A few new pics

He's Here!!

Last Tuesday I went to my weekly appointment, sat in the waiting room for over an hour and when I finally saw my Dr he told me I was almost 4 cm dilated and 75% effaced. At least there was some progress after 5 weeks of being told "any day now". I went home planning on at least one more week of pregnancy. By 6 o clock that night I thought maybe I was feeling something going on but since I wasn't sure I cooked dinner, ate and went about my business. After three hours of counting contractions to make sure I was really in labor (no I'm serious, not sure what I was thinking) we decided it was definitely rime to head to the hospital. Anyone who has delivered at Forsyth knows that often times you spend a lot of time waiting around on the people there. When we checked in I was 5cm, but the time they put me in a room I was 8 cm, and then I sat and waited and waited for someone to catch the baby :) Parker Lawrence Applegate was born at 2:19 am on Wednesday July 20th after 8 hours of labor and two and a half pushes. 6 pounds 5 ounces and 20 inches long.He is a great baby, good nurser, good sleeper, immune to the insane noises that occur in a house with kids who love Star Wars- he is perfect. Really my only challenge is the lack of sleep that comes from having such a different set of age groups with very different schedules. Since we are only one week in though, I'm not too worried, we  will all adjust. Aarik started a new job and so all of our scheduling is crazy. After three and a half years on third shift he is now on a regular work schedule. Konnor and Mckenzie are very much in love with their new little brother. Mckenzie is very possessive and very helpful. Konnor started out a little stand offish but is coming around nicely and especially enjoys the times when Parker is awake. We are all very grateful he is here healthy and handsome. I've learned a lot so far, first of all back labor doesn't go away after the baby is born like regular labor does
:( secondly, adjusting to three kids is nowhere near as hard as adjusting to two IF you can keep people out of your house. Parker was born Wednesday, I came home Thursday evening and Friday I was alone with all three kids and had slept maybe five hours in 4 days. It was hard but not as hard if I didn't have to worry about putting a shirt on for people to come in the house, or if the front room was clean, or if the kitchen was clean, or if the kids had been wearing the same pair of pj's for 48 hours straight. If you take out those worries and just let things happen it's not half bad. Maybe even pleasant. I've learned a lot more than that but off the top of my head (swirling with exhaustion) those stick out. For right now, I have to say, Life is Good!

Still Here

Finally closing in on 36 weeks when I'll be allowed to resume my regular pregnancy exercise routine. I've been surprised how many people STILL give exercise during pregnancy such a bad wrap. This is my first pregnancy that I have exercised the entire time and the first one that I haven't been angry the whole 9 months. The past several weeks, while ordered to cut out my exercise, that familiar irritability is back. Wednesday can not get here fast enough! In the mean time I got a little support and encouragement as well as a mood booster when I opened an email and found this.

Almost there...

Well I haven't done as well as I'd intended keeping up with this pregnancy by blogging. I guess the truth is that I'd promised myself I wasn't going to complain during this pregnancy because we are so blessed to be able to get this baby here. Having said that, if you can't complain the last couple months of pregnancy, there often isn't much to talk about. :) But we are FINALLY in the home stretch (34 weeks tomorrow) so I felt like I should blog about something. The latest news with Mr Parker is that at my check up last week he had dropped so low and sunken back so far that we had a very hard time finding his heartbeat (surprise surprise) this prompted a check and we found out that I had also dilated to a two. Considering that I've given birth to two children and had a D&C I wasn't too concerned but with the amount of contractions I've been having for the past several weeks it meant a fetal fibronectin test and bed rest for the weekend until the results came back. I did almost 3 months of bed rest when I was pregnant with Konnor. Aarik was working during the day and we had no kids so the apartment stayed clean and he could come home and hang out with me in the bed when he was home. We also had a surprisingly large amount of help for a young couple with no kids. This was quite a different weekend. We now have two kids tornadoes that can tear a house apart in two seconds flat. Aarik spent father's day weekend regulating wrestling matches, trying to clean up behind them, cooking (which he NEVER has had to do since we got married), bed time routine, and trying to finish up all of our last minute baby projects that we saved to keep ourselves busy the last few weeks of waiting. The man deserves some kind of award. Finally at 4 o clock yesterday we got the call. There is a 95% chance that Parker will NOT be making his grand entrace between now and July 1st. For some reason I still am not allowed to exercise, pick up kids (or anything "heavy" for that matter), or do shopping that requires a long period of walking or standing. I guess if it's that or bed rest, I'll take it. At my 35 week check up next Monday we are supposed to get a better idea of where and when we are going. If it works out I'll try to blog about that and Mckenzie's fourth birthday next week. Once Parker arrives I will also blog about that as soon as I get the chance. Hopefully that one will wait until the second week in July!