Bobby's Sunday Summary

Not a lot to report. Two weeks until the baby.  It is both good and bad.  It is god because the "end" is in sight.  It is bad because there is still a ton of stuff to do before then.  Work is going to be a bit crazy with me gone for so long, but we will see how it all works out.

A blog post by Alice

After school I get to go trunk-or-treating.Do you think that is weird?IT IS ONLY FRIDAY!Do you
under stand?Just so you know I'm writing this my self.

37 Weeks...almost there

[Quick chicken update: the day after I turned off the lights, there were FOUR eggs in the nest. Maybe the lights were bothering them? Then the next day, only one egg. Grrrr. Gotta figure something out here.]

Short version: all on track :), GBS-positive :(, and induction date scheduled :S

Long version:
I had my 37 week prenatal appointment today. Alice was born by now. Robert and James wouldn't be coming for another 3.5 weeks. It's the final countdown. The news since last week is I'm GBS-positive...again. Bummed, but not terrifically surprised. I'm feeling kinda "blah" about it, actually, because I freaked out last time and found a calm resolution. Looking back at my 38-week prenatal appointment with James, though, it's funny to see I was toying with the idea of an induction then, too. I had completely forgotten about that. And I was whining a lot at this point last time about being uncomfortable :) Sounds sooooooo familiar. Maybe I've had the exact same pregnancy experience four times in a row and I just THINK each one is new and different.

Anyway, I went ahead and scheduled an induction for the babe's due date. The convenience of a planned birth and the details of my specific birth history (i.e. my water always breaking first, precipitous/rapid labor following immediately) won over any reservations I had about unnecessary medical intervention. I'm a hippie, but not hard core :) A past version of me would chalk this decision up to weakness, and maybe a future version of me will declare the same verdict, but the me right now finds it an attractive, low-risk option worth taking seriously. We'll have to wait and see. It's only an illusion of control: Peek-A-Boo could always come early, or conditions might not be right for an induction when his due date finally comes. And I reserve the right to change my mind about this at any time :)

My uterus is measuring a bit large again (39cm when 37cm is expected), but not alarmingly so. The midwife tells me to expect a baby about as big as the last couple I've had. Okay. I asked about baby jaundice and the length of my hospital stay and which post-partum procedures I can reasonably decline without putting me or the baby in danger. I'm all for routine checkups on my healing and recording the baby's eating/excretion patterns. That's totally cool. I'd just like a little leeway on when those checks happen. Do they have to wake me up for it? Could I possibly give them a call when I'm awake and already nursing for them to come in and do all that stuff? But will I want to call them? Probably not. I talk a big game about wanting to take control of my hospital experience, but in the end I will probably just grin and bear it for the required minimum amount of time and check out as soon as possible. Again, we'll have to see how this plays out.

Still no eggs

The 24-hour lighting has had no effect on the hens' laying. I think I started the lighting too late. Some of the stuff I read indicated you should supplement light before the biological shut down happens. Oh well.

Looks like we have a few outdoor pets to take care of all winter.

Dang.

There is one alternative...my friend Alison offered to take my "pet" hens to the livestock auction and give me a few of her pullets (young females, just starting to lay) to try instead. Her hens have had supplemental lighting all fall and not stopped laying. In fact, the pullets are just starting to lay right now.

I am sorely tempted.

Ghosting

Alice was "ghosted" yesterday...the unholy union of doorbell ditching and chain lettering. She insisted we follow the instructions to the letter or it wouldn't count. She got Robert REALLY psyched about it, too, so I agreed to try it this year. We rustled up some Halloween stickers, printed off the instructions, and selected a couple victims good friend neighbors.

Tonight was our delivery night. Alice and Robert dressed in all black or navy blue. I didn't know they had that much black and blue in their closet. We drove to the first house after dark. Alice was a little confused about which door was her friend's door, so I had to get super close to show her. We were 20 feet from the door when she FINALLY saw which door I meant. She and Robert immediately ran up, dropped the gift, and knocked. What?! I WAS RIGHT THERE! I almost swore at the girl as she bolted past me toward the appointed safe spot. I booked it too, 37 weeks prego and everything. Not comfortable. Not fun. I don't think we were detected, but I don't really care.

I hadn't intended on everything happening so fast, so James was still buckled in his car seat. He got screaming mad when the kids hopped in and buckled up...he had wanted to SEE!

The next house was much, much closer to home. I parked the car in the garage, turned off all the lights, and walked with James to a nice vantage point. Alice and Robert scoped out the front door and saw people in the front room...too risky for Alice. She threw the "rules" out the window and decided to leave the surprise at the front door WITHOUT knocking. She and Robert still ran away as if they were being chased. That startled James a bit and he started running away in terror, too. What would this kid be like without Alice and Robert as older siblings? I have no idea. His life seems to revolve around them :)

Alice just kept saying, "I can't believe I just ghosted someone! I ghosted!"

Bobby's Sunday Summary

I decided to put up some pictures of things we did recently.  Sorry, several of them are rather fuzzy. The first group is a recent trip to a park.  There is the really great climbing net.  Robert went all the way to the top of it.

A different angle of the same thing.


James always wants to do what is older siblings can do.  This includes jumping on and off a moving merry-go-round. or climbing up high.  Again sorry abut how fuzzy it is.



Earlier this fall we went to a local orchard that has a bit of a wizard of oz theme to it.





The weather was actually surprisingly warm.

36 weeks (and chicken update)

No more eggs. Not one for four days, despite 24-hour lighting. The hens are staying up later than me every night partying...eating, scratching, flapping, roosting, perching, chatting. And yet, no eggs. I need to do a little more research and see how long it takes to reverse a daylight-induced dry spell.

As for the baby, all is still progressing normally. He's growing well and moving like a ball of snakes. I get Braxton-Hicks contractions and real contractions every day. Now that we're looking at just 4-5 weeks left, it truly feels imminent, and I'm happier for that.

I met with the midwife named Carissa today. She told me that Advanced Maternal Age comes with yet another recommendation/possibility: induction at 39 or 40 weeks. There's a slight increase in the risk of stillbirth with any woman going past 41 weeks, but being 35+ adds another slight increase to that possibility. At 39-40 weeks, if the baby's head is firmly planted in my pelvis and I'm dilated to at least a 2, we could make an appointment for them to break my water.

My first reaction to this news was two-fold: "Ack! Too much medical intervention!" and "Sweet! I can pick the day this pregnancy ends!"

Each of the other three births started with my water breaking before any notable contractions, so I guess breaking my water isn't that far from my "norm."

Then again, maybe breaking my water won't start any contractions. How scary it seems to prod my body and the baby into something so dangerous as childbirth when either one of them might not be fully "ready."

Maybe it won't be a big deal. No problem at all. How great would it be to walk into the hospital, showered and dressed, after a regular night's sleep, having had plenty of time to arrange childcare and carpools for the older kids, and delivering a healthy baby when it's convenient for me?! Soooooo tempting.

So, at this moment, I'm kinda leaning towards induction at 40 weeks, and it's not because I'm the slightest bit concerned about stillbirth. I've got to think about it more. It feels like a bit of a selfish decision, actually, but considering how many lives and schedules will have to be shuffled on-the-fly to manage a spontaneous birth in the middle of the night...maybe induction is the less selfish option overall?

Hen Update

Gathered 1 egg today, but the hen that laid it set it out in the open pen, not in the coop. Odd. Alice almost stepped on it.

And at least one chicken is still up and moving around tonight at 9:40 when I'm heading to bed. This might just work after all. Wait and see.

Light up the Night

I can tell winter is coming just by my hens' laying this week:

Thu: 4 eggs
Fri: 2 eggs
Sat: 0 eggs
Sun: 0 eggs

Or lack thereof. All of a sudden, the length of day is just a few minutes shy of what their bodies need to indicate a good laying season. It's an excellent natural safeguard against raising chicks in the midst of winter. I can't blame them. But I'm a very selfish farmer and I hate taking care of chickens that aren't producing food for me.

Fortunately for this selfish farmer, it's easy to "trick" the hens' metabolisms  to lay through the winter. All you need is a 60-watt light bulb. Or, in my case, a 13-watt CFL that produces as much light as a 100-watt light bulb. I installed it this afternoon at the top of their pen. The extension cord from my patio to the back corner of our yard is a little awkward, but it's good enough for now. I want to see if I can get them to start laying again before I work on aesthetics and lawn mowing issues :)

Bobby's Sunday Summary

So far so good.  Today has not been that bad.  Most things have worked out OK, the day is not done yet, but so far no kidney stones :) or anything else that problematic, but the day is still young.  Not too much else to report.  The kids want me to tell you about how we went out for frozen yogurt on Saturday.  They filled up their jar with independence points.  These are things we award them when they do something independent, because they really need help being more independent some times.  They filled up the jar so we went out for frozen yogurt.  They really love it because they get to pick toppings, so they end up with a bit of a sugar coma when it is all done.  But it is also a great time to just sit and talk with them while they are in a good mood.

Buddy's Prayer

As we were getting the kids ready for school and preschool this morning, I reminded Buddy that he would get to take a field trip to the pumpkin patch next week with his class. He thought it was today, though, and started acting a little funny. He wanted to pick out extra-special socks. He prayed in family prayer, "Please bless me that I won't be scared with too many people at the pumpkin patch."

Too many people? I hear ya', Buddy. I'm impressed that he's in tune with his feelings enough to know that big groups make him uncomfortable. I'm relieved that he would think to pray for help. Most days, this kid is as loud and active as they come...at home. He teases his siblings and holds his own in a fight with them. I rarely see him with people he doesn't know so intimately. It's easy to forget that he can feel vulnerable.

He doesn't often pray for himself. In fact, he's more likely to pray for Peek-A-Boo than anyone else these days. So far, he's prayed for Peek-A-Boo to be healthy and strong and to grow up nice and to be a good dad.

I still wonder what the heck I'm going to write on his Kindergarten registration forms next summer...he's a bit more complicated than Alice was at this age.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This was a very odd week, although things are finally back to "normal" or at least something close to it.  Last Sunday, like I said in my previous post, I got a kidney stone.  It is the worst pain I have ever felt, tied with appendicitis.  I have it from an authority on the matter, someone who has experienced both, that natural child birth is much worse than a kidney stone without drugs.  As such I can sympathize with Susan better now, but still lack a complete empathy for her.  On a very very strange twist, Monday my parents called and we chatted about how I was feeling.  I asked if we had a family history of kidney stones and apparently we don't, but the very next day my father develops one too, and is still in the process of passing it, poor guy.

This week was James birthday too.  He is growing up a lot, James feels like a real person now.  He doesn't have a lot of words, but he is getting more and more every day.  He can express his desires very clearly, and has a real personality that is all his own.

I think one of the best parts about this week is that it is General Conference for our church.  This means that I didn't have to wake up at 5:30 to get to my early morning meeting.  So I could sleep in until 6 when James usually starts yelling for Susan to come get him.  After a while he will give up on her and start yelling for Alice-Buddy to come get him.  I'm not sure why he doesn't yell for me, but he doesn't.  It was good though, I got to make breakfast for the kids while Susan slept in, and I don't have a giant list of things I need to do today.  There are a few, but I got enough Bishop stuff done yesterday that I feel OK relaxing a bit today.  I still have plenty to do, but it feels like I can handle it.  Not that I have everything figured out because I don't my any means, just that it doesn't feel like my life is careening out of control and all I can do is hold on.

Work was not helping there either.  What I work on is an open source project that lets people process enormous amounts of data very very quickly.  It is taking off a lot a Yahoo, and we are having a very hard time keeping up with all of the demand.  Some of it is new feature work that has to be done so that some groups can adopt it.  Some of it is bug fixes and hardening of it to make it more reliable for groups already using it.  But things are starting to calm down there a bit too.  It is a bit odd for me with this project as it is a real success.  My career has been rather odd.  I started out at Motorola working on a new phone platform, that was a lot like Android, but there were many issues, and the project was canceled, then resurrected again, and canceled again after shipping one phone.  So during about 5 years at Motorola one phone shipped with a significant amount of code on it that I wrote, and several phones with a very hidden feature that probably no body has ever really used that I helped out with. At Yahoo! it was not all that different at the beginning.  I started off doing helping on the search engine, which eventually got sold off to Microsoft sort of.  Then I was working on a machine learning project that even the people who asked us to build it didn't want to use, so it too was canceled.  After that I was put on a successful project, first one ever for me, Hadoop, but it was already successful before I joined.  This new project is the first time that I have really had a successful project from the start.  But now I feel extra responsibility in making sure it grows and meets the needs of people who want to adopt it.  Sorry about the long explanation.

James is 2!

Happy Birthday, James!

He still has no concept of birthdays, but it's been fun to celebrate all day around him. He allowed Bobby and the kids to sing "Happy Birthday" to him this morning...I wasn't allowed to join in. And then he graciously accepted two generous gifts from neighbors (a wooden rocking horse) and home teachers (a no-sew fleece blanket).

We played with friends, we went to the doctor (for Peek-A-Boo), and this afternoon we toured my friend's egg farm with a bunch more friends. It was cold, windy, and miserably rainy. James loved it ALL. He followed chickens, explored the nests, pet baby chicks, stomped in puddles, squelched through the mud, and ran through the rain. At one point, a group of us was huddled in a barn to stay out of the wind and rain. James saw a chicken door to the outside run and just ran out himself. He wanted to see the water and mud a little more.

A friend took this photo of the four of us. You can see one of my friend's 800 chickens just behind us :)
 

We haven't celebrated with cake and candles yet. Today was a bit crazy. But we did enjoy one of James' favorite dinners: cheese tortellini, grapes, and hot apple cider. Singing and candles are soon to come.

Starting to wallow in self-pity

I haven't been sleeping well. Therefore, I'm not feeling so happy and I'm starting to wallow in self-pity :( I'm tired. I wake up several times a night due to a variety of physical ailments all connected to and important for the growth of this particular baby. Oddly enough, I don't blame the baby. I find him a delightful companion. It's this big ol' body that I've got to deal with that's making me grumpy. And I don't remember loathing my body so much in earlier pregnancies. That can't be helping, right?

I'm looking at 6-7 more weeks of this pregnancy. In a sleep-deprived state, that sounds like a torturous eternity. I remember way back to March when we first learned that I was pregnant. I/We were only 6-7 weeks along. I looked ahead to this moment in disbelief. It seemed forever away. How could 28 weeks (6 months) just come and go like that?

It did.

And it will again.

One day at a time.

One interrupted night at a time.

This wallowing won't last much longer. I'm determined to pull myself out of it. I'll be going to bed early again and working on a couple "outside-of-me" projects...things that make me think of anything but my aching body :) As crappy as today feels, I still know that things can and will change. They always have. Even if it just shifts from one kind of crappy to another kind of crappy for a while, it's not hopeless...I usually find a new groove somewhere along the way.