemed like we had a really persistant thick fog. I thought for sure something local had happened, but heard on the radio that the smoke was actually coming from wildfires in Georgia and the panhandle of Florida. Later on there were also reports that the smoke didn't come from those wildfires at all, but from something that had happened in Orlando. Either way, I was blown away by how something that had happened at least 100 miles away could so heavily affect us. I have been sick all day with sinus problems as a result of the smoke. Can you imagine that? Something that was sparked that far from where I live made me sick... It just goes to show that one person can do one thing, and that one thing and one person can affect hundreds, thousands of people! Now, if it just were a positive thing...
Today was supposed to have been my first visit with the midwife I had selected. I am somewhere around twelve weeks pregnant, and still haven't even had a confirmation of my pregnancy (other than the home-pregnancy test I took). I am pretty sure I am pregnant and would be pretty darn depressed to find out that I am not, as my waistline is growing beyond control and my chest has miraculously grown a cup size or two! I had been looking forward to hearing the baby's heartbeat and doing all the stuff that pregnant women do when being visited by or visiting their doctor. However, today I was really disappointed when my midwife never showed for our appointment.
My experience so far during this pregnancy with any medical practitioner has not been a good one. I left three or four messages at the office of an OB/GYN that I had seen before and really liked; never heard back. Then my sister Erin who is also pregnant suggested I look into midwives, which was a wonderful suggestion; the type of care midwives have to offer seems to fit pretty well with my no fuss, au naturale attitude. Plus I was really interested in a more homey atmosphere with the options of a home birth or water birth. So I set about looking for midwives in my area. There were four in the phone book. Can you believe that?!!! Four!!! In all of Tampa there are only four midwives!! I thought for sure there would be more. One of the midwives turned out to be a nurse midwife, which means she won't deliver anywhere else but in a hospital. One turned out not to be a midwife at all but a douhla. One number was no longer in service and the other was a birthing center about 45 minutes from me. It seemed my options were pretty limited.
In talking to the douhla, though, she knew of two other midwives that were not listed at all. I contacted one and set an appointment based on the fact that the midwife offered a birthing center. I thought at the time that I would rather go there than have the baby at home. After going to my fiasco of an appointment, which lasted three hours and all they did was take an hour to fill out paperwork for me when I could have done it in fifteen minutes, take two hours to take my blood pressure, make sure my reflexes were ok, and then they basically sent me on my merry little way, I decided I would go to option B. Option B was today's appointment.
Now I am on Options B and C. I called the birthing center in Dunedin (the one that is 45 minutes away) to see when I could schedule an appointment. The next available day for an orientation, which they require you to go through before you can see a midwife, was May the 24th. Then, if I qualified for their services, I would have to set another appointment to see the midwife. The girl I spoke with made it sound like that would be even later than the beginning of June. After that phone call the midwife I was supposed to see today called back and apologized profusely for her absent-mindedness. Thankfully I had had time to cool off from my irritation and disappointment, plus I was really ready to just get this stuff started, so I rescheduled for tomorrow.
Let's cross our fingers and hope everything goes well!
