.

I just managed to get me, Abby & Anabel a bath. I had Anabel in her bath seat in the front of the tub, then me holding Abby got in the back. I washed Abby, wrapped her in a towel, gave her her binky and propped her up in her rocking chair. Then i took a quick shower with Anabel. All went well. I was very pleased with myself that i managed to do it with no help, and both girls and myself :) lol

Now we are downstairs. Anabel is watching ‘D go go go’ (which she calls Go Diego Go) She loves that show. Abby is asleep in my arms.

I have some things that need to be done, like laundry, dishes, and the house picked up… but i’m just enjoying some chill’n time.

Sometime in the night or the early morning Abby’s cord fell off, yays! Now she has a cute little button and now i can give her a good bath too :)

Also this morning we had to bring her in to get a test retaken because they think the blood they took of hers spoiled in the heat of the mail and the one of the tests came back wrong, so they wanted to retake to see if they get a different result this time.

But while we were in there they also weight her. She was 6.9lb at birth and 6.5lb 72 hours later, but today she was 7.11lb. So she is growing :) I knew her little belly was getting chubby, heh

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Anabel is eating good tonight. I made her some stuffing and cheddar bacon scalloped potatoes. She seems to really like it all :)

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Bob is asleep on the couch hold little sleeping Abby, it’s really cute!

We got a ton of packing done today, now we are tuckered out! I have no idea what i’m making for dinner >_< i’m going to do some searching online and try to come up with something.

I was going through some of my pictures today and it hit me how much Anabel has changed. 3 months ago she looked so babyish and now she looks so much older, my little toddler! It’s crazy! And now i have another angel and it made me sad how much/fast she is going change. Haaa but it will be so much fun. I enjoy Anabel so much and now it’s doubled!

 

I enjoy holding Abby so much! I’m so in love, i could just sit, hold her, stare at her, and be so happy! :D She’s to cute. I can’t get over how beautiful my oldest is either, she is so gorgeous. God has truly blessed me.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Risch we were able to get a photo shoot with Carrie Evans, a local photographer and one of my past co-workers. She does AWESOME work.

Here is a preview to our shoot:

http://carrieevansphotography.com/bob-and-amys-preview-ottawa-kansas-family-photographer/636

I love the pics of my little angels. I am so blessed!

Day One

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Day Two

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Day Three

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Day Four

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Day Eight

Anabel has been so cuddly and kissie with Abby. Today i have been having her sit by my and i help her hold little Abby, she seems to love it. It’s so cute. So far i haven’t really noticed any jealously, but i still make it a point to try and make her apart of everything and still get tons of attention too. It helps that Abby is such a content baby that she sleeps in her bed quite a bit, giving us time to spend with Anabel.

I love my girls, they make me so happy. God has blessed me so much! I don’t think i could get any better babies :)

July 12th:

I took a nap when Anabel went down for her nap. When i woke up i felt very strange. I was achy, shaky and nauseous, but it didn’t feel like i was sick, it felt odd. Some of the ladies on babyfit.com said they thought i might be in pre-labor. I was hoping so but i was counting on it.

I was really nauseous and i figured it was because i hadn't hardly eaten since breakfast. I finally ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right before we decided on going on a walk. It was really hard to walk, my legs felt like they couldn't take it, but we managed like 8 blocks.

I was having a lot of back pain with all of this so when we got home i decided to do some squats and different things. While i was on my hands and knees i had a very intense contraction with tons of pressure (something i wasn't having with the other contractions) I told Bob maybe this was the real thing since they are getting more intense.
He then decided to call his parents and sister so they could be on stand by.... not something i really wanted him to do. I wanted him to wait until i was a little further along because 'what if' this isn't the real thing you know? I would look silly! Oh well!
Right after the really intense contraction i had to run to the restroom to throw up... all of my sandwich, boo for that! But at least my stomach felt better afterwards.

That night contractions were pretty much 10min apart on the dot and more intense. We went to bed and i tried my hardest just to ignore them and get as much sleep as possible. I was up a lot into the night but i didn't worry about timing them.

July 13th:

We did have a midwife appointment @ 8:30am but Bob said he was just going to call them and tell them that we thought i might be in early labor and that we were just going to cancel our appointment and come later if things got closer. It was an hours drive to the midwife and he didn't see the need to waste gas on them sending me home because the contractions were not strong enough or something.
I'm glad we didn’t go because my bag wasn't packed and i wanted to get things like the sheets cleaned and stuff. I had already got all the laundry done the day before so yay for that.

We decided to do some more walking. We tried going to the park for a little while but i quickly decided that we should go somewhere else. It was upper 90’s out and i didn’t want my whole body drained if this was the real thing. So we decided to go to Wal-Mart to be in the air conditioning. We were only there at Wal-Mart probably 1.5hrs because i was getting so tired and disappointed because the contractions seemed to be getting further apart and not as intense. As soon as we got back into the van i had a very intense contraction. I told Bob that i wondered if it was me being self conscious that was making them slower. I had heard of woman who felt put on the spot or nervous around people that it slowed their labor, and i was wondering if that was what was going on with me. Once home again everything went back to what it was, 5-10min apart.

After being home for awhile Grandma Risch came over and offered to take Anabel for the night. That way if something happened in the night Anabel wouldn’t have to be awakened and all that. So we let Anabel go for the night. (which ended up being the right decision aye? LOL)

After awhile, Bob called the midwife to update her. She told us some things we could do to try and increase the contractions to see if this was the real deal or not. That is when contractions picked up to 1-4min apart with a lot of pressure. It was crazy how quickly it all changed. After about 45min Bob called the midwife back. She said she thought we should come in as soon as possible.

We still hadn’t gotten our bags packed or the sheets washed like i had wanted, LOL. We quickly got things together and headed out. In the car the contractions went back up to about 5min apart.

Once we got there i started having the contractions really close together again. We got there about 9:40pm. Midwife checked me and i was at 5cm. I was soooo excited! They started my IV for the Group B Strep thing right away. Nurse tried putting it in my forearm first, but my vein rolled. Then she tried my inner elbow area, thought she got it, but the vein wouldn’t flush so she called the midwife in. The midwife put it in my right hand. It so didn’t feel good at all, but I'm a whuss like that. They put the antibiotics in my arm and i got a horrible taste and smell in my mouth it was nasty. Then all of a sudden i was having a hard time breathing, i admit i started to panic a little bit because i thought it must be the IV. Bob told them and they came to check me. She said all my vitals were fine, heart beat, blood pressure, lungs sounded clear. I don’t know what was going on but in a few minutes i was back to feeling normal.

Midwife said she would like me to labor out of the water for awhile until i was more dilated because sometimes the water can slow things down a bit. I labored for about 2 hours, she checked me and i was a 7cm. She said i could get in the big tub. I was in and out of the tub because i had to use the bathroom a lot. While out of the tub i would do some lunges during contractions because the midwife said it really helps things move along. With in an hour i went from 7cm to 9cm and i was so shocked! Midwife said the water sack was really bulging out big time and that each time she checked me she was amazed at how active the baby was. She said she was turning her head back and forth so much. Baby was moving a ton, it was very uncomfortable because after each contraction she would push and wiggle so much, it hurt!

Everything was going great up to this point. But over the next 1.5-2 hours i started to loose it. Contractions were so intense and something told me that things were not changing or progressing and i was getting to the point that i thought i couldn’t take it. I was right too, when the midwife checked me i was still a 9 and she thought the bag of water was in the way.

I voiced that i didn’t think i could handle this anymore. They gave me a few options, she could brake my water and/or give me morphine. I was scared to get my water broken because i knew things would get so much more painful LOL i was really close to getting the morphine. I kept asking for someone to tell me what to do. I was scared of being in more pain but i also knew i didn’t want morphine, not really, even though ‘taking the edge off’ did sound wonderful.

I remember saying something like ‘i gotta have something’. Later Bob told me that it sounded to everyone like i was asking for morphine, which Bob said ‘hold on, lets try braking the water first, then if you can’t take it, maybe the morphine’. Even though Bob thought i was asking for the morphine i later told him what was in my head, what i was trying to say. I was trying to say ‘something has to happen’ either they had to brake my water or i had to get morphine because i was about to loose it and i felt like i was out of control of my relaxing with contractions. I was glad when Bob voice what we should do, cause that is what i wanted him to do.

Midwife assured me that breaking my water would not hurt, but she had to do it while i was having a contraction. I thought i was going to loose it, but it wasn’t really any more painful then the contraction it’s self, so it was ok. After she broke it she checked me and said ‘ok when you have another contraction would you like to push?’. Both me and Bob were like ‘what the heck?’. She said that the water was the only thing holding me back, that now i was ready to push. It was crazy trying to push, i had forgotten how to do it. But after the first time trying it, i quickly remembered.

I pushed through like two contractions on the bed, then the midwife said i should head to the tub. Bob told me later i ‘ran’ to the tub and that it amazed him and the midwives how quickly i moved. LOL i just remember thinking ‘there is no way i’m going to have another contraction mid-way to the tub!’ LOL

I hopped in and pushing continued. I remember thinking about how long it took to push Anabel out and that even though everyone was telling me ‘it’s coming’ that the baby probably wasn’t. The midwife asked me a couple times ‘Amy did you move your baby down with that contraction?’. First time i said ‘i don’t know’ and she said ‘no, come on tell me did you move the baby down any?’ she had me check a couple times, which I was reluctant about but i am happy that i did now. So from then on out every time she asked i would say ‘yes’.

I was shocked at how quickly they said the head was almost out. I didn’t believe them. I remember Bob saying ‘There it is! One more push baby and the head will be out!’

I had my eyes shut so tight pushing that i didn’t realize what all was going on. I opened my eyes and the baby was out and they were working on getting the cord from around the neck. Midwife said that was what was making the heartbeat dip down while i was pushing. I started to freak when it took a couple seconds for them to the cord off it’s neck. Midwife also said that Abby had her hand up on her cheek when she came out so that might have made things a little harder.

Once Abby was on my chest i was bawling. I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that we didn’t know if it was a boy or girl yet. I was just bawling, LOL

I got the honor of getting the first look at what sex she was. And i remember saying ‘No one thought it was a girl!’. Another shocker was that the midwife said i didn’t tear at all. So shocked me! I do remember that the midwife noted that Abby nursed after 11min of being born. She is a good eater :)

One thing that makes me sad is that we didn’t have a camera, so we got no pictures of her being weight or foot prints taken or anything. But there is nothing i can do about that now.

So Abigail Raya Michelle was born on her due date of July 14th, at 3:15am. Bob said from the moment contractions picked up at home to when she was born, was like 7 hours. She weight 6.9lbs, 20.5in long and 13.75in head.

After she was born and i was out of the tub and laying with her in the bed… it all kinda ran together. We did place her in a basinet for awhile so i could try and get some sleep, but i didn’t really sleep at all, i was checking on her to much, LOL. I know that some time during that time the nurse did vitals and did the footprints and stuff.

In the morning a new nurse came in and wanted to see what we wanted to eat for breakfast. She cooked up waffles and sausages. That was very very nice.

Some things that happened that didn’t get put in the main story (because i’m not sure were it happened exactly). Was that the midwife and the nurses were awesome and they would pray over me. It was great. I adored my midwife and nurse, they were just to awesome, the way they pet me and reassured me through out the whole thing. They started to feel like family during the whole thing.

Over all it was a wonderful experience. Bob still acts like he is amazed at how great and fast it all went.

Ok so this morning Bob was gone doing a couple of different things. Well hours after Bob had been gone, Anabel heard a noise outside in the front. Her eyes got big, she started pointing and repeating ‘Dada? Dada?’. She ran to the front door and starting banging on it, crying ‘Dada’. It broke my heart! I was trying to tell her it wasn’t him, but she wasn’t understanding. I ended up calling Bob on the speaker phone and let her talk to him. It helped but i still don’t think she was putting two and two together.

I ended up being able to distract her which was good. But she has never done that before and it was really cute but really sad too. I think it made Bob pretty happy, knowing she wanted him that much.

Anabel always brightens our day. Grandma Risch had bought Anabel a little purse like back at valentines or easter (i can’t remember which) but Anabel didn’t act to into it. It got forgotten at the bottom of her toy box. Well about 4 days ago she found it and got it out of the toy box. She remember how we showed to carry it on her shoulder and ever since she loves that little purse. She walks around with it on her shoulder and it’s so cute!

She also has been into her new barbie dolls. She will crawl up onto the recliner and sit there with them jabbering. It’s sweet. Oh and bunnies! She is big into ‘hopping’… although she hasn’t learned how to hop, she bounces up and down saying ‘hop hop’ and makes her toys hop.

LOL Anabel is a trip! We have a bucket from her birthday that she plays with and she just put it over her head where she couldn’t see, then went walking around the house until she banged into the wall…. LOL it was priceless! (and no she didn’t hurt herself) It was just funny :D

I’m feeling a little odd today. Can’t put my finger on the reason though. I just hope it means something to do with baby coming? Lately i have been feeling uncomfortable in my mid section. My butt, lower back and lower area but feel kind of achy.

I did get a nap in today which makes me UBER happy. When Anabel went down for her nap at 11:30am me and Bob fell asleep watching a home improvement show. I got to sleep until 2:30pm, which was a really long nap for Anabel, usually it’s only two hours.

 

I’m hoping to get some cleaning done today. Cleaning is a never ending job! I was going to have Bob do the mopping but since he hurt his back, i guess i’m going to have to get on my hands and knees instead of him.

My birthing center is about an hour away from our home and the appointments are like 15min. long, lol Oh well!

The midwife said that the head is really low down there, so much she can't move it at all. She thought the baby might want to come by this weekend (i'm crossing my fingers!) I am having a ton more pressure down there and having a lot of BH. I was hoping the baby would have came yesterday but baby said no :)

She said that if baby isn't here by my next appointment that she would be willing to check my cervix and see if anything is going on.

Hopefully really really soon! Like tonight? I wouldn't mind that :) I did get the house straightened and looking nice, so i would be comfortable for the baby to come.

Bob starts his vacation in 3 days plus he has a lot of personal and sick time stored up so he can use 'leave of absence' and get paid for it besides his vacation time, so all will work out great.

I'm all excited thinking about the baby coming soon!

Me and Anabel just got back from a walk. Our plan was to go down the block to where i saw some wild blue flowers that i had seen this morning but when we got there i couldn’t find any o.0 it was weird. I guess they all closed up because of the heat? Anyways i was enjoying walking plus midwife said to walk like 30min a day… and i want the baby to come. So we ended up walking about 12+ blocks. It was nice.

Now Anabel is curled up under a blanket with her Barbie on our recliner, watching a cartoon, lol she is so cute! And i might call my mom just to chat, i’m bored >_<

I need to clean up the kitchen but i’m going to chill some before then.

Your Baby This Week
If you're not in labor at this very moment, you will be soon! And as anxious as you are to meet your little angel, he is just as excited to enter the world.

Even at this late stage, your baby is still growing, now to around 7 pounds (3.5 kg) and 22 (56 cm) inches. All of baby's organs (except the lungs) are fully developed, along with toenails, fingernails, and muscles in his arms and legs. At this point, babies can become entangled in their umbilical cords. If this should happen, don't worry. In most cases it's not dangerous. And contrary to rumor, it's not caused by anything you did.

Your Body This Week
Although your tummy is larger than you could have imagined, you may actually feel more comfortable in your body than you have in a while. That's because your baby has dropped further down into your pelvis, relieving additional pressure. This change has also caused your center of gravity to shift suddenly, so you may lose your balance more easily or have difficulty standing upright, particularly when getting out of a chair. Take extra care of yourself - you have a baby to deliver very soon!

Dentist just called to to tell me that i missed my appointment yesterday. They use to call you the day before to remind you but they haven’t in awhile. So i told her that i might go into labor anytime now and that i would like to reschedule the appointment for down the road. So i scheduled it for the end of this month. Hopefully baby will have come and i will have time to rest before i have to go in! No matter how simple the appointment i still can’t eat regular for at least a week because my mouth is so sensitive and i don’t want to deal with that right now!

Also i was able to have the energy to do some cleaning. I cleaned my downstairs bathroom/laundry room, got my table which was piled high, pretty much cleared off. Got the laundry folded and got another load in the dryer. I have a few more things i want to do tonight but i’m really happy i got anything done, LOL

I mean i had that nesting period and cleaned so much, only for it to get ruined a few days later. I mean baby could come any day now and my house get really messy! So i need to get it back into shape!

I/am starving so i decided to make myself a salad real quick and then sit down with Bob and watch a TV show. Well i put my whole salad together and went to grab the ranch… two little drops came out. If anyone knows me, i have to have extra ranch on my salads or i just can’t get it down. I wanted to cry. I asked bob to run down the street to Walgreens and buy me some…. he so did not want to, but he did anyways. Poor guy. It was either that or me throw the whole salad away and me go hungry cause nothing else sounded good. He’s gone right now to go get it. It’s really nice of him to do that for me. At least he doesn’t have to deal with me being preggo for to much longer now, lol

A friend posted something to my sister on facebook that got me to think that maybe my uber tiredness had something to do with iron? Which could be the case because we use to eat beef like crazy because we had the beef meat from one of Bob’s cows BUT we had ran out of ground beef, which is pretty much all we use. So i hadn’t gotten hardly any beef for a couple weeks. And i’ve felt really tired for about a week now. I forgot to mention it at my midwife appointment. So tonight i think i’m going to do eggs and hamburger patties. My mom mentioned it and it actually sounded good. I bet Bob will think it’s kinda weird but oh well. Hehe

 

My house looks like a tornado went through it! I’ve only done the bare minimum the last few days and things are starting to pile up. Especially when we have spent a lot of time out side the house and then you come in and just bring in your stuff and set it down, and not all of it gets put up right away….yeah…. Plus today when we got back from town we all kinda lounged and when Bob went to work i spent most of my time letting Anabel watch TV so i could nap. I locked in the living room area of the apartment so i know she would be safe and she sat and watched cartoons. Kinda not what i like her to do all night but i was soooo tired and i didn’t know how else to rest. I figure i need as much rest as i can get before this baby comes. Bob understands that too so he doesn’t really say anything. I know he would love the house to be all uber clean. Hopefully i can get another burst of energy before the baby comes because all the cleaning we did while i was in the nesting mode…. well it’s all ruined now LOL I need to redo everything plus some probably! Haaa

Well tonight after Anabel ate we went out side and i let her play on the back patio. She loved that and the weather was really nice. The sun was setting and there was no sun shining down to make us hot, and there was a cool breeze. It was nice, i enjoyed it. We were out there until Anabel crawled up onto one of the patio chairs and laid her head over on the arm. I asked her if she was tired and wanted to go night-night. Her eyes got big, she crawled off the chair, went to the door, pushed it open and started running all the way through the house to the stairs…. which i opened and she climbed up the stairs and into her room. I guess that answered the question, LOL So that was way to cute!

 

Oh here is something fun! I had planted some tomato plants in one of those topsy turvy type planter, well i got to pick my first tomato off of it yesterday. It was one single yellow cherry tomato so it’s not like it does a whole lot for a meal, but it’s just exciting that i grew something! Also one of my roma tomato’s are starting to grow, that i’m just all around uber happy. I realize that three plants won’t produce a whole lot so next year i will have to plant a lot more, but this is my first time growing a plant that is living and producing! I’ve almost killed it several times so i’m really shocked anything is growing, but YAY! Next year and my new house i think i’m going to try and plant a lot more stuff. Yay yay! I’m so excited about it!

Everything seems fine. I had gained 2 pounds. I measured right on 38cm so i’m right on target. Baby is finally in a good position, she just wants me to try and keep it that way by being aware of the way i sit and lay. Babies heart beat was good and strong, the best we had heard it, really loud and clear.

Nurse said my blood pressure was up (for me). She asked me if i thought i had lost my mucus plug. I said i wasn’t sure and i explained and she thought i probably had lost it then. She seemed to think that my blood pressure being up was maybe a sign of things moving along towards labor. Which is sweet.

My midwife said she has been having this feeling that a lot of babies are going to come on the 5th. I looked at the weather and the 4th and 5th we are suppose to have thunderstorms, so that might help things out. I sure wouldn’t mind it coming then.

Midwife also said the baby felt like it was a healthy size, not small but not big. So i pretty much liked everything i heard today.

So yay!