7 quick takes

1. It's my last day of my last week before I start working part-time from home. So I should enjoy it right? Good thing its sunny out!

2. We've been dealing with rash issues with Ben, thinking its a mix of cradle cap and baby acne.  He doesn't mind, but I sure feel bad for him.

3. Found a new show that both Keith and I like, called Better Off Ted. Reminds us of Arrested Development.


4. I hurt my back, or maybe its just my hips deciding its time to decrease to normal size again. Whichever it is, it sure is annoying cause I can't do all the crazy holds I have developed for holding Ben so that he is happy.


5. We are working on having Ben nap on his own, and also trying to space feedings out to at least 2 hours apart. The second is going better than the first. Not sure he is ready to nap for more than 30 minutes on his own, and this is after he has fallen asleep with one of us close by.


6. We made it out for many walks this week once the rain was thru early on, and they have been fabulous.


7. We are going out to our first dinner engagement tonight without Ben, hopefully it goes well.

Train success

I am attempting using public transit with Ben these days. Yesterday we rode the train (the rapid if you are a Clevelander) and we had no crying, and actually had a sleeping boy one way.  This is a rare occurrence in the car these days, so it was a nice change.  So we are gonna try it again as we are headed to a friend's house which is right off the train line.  I think he likes it because he gets to be close to me rather than in a separate seat, and it probably has a more even vibration about it too.  Who knows.  Anyway, I am testing it out so I can maybe see if I can really use the public transit for my transportation to and from schwork.  I know I will have a few bags to take in each day, but I do think so far it is possible.  Though I will definitely have to invest in an Ergo carrier, or maybe take the jogger stroller some days.

Pray today goes ok, it was kinda a restless night in the Kurak household last night.

exercise

I think I need to progress from walks to some small runs, though I don't think Ben could go with me till he can be in a Jogger stroller.  That would be fun.  But for now we will see, maybe just walks and some ab workouts.  Does anyone have any recommendations for new mama workouts that can be done efficiently.  Granted since I have an active baby I get a workout from keeping up with him, but still feel like I could do a little more for my health. Who knows, maybe I am just crazy.

my little hopper

Ben likes to stand on his little legs a lot. So we have developed a hop walk. Here's a pic of that.

black bean brownies

Just sub out the eggs and oil in the brownie mix directions for a can of drained and rinsed black beans by pureeing them with a 1/2 cup of water. From there simply follow the box recipe. And what to you get? Rich, chocolately deliciousness. Yum.  And because these treats have fiber and protein in them, you are less likely to eat 5 of them in one sitting.  Maybe an inventive way to curb a sweet tooth?

Hope all is well.  Many birthdays today of people I know, so Happy Birthday to all of you guys with April 21st b-days!  Enjoy the sun.

Eco-sink

So, yeah, we have this tiny, tiny half bath in our house. But we wanted it to have a sink, which when we bought it it did not. The only way to put one in with the lack of space was to get this. An eco-sink which totally jives with me being environmentalist girl. So yeah, just wanted to share that. And the even better thing is that Keith is installing it as we speak. w00t!

labor pains part 3:delivery

Hi all. Finally I am going to finish the birth story of Ben. Up to this point we were on our way to the hospital with my water broken. Ironically Keith told me it broke during the Rocket Summer song Walls, in which the lyrics go "break the walls down, we're gonna bust you out and take you home." Yea for Mr. Bryce Avary for adding to the moment. So we drove down bumpy Chester Ave to UH-Case and arrived at Rainbow Babies, last time we arrived I could walk in, this time there was no chance of walking to MacDonald. I gladly took the wheel chair and apologized in advance to the guy pushing it for making it all wet.

When we got to MacDonald the midwife saw me and immediately got me to a room. She knew I was already pushing. Thus I got to skip the 20 minutes of EFM. I still had the urge to be over the toilet, so I disrobed from the waist down, and continued pushing over the toilet. After a while I wanted to change positions, so I moved to the hospital bed and was on my hands and knees pushing, they then got out the squatting bar and had me try that. Ultimately I ended up between squatting and lying back with my legs up on the squatting bar. To get from one to the other, I would pull myself up cause I had a lot of adrenaline in my system despite only sleeping for 1 hour in the last 24+ hours. Needless to say, the next day my arms and pecs were super sore. The only annoying thing was the intermittent EFM that they did, it just seemed not to jive with the process of the whole pushing a baby out thing.

I think what got me thru the pushing because for me I couldn't tell how much progress I was actually making was that there was a nurse there that said she wanted to see the baby be born and she had to leave at 12:15pm, this made me think the end was in sight, and so it was. After a little more than 2 hours of pushing, Ben was born at 12:12pm. What was cool was that Keith got to catch him on the way out, and there was no intervention except for some EFM. I got to wear my own clothes, and they gave me Ben right way when he was born. Even though this whole time I knew I was carrying a baby, the moment they put him on me I was elated, it was really him my baby boy. Keith was crying at this point too, that kinda made me smile. So Ben was 8lbs 11ozs and 20inches long. A big baby boy. Apparently this shocked the midwives as they though he was gonna be a bit over 6lbs not almost 9lbs. So after this the three of us passed out for like an hour all totally exhausted, but a happy new little family.

a Ben pic

just thought I would add a pic of my baby boy.

labor pains part 2

I am not sure how far I will get with this post as the sleeping baby on me is in turn making me a bit drowsy. But I wanted to attempt to continue the story. Ok totally took a nap with the baby, but now I am up again and baby is still sleeping. So I wanted to continue the story. I finished the puzzle around 7:30pm and then started to watch my discs of Gilmore Girls. I believe that I was somewhere around season 3 or 4 at this point. The contractions were between 3-5 minutes apart. Keith had downloaded a contraction counter app for his ipod touch and was having fun keeping track of them. Around 9pm we called the midwife and she called back telling us that she knew I was in labor, and that I could come in if I wanted to, but they didn't have a tub room ready for a water birth which is what I was wanting. So I said ok, I will wait it out here for a bit longer. So I did. I took a bath at home relaxed a bit, Keith took a nap, and we called the parents saying we hadn't gone to the hospital yet but we were getting ready to go. Thus we said we would go dark for a bit and call when we had news.

Well it wasn't till 1am that we went it, and at that there still wasnt a tub room ready. They hooked me up to the fetal monitoring and checked my progress. I was only 3cm dialated. So we were sent to walk around the hospital for 2 hours. So Keith and I walked, and again, Keith took another nap, so for a while it was just me walking thru the contractions. But then we got snacks and then returned upstairs. No more progress was made, so the midwife sent us home with ambien for me to try to sleep thru the contractions. This was around 5am so we had basically hit the 24 hour mark. I tried to sleep and I believe I did for about an hour, and then woke up totally disoriented thinking my bedroom was a circus tent. I was crying because of the pain and disorientation, and I definitely hit my breaking point then. Keith, once he figured out what was going on, calmed me back down. Since I only took one ambien he thought I should take another one, though it totally did nothing but disorient me. When I went to the bathroom in the morning, I found that my mucus plug had come out, so transition had started. I took a warm bath, and labored in the bath. In the bath I remember that the contractions I had were associated with different animals, all of the circus variety. Weird stuff that ambien is.

After the bath, I got up and had an urge to be over a toilet, so I ate my breakfast of oatmeal on the toilet and unbeknownest to me I had started the pushing phase. At this point we were headed into the hospital, but Keith called them again around 8:30-9am ish and had them talk to me. Again they said to stay home as long as I wanted to but, I knew we needed to go. So we went. Funny thing was that as soon as we got in the car and started driving my water broke. Like a water balloon popping. A strange feeling and sound I must say. And Ben is up so I must go. Part 3 will be later.

labor pains part 1

So as I was telling my husband earlier today, I have a lot of thoughts these days but just haven't been able to get myself to blog about them. I guess partially its because I have been learning to be a mama to my sweet baby boy. But there are definitely times where all I am doing is reading the latest status updates on facebook or checking the weather to see if its changed in the last hour. Yeah, so basically wasting time. So today I am going to attempt to try to start blogging more regularly. Starting with the birth story of my baby boy, Benjamin Anselm. So here goes.

I woke up March 1st around 5:30am with pain, not too intense, but enough not to be able to sleep. My husband was already up doing work, as he usually is either up late or early getting some of his programming done. So made my way to the office where our guest futon bed is located, and said to him. I can't sleep and I keep having these pains. I am not sure if this is labor but they are definitely not going away. At this point they were like 12-15 minutes apart, and not too intense. But enough not to sleep, so I asked Keith if he would go for a walk with me.

And so at 6am we went for a walk in the cold with the snow covered sidewalks. The contractions continued. I called my mom and told her that contractions had started, which I realized was a bad move cause she didn't think it would take as long as it did, so we got a lot of calls that day asking if the baby was born, but it was nice to know she cared. So Keith went into work, and my friend Megan came over with snacks to eat. Oddly I remember my super dairy cravings that I had had suddenly went away. Megan said that this was because it was like a marathon and you wouldn't chug milk during a marathon. So for the morning we hung out me bouncing on the exercise ball that Kati had leant me (for which I am ever so grateful, it got me thru the last weeks of pregnancy and labor cause Ben was at zero station for a while) and putting together a 1000 piece puzzle.

My sister having read my facebook status, called in the late morning asking about labor and such. She had a much different experience, and so we were conflicting as to what was happening and such. She had no early labor since she was 6cm dialated without an contractions. But all in all I was glad she too was excited. So again puzzling, pandora station listening, and bouncing on the ball thru contractions was how I spent most of the day. We called the midwives office in the afternoon, but as I was still in early labor, they just gave me suggestions as to how to get thru back labor, and told me to stay home as long as I could stand it. Keith came home in the afternoon, and was like ok, this is really it, cause I was still having the contractions, but he was caught a little off guard since it was like 5 days early of the due date and this was our first baby. But early babies are normal in my family, and honestly the timing was perfect because I was so ready to be done with work after the escapades that had happened over the past month.