Pumping Action

So we broke down and bought a pump so Shawn can have 'Sydney' duty during the night... I was really leery of using it.. all I could think of was the Napoleon Dynamite time machine bit. I had these premonitions of yelling in pain to Shawn, "Turn it off! turn it off!" while the Medela pump makers just laughed at another chump mom.

BUT it turned out fine, and I was able to have a full night of sleep last night thanks to my wonderful husband. My only recollection of the night was Shawn laying down next to me around two a.m. and Sydney starting to cry a few minutes later. Shawn just cried out, "Noooooooo!" like Superman trying to turn back time after Lois died.

First Bath

Here are pictures of Sydney's first bath!

So tiny.

How funny! Everyone keeps saying how small Sydney is. She just looks normal size to me, until I see a picture of someone's head or hands next to her. Even then I don't think she's small. I automatically think , "Jeez, I've got an enormous head!"

Thus the beginning thoughts of yet another parent whose child can do or say no wrong. I even can say 'her poop don't stink', truthfully!

Pictures and updates

Well,

Between interruptions and other responsibilities (changing, feeding, etc.), it's only taken me (Shawn) 4 hours to make this post. Granted, I cherished and enjoyed every interruption!

Here's some pics and info for you:

Here's another pic of her with her beautiful eyes open:

Here's a pic of all 3 of us:















Here's a pic of (newly) Grandpa Ross holding Sydney:




















Here's a nice close-up pic to give you some perspective:
















Here's Sydney saying "wow, who are you?":















Here's a pic of the 2 leading women in my life:















Keep checking our blog, because I may be able to cut some video together later!

Thanks for everyone who prayed for this bundle of joy, Michelle, or I during the process of Sydney coming to us.

Pics set 1

Here's a couple pics of our new bundle of joy for your perusal:

Sydney Grace not long after birth: (that's Shawn's finger being squeezed by her hand)














Another pic of her squeezing Shawn's finger:















Last shot of her doing her daily stretching exercises!:

And three makes a family!

Soooo, how a perfect little angel graced our family.....

I started having contractions at 7am, oh, on Sunday morning. This is not counting the contractions I had saturday night from 6pm to 5am. So the Sunday 'wuss' contractions kept going and going every ten minutes or so during the day, through walking the mall and watching TV. During Happy Gilmore I was bouncing on the birth ball, walking the stairs, and eating like, fifteen mozzerella cheese sticks. The next hour, during Battlestar Galactica, the contractions got really bad and I cried like crazy over Lee and Dee's marital problems. Then Shawn said, "We should either go to bed and sleep or go to the hospital." so I promptly produced a bunch of barf and bloody show (TMI, hee hee) and decided we were going to the hospital. So much for the cheesesticks!

We take a twenty minute bumpy ride to the hospital, bumps negated by lamaze breathing techniques, thank you very much! Lauren, our doula met us at the ER. Walked up to the baby floor and found out I hadn't dialated anything since my check-up last week. Two lousy centimeters! Stink! So I was sent home with Perkaset and Ambien to sleep through the night. My stomach and uterus now felt like a big bruise from contracting for twenty four hours. Lauren came home with us, and a good thing too! The sleeping pill and the narcotic served to loosen up my cervix to four centimeters in one hour. Whammo! Did that hurt.

So back again to the hospital at four thirty in the morning on a bumpy road, and no lamaze breathing techniques were really helping this ride! We popped back into the old room from eleven pm. and called an anesthesiologist PRONTO. He was actually at the hospital and came in within about ten minutes. Meanwhile, Shawn was doing an awesome job keeping me sane by counting to four within two inches of my face. He said later that I was exhaling so hard I was drying out his eyeballs... and my breath wasn't so nice. But that's what love is all about!

So I recieved the epidural during contracting, which was kind of nice because I didn't notice this huge needle gong into my spine. I was too busy blowing on my husband's eyeballs.

So within an hour I was seven centimeters and within two I was fully dialated. Alisha had arrived for photographing the birth. Dr. Voegtle came to break my water and got the junk all over her street pants. Woops! While she went to change into scrubs, Sydney crowned and within ten minutes popped out. Whoopee!

Success!!!!

Well, the next queen of the Ross household has arrived!

Sydney Grace Ross came to us on Monday, January 29th at 10:31AM CST.
She weighed in at 6 lbs., 9 oz., and is 19 inches long.
She has beautiful black hair with possibly some blonde mixed in. Pictures to come!

Edit: I changed the birth month to the correct month (January). I mistakenly put it in as September originally (in my half-awake state).

Progression...

Well, we arrived back at the hospital @ 5am, and it's now 7:35am. Sydney will be making an appearance soon! For all of my geekiness, I have no clue what all this medical stuff is. It's truly amazing...

Well, we arrived at the hospital tonight, planning on having the latest member of the Ross clan show up. So far, we're hoping and praying that she comes soon!

Count this as another rantable post in the "start labor now" category...

Get Outta There!!!

Warning: Rant!

Can I just say that being pregnant is getting really old. Can I just tell you the things I have tried in the past 48 hours that have NOT sent me into labor?

*Eggplant Parmesan*
*Walking Three Miles*
*Bouncing on the Birth Ball*
*Pressure Points*
*Doing Married People things*

Can I just say that those have not worked. At all. And I have had little stupid contractions for two days that are just wuss contractions. Aaaarg! What's the deal?

My husband is so funny. His brain is totally a sponge. I was reading about what to expect in the next few weeks and through I would shock him by a new fact I learned. Conversation went like so:

"Shawn, did you know that in the next week or so I'm going to drop out a MUCUS PLUG?"
He doesn't even look up from what he is doing and says, "Yeah, I knew that."

It's really weird to think that Shawn might know more about the birthing process than I do.

Also, I've noticed something when Shawn grows his hair out. It's totally Bill Murray hair. We need to get him a haircut.

We decided to prepare for our baby coming with this:

Here is a picture of Thanksgiving at the St. Charles Eschner's table.
People:
Left to Right-
Lori E., Stephen/Steven (I always get it wrong) E., Mark E., Me, Kathy Melton, Steve Melton, Bill R.'s friend, Bill R., Anita R., George R., Peggy R., Grandma E., Oma E., and Grandpa Lothar E.

Food:
Stuffing and Dressing
Orange Fluff
Green Salad
Turkey
Gravy
Mountainous Mashed Potatoes
Weird Marinated Onions (one of my contributions)
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie

This is really cool! Find out which celebrities look like you!

http://www.myheritage.com

http://www.myheritage.com

Holy crap! Christmas is coming up super fast. I have a huge list of things to do and can't waddle fast enough to get them all done. Shawn has been working so hard at his new job (full time video production and IT support at the church) and I am so proud of him!

My birthday was Monday (pics to come later) and Shawn and I ate Imo's- yum! We got extra cheese and the guys ran out with it really fast so the cheese slid off the crust just an inch. Tuesday we had a family b-day party over at Mom and Dad Melton's. Shawn is really getting to know me too well- one of my presents was a calendar pack filled with Cat pictures. The highlight of the night was when we were able to share this SNL skit with Mom and Dad Melton from YouTube. Shawn and I cry laughing every time we see it.

Also, for updated pics, here is one from Halloween up above. If you can believe it, Baby is even bigger now. Every time I sit down she thinks, "Hey, start the ride up again!" and starts jumping up and down on my bladder.

I can't believe how much we've missed on the blogs! Drew has tons of hair! The Bonos are among us! Party time!

So much to do!

It's going to be interesting when this little girl comes along- life seems overwhelming right now! Sometimes I will lay in bed in the morning and just think of this big overwhelming list of 'stuff' that has to get done ;) But when I actually MAKE a list and have it on paper the things don't seem all that bad. I guess it's the scary anticipation that makes each day seem so untackle-able!

Oh, we are watching dateline or something and the subject is baby names- in Los Angeles, 30% of African American names are unique, like Shaniqua and Shakira. Jason Lee from "My Name is Earl" named his kid 'Pikot Inspektor' and Gwyneth Paltrow named hers 'Apple'. I have a name I really like, but we are keeping the final decision secret.

Oh, and little Baby 'Shaniqua' in the oven is dancing around on my bladder day and night. I think she is singing, "Hello, my baby- Hello, my darlin'- Hello my good time gal!"She is definately taking dance classes if she keeps this up. It just makes me smile because no one else can feel her yet from the outside and right now it's my little secret!

Lots of Stuff!

Actually, I have an excuse why I haven't blogged- I forgot my password and signin. Plus I didn't have my blog in my Bookmarks so I couldn't find it for a while, lol! Not to worry, it won't happen again.

Megan Ross will have fun with this- last night I dreamt I was flying over fields of fruit and would swoop down and take bites out of every different thing and one of the fruits was a rambutan, which is native to Thailand: Megan always sends us pictures of her eating a ton of these.


But bigger news than dream fruit: We found out about Baby Ross!


It's a Girl! It's hard to tell, but her tiny mouth is open and she is saying, "Feed Me!"
I swear, I never thought a human being could experience hunger like this. "Eating Dreams" happen almost every night, and then I wake up and daydream about eating.

Here is a picture of me at seventeen weeks and then eighteen weeks:
That's six more pounds of baby fat inbetween those pics.
If you'd like to see what's going on in there periodically, you can bookmark our Baby Calendar.

Oh, and I HAVE to share the latest recipie that we gobbled up. I am making this for our Friend to Friend snack this Wednesday: Butterscotch Buns!

Baby Ross is coming to town!

Hi all! Finally us Rosses are getting caught up in the blogosphere with the coming of Ross #3.
Week eleven. where I look like I'm just pushing out my gut:

I just went out to lunch with two of my favorite mommies Julie and Elizabeth and it was so fun just anticipating mommy life. The morning sickness has finally dissapated and I am hard at work making our house a home for all of us. We have already been blessed with a gorgeous crib, changing table and baby books, and my mom is really excited about sewing baby stuff! The big question everyone asks us is, "Are you going to find out the gender?" We haven't decided yet- we might just let it be a big suprise!

My first order of business when I found out we were pregnant was to get my own pregnancy calendar and bookmark it. Every day I can see new things about what's going on inside baby's world and what baby looks like right now.

I really want to get one of these pacifiers too. I saw a baby with one once and couldn't stop laughing.

First peek at Baby Ross, at seven and a half weeks: