Today was Anna’s official due date, but instead, she’s been here for nine whole days – most of which have passed by in a sleep-deprived blur. Good thing we’ve been taking pictures!
Due Date
Year: 2008
What’s In A Name?
A word about Anna’s name. Anna is mostly just a name we liked, although it does have some family ties. Catherine is for my grandmother (my mom’s mom) who turned 80 the day Anna was born. Depending on which baby name dictionary you consult, Anna means “joy” or “gracious”, and Catherine pretty much universally means “pure”.
And since I never did write about how we chose Carolyn’s name, I’ll do that now too! Carolyn is also a name we liked, as well as being sort of a combination of my parents’ names, Carl and Karen, and my godmother’s name, Linda. Sylvia is Denis’ mother’s name. Carolyn means (again, depending on which dictionary) “song of joy” and Sylvia means “forest”.
Sleep is Overrated
It’s amazing how quickly I can adjust to not enough sleep – just last week I really needed 8-9 hours to feel rested (granted, those were not uninterrupted hours, what with baby pressing on my bladder!) but now that I’ve had two nights in a row where I got 6 hours with just one nursing session partway through, I nearly feel human again!
Besides, who needs sleep when there are tiny fingers to admire?
First well-baby visit
Vital stats:
4 days old
6 lbs. 3.5 oz.
(Discharge weight from hospital 2 days ago: 6 lbs. 2 oz.)
Anna got her first shot today – they start the hepatitis B vaccine series at birth now, but we wanted to discuss that with the pediatrician first instead of getting it done at the hospital. And everyone was pretty impressed that Anna was already gaining weight back. (Actually, me too, because she’s already pretty fast and efficient at nursing, so I wasn’t quite convinced she was getting enough!)
Welcome, Baby!
July 12, 2008, 4:27 AM
6lbs, 5 oz
18.5 inches long
So I wasn’t too far off in saying that it would be good if she came after dance camp ended last Friday! I woke up at 12:50 AM on Saturday, and felt like I might be having “real” contractions, but I waffled a bit about whether to wake Denis up. After another couple, though, I woke him up and he started timing them…at 3 minutes apart lasting a minute each. The midwife thought we could probably think about heading in – although I was still half convinced they were going to send us home with a false alarm. So Denis threw some stuff in a bag (I never did get around to packing) and we called my mom to come over and stay with Carrie, and the doula to meet us at the hospital. We got to the hospital shortly before 3 (if I never repeat a car ride like that it will be too soon), and we were holding our baby an hour and a half later.
I managed to not only have my VBAC, but there was no time at all to even consider pain medications (I hadn’t quite made up my mind on that part) and so it was about as different from Carrie’s birth as it could have possibly been. I was up and showering not even two hours later, and we came home last night, after just spending 36 hours in the hospital. We could have stayed a second night, but we wanted to get back to Carrie, and get some rest – since hospitals are about the least restful places you can stay in.
So far everyone’s doing great. We’re going to have to make some adjustments, but overall Carrie is beyond thrilled to have her little sister and just wants to hug and hold and kiss her all the time. I’m incredibly sleep deprived, so I’m going to go feed the small one again and try to get a little sleep before she wakes up and wants more!
Dance Camp
Dance camp is officially over, but Carrie loved it. They even had a little recital, and amazingly had managed to get the dozen or so 3 year olds in Carrie’s group to learn three (simple) dance routines – one tap, one ballet, and one…well, it was a large group dance with all 60 of the girls in the camp, I couldn’t really give the style a name.
I’m impressed enough with the studio that I think I’m going to sign Carrie up to take lessons there in the fall. She really does love dancing, and while it might be nice to expose her to other activities, I also want to encourage her to do things she loves. So for now we’ll do dance, and if she stops liking it so much we’ll reevaluate then.
As ready as we’re going to get!
While there’s still quite a bit of general cleaning that has to happen around the house, the baby’s room is pretty much done, enough of the laundry is done, and at 38+ weeks the baby is close enough to being “done” that I’d be really quite happy if she came any time now. (Actually, though, maybe after dance camp ends on Friday would be better.)
I suppose we should really pack a bag or two and pick a name soon…
And this one time, at dance camp…
Carrie has dance camp this week, every morning from 9-12. On the one hand, it’s nice to have a few hours to myself…on the other hand, I think Carrie might have been a little overwhelmed. There were at least 50 little girls in leotards when I dropped her off this morning, and she wound up in meltdown mode when we got in the car after. But she says she liked it and wants to go back, so we’ll see how tomorrow goes.
And I keep trying to call it band camp.
Happy Fourth!
Thank goodness for great-grandmothers who go shopping and send random things to their great-granddaughters, or Carrie would have been wearing something much less patriotic today! (I kind of totally spaced, and didn’t even think to find something red, white, or blue for her to wear…and the one blue skort she had was in the wash anyway.)
We pretty much just hung out, worked on the baby’s room some, went to my parents house for dinner, and stayed up really much too late to see if the fireworks that used to be visible from our hill were going to happen. They didn’t but between hanging out around the little open grill we’d used to make s’mores and watching the stars, Carrie didn’t mind one bit.
Oh, and we figured out how to get her to go to sleep right away: keep her up until 10:30!
37 Weeks…
Any time from today on is considered full-term for this baby, so we’ve been trying to get the big things done enough to feel ready. Big things like: digging the infant carseat out of the basement…check, doing some baby laundry…maybe tomorrow, packing the bag for the hospital…uh, yeah, better do that soon… And, of course, trying to get the baby’s room to a point where it’s not completely under construction anymore. Denis got the painting done this weekend, and he and my youngest brother got the furniture mostly sorted out. Carrie has a “new” (my old) dresser in her room (with a mirror!), and the changing table/dresser is all set to be filled in the baby’s room. Once we get the closet organizer in, the window treatments up, and assemble the crib, the room will be as done as it needs to be for now. I’m not assembling the crib until everything else is done, though, because I went into labor with Carrie the night we put her crib up, so I’m feeling a little superstitious about that…of course, by the end of this predicted hot and humid week, I might just be begging to get that crib ready…
Oh, and happy birthday, Lisa – sorry I couldn’t go strawberry picking with you today!