At home

It's been a pretty good week for us. We were able to leave the hospital at about 10:30 on Wednesday. I've been feeling great - though I will say that the afterpains hurt a lot more this time around... but, that has downgraded to a few mild cramps here and there.
Ruthie is doing pretty well as we try to get her on the EASY routine. The first night home she slept until 6am or so - I guess we were all too tired to get up and eat. Plus she was probably glad to sleep in a nice comfy bed with no one poking or prodding her or messing up her swaddle in the middle of the night. After that, it was more like 3-4am and then again at 6-7am. The E(eat) has been pretty good, but she still wants to sleep a lot, so I end up waking her up 2-3 times during the feed to make sure she gets enough. I'm taking her to the doctor tomorrow because it looks like she has reflux just like the boys did. Guess that's just something my babies will have :( At least they have medicine for it! After she eats, she's not up for too long before her nap. Interestingly, she does NOT want a binky most of the time. It actually seems to anger her. I think it's related to the reflux - drinking milk probably soothes her throat and that dang binky doesn't have milk in it. We tried a night without her having a binky and she slept just fine so maybe she just won't need it. We'll see what happens if/when they get her on some meds.

The boys mostly just ignore her. Ben completely ignores her, but Tristan likes to say "HI BABY RUTHIE!" really loud. I'm sure she'll be a good sleeper with 2 loud brothers ahead of her ;) I'm sure they'll get more interested in her when she does something other than eat and sleep. It's been an adjustment for them, and they get pretty touchy sometimes over nothing. The kindergarten has a very specific pickup routine - the parents stay in the car and have a window sign with the kid's name. The kids are supposed to go get in the car and then the parents pull forward if they need time to get the kids buckled. Ben had to be carried by his teacher to the van when Neil picked him up on Thursday. His teacher was very understanding though, and said his behavior is typical for having a new sibling in the home.

Today we had lunch with my parents and stopped by to visit Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Andrews on the way home. We of course were sent home with plenty of treats and rolls. We're glad that Grandpa is doing well, he was in the hospital for a few days because they found blood clots in his leg.

On the way home from Lehi, Ben was singing the days of the week song. Tristan yelled "BEN! You're singing it wrong! It goes 'Sunday, Friday, Tuesday, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Sat-ur-day'" Neil and I cracked up. Tristan is very dramatic and was EXTREMELY agitated with Ben for singing it wrong :)

Hello Sweetie!

So we arrived at the hospital at 7:30 AM on Sept 17th. We got all checked in and my doctor came and broke my water right away and got me hooked up to the Pitocin. It was REALLY frustrating to hear that I was STILL a 2 - but it made me really glad that I was there for the induction. I mean, I've been at a 2 for the last 2 weeks. I guess Ruthie was just too comfy in there!
At around 10:30 or 11 I decided the contractions were just too painful to handle anymore, so we got the epidural hooked up. It was a little better than with Tristan - I could kind of feel my feet and I could tell when I was having a contraction, but I wasn't feeling any pain :) Sadly, I was not quite a 4 after 3 hours, so I was a little worried about how fast things were moving along. After the epidural, they were able to increase the Pitocin. They made me lay down on my side after that, so Neil and I watched some shows on my laptop and I kinda dozed a little.
At about 1:00 or so, the nurse came to check me again. She said "Oh...." which was a little concerning. I was hoping she wouldn't say that I hadn't progressed much. Then she said I was a 9! She notified the doctor and they started getting the room all set up for delivery. At about 1:45 the doc came in and we got ready to push... and waited... and waited... for a contraction. It probably really only took a minute or two, but it sure felt like it took 5 minutes! As soon as it came, I pushed 3 really good pushes (I testify of the benefits of using a mirror) and there she was!

Ruth Kayla Baxter, born at 1:52 on September 17th (the 17th grandchild of Afton!) weighing 8 lbs and 20.5 inches long

She was quite upset when she was born. She cried off and on for about 2 hours, which was different from Ben or Tristan. They were pretty chill once they got wrapped in a warm blanket. She also swallowed a lot of fluid before coming out. They pumped 8 CCs and she was still coughing and crying pretty wetly. By now (she's what, 28 hours old?) it's worked itself out.

She's been a great baby so far. Not too much crying, and some pretty good awake time. She's been frustrated this afternoon/evening because my milk isn't in yet and she's hungry. We ended up having to give her some formula because she wasn't staying latched on. She'd start nursing and then get all mad. We finally gave her about an ounce of formula, and now she's all swaddled up and sleeping away :)

No Seriously...

Well I guess I should first say that I'm grateful that such things as inductions exist... but come on! I have not dialated at all in the last week?!?! That's just rediculous! I couldn't hear what the doctor first said when he gave me options for inducing because that paper on the exam chair is so crinkly and loud, so I just said "As soon as possible." I think he might have said "later this week or early next" but after he checked me he said "Do you want Monday/Tuesday? Weds/Thurs...?" Well hello, Monday for sure! He told me to head over to the nurses station and get set up for the induction. That nurse was pretty funny. "Oh you poor thing!" She called to get it set up with Labor & Delivery and gave me my little instruction sheet, which I'm familiar with since it's my 3rd time around. She still walked me through it (I'm sure she has to), but then she started giving me idea on how to get labor moving. "You should walk a lot. Go shopping or something..." among other ideas. I smiled and nodded, but inside I was thinking "Silly nurse, this is my THIRD baby that wants to stay in there... I think if there was something that worked, I would have found it by now!"

So yeah, on Monday morning at 7am I'll be calling to make sure they still have room for me, which they probably will. Let's see... Ben was born around 5pm. Tristan was born a little earlier than that, and we had to delay Pitocin for 3 hours with him... so maybe Ruthie will come early afternoon? One can only hope... The nice thing about a planned induction is that I can make sure my house is clean before I leave, and I can take plenty of stuff to keep me occupied until she's born. Plus since we live within like 5 minutes of the hospital, I can send Neil home for whatever we forget :)

In other news, the water heater was installed yesterday morning, so I actually got to run my dishwasher and take a shower at my own house again! Hooray!

I don't think there's anything else going on to report about... If anything exciting happens between now and Monday I'll post about it, otherwise I'll start posting when I get to the hospital on Monday!

Trying to Blog Again...

I keep telling myself that a blog is a great way for family to keep in touch, and a great place to journal about cool/funny/exciting things that happen in our family. So I created a family blog. I wanted it to have some kind of cool name but I could never think of anything I really liked... I made 2 posts on it, and then I didn't post anything for two years. I'm going to pretend like it's because I was so busy...

I mean, up until December 2011 I was in school, and from Sept-Dec 2011 I was doing my student teaching, which is a lot like having a full-time job where you don't get paid and you have no idea what you're doing most of the time. You just hope it turns out well, or at least that you don't ruin the classroom for the "real" teacher... After that, we were pushing hard to get Neil's CPA license finished up (done!) and I was pretty sick with baby #3 for a bit. Sometime in about June or so, we started looking for an office space for the tax practice, and realized it was time for us to move too. After some frustration in looking at decent houses in terrible areas, we finally increased our price limit and found a house that someone built for me a while ago. No, seriously! It's the perfect house for me. 5 bedrooms PLUS a good sized storage room and craft room, a laundry chute, and the best part for my kids - a good backyard that came with a nice big wooden playset (swings/slide/sandbox/monkey bars). We were really lucky that they had nice neutral paint and carpets everywhere, and everything was in great shape too, so all we had to do was organize our stuff and call it good! We are down to only 1 room that isn't organized at all - the craft room. And honestly, with a baby coming REALLY soon, it's not like I'm doing much crafting anyways!

A week ago, Neil came out of the shower and said I might want to wait until he can look at the water heater because he showered COLD. He didn't have time to look at it before taking Ben to school and heading in to work, so I looked in on it. It was leaking (I mean, it's 22 years old...) so I texted my dad to confirm that it was probably dead or dying. He called me back right away and helped me figure out where the pilot light was and get it re-lit. I did my errands and got a nice warm shower when I got home. When Neil got home I showed him the water heater, which was still leaking a lot (and unfortunately getting under the walls a little bit). We decided it would be best to shut off the water to the heater (and the gas). We had already called to get a few bids in for replacing it, the cheapest being $1000 because of the code work we needed to do for it. Luckily we know people who know stuff, like Neil's dad, who suggested we check and see if the water heater would be covered with our home warranty - which it is! :D So the plumber came last Thursday and looked at it, told me how to drain it out so it would stop leaking into the wall, and said they would get it ordered and call us in the next day or two to set up an appointment to come back and install it. They are apparently super busy all the time because they handle all of Farmer's Insurance's home warranty plumbing needs, but the tech did write "Emergency Service" on our sheet. However, it's Monday, and I STILL don't have hot water. That means I drive to Neil's parents to shower and I make a pile of dishes to wash later. Saturday morning we got out the pressure canner pot to boil water and spent about 1.5 hours washing the dishes that had piled up over the week. Not really looking forward to doing that again... At least I can wash clothes in cold water. I've always washed darks in cold and whites in hot, but I don't think it will hurt to wash the whites in cold for a week or two - so at least we can still have clean clothes! I also called the plumbers this morning and left a message that I REALLY needed hot water because I haven't had any for a week and I'm about to have a baby. As far as I know, they haven't called yet...

My next doctor's appointment is on Wednesday. That will be my 40 week appointment, and hopefully I can get an induction set up as a backup plan. Apparently it's my mom's fault - she was always about a week past her due date before she delivered... The nice thing about scheduling an induction is that you know exactly when you'll have the baby. The night before, you can do whatever you think you might want to do before having a newborn (like sleep!) and you can make sure the house is totally clean. I keep telling myself I need to keep it all cleaned up, but it's a little more awkward without having hot water to wash dishes or run a dishwasher. I'm settling for semi-clean for now... :) My intent is to give another update on Weds after my appointment, but I AM extremely pregnant and prone to forget things...