He IS Here!

Wow, the past five days have been a whirlwind and I still don't have time to write a long post about it just yet, but wanted to make it blog-official: Wilder Roman is here (finally)! He is the sweetest, most precious baby ever to be born and we are totally in love with him. He arrived on Friday, November 26 at 12:15 pm after 32 hours of labor, weighing 7 lbs. 4 oz. and measuring 20 inches long. Here are a few pictures of our sweet angel:

Will definitely write a longer post soon with more details because there are plenty (including a skunk fight under our house the first night home, nice). In the meantime, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers! We're all doing great and couldn't be more happy!

He's (Not) Here!

I've learned a lot since becoming pregnant, like the importance of staying hydrated and that my stomach can grow bigger than I ever imagined. Today I'd like to share with you my most recent lesson... NEVER ask a pregnant woman who is approaching her due date if the baby has come yet. I'm sure I've been guilty of this in the past, and to anyone I have done this to, I am truly sorry. 

In the last week I have gotten a crazy number of inquiries as to whether or not Wilder has arrived. Don't get me wrong, I truly, honestly appreciate the thought behind these inquiries but don't people know that when he does make his appearance I will be shouting it from the rooftops? It's not like I've secretly given birth and refuse to tell anyone. I understand, I live far away and people can't see for themselves that my belly is still obviously full of baby; but, until you hear otherwise, please just ask how I'm feeling or say that you're thinking about me. It's already stressful enough to have to wait and wait and wait, but add on top of that friends and family asking "Is he here yet?" "Is he here yet?" "Is he here yet?" and it's really sending me over the edge. 

I know I will probably hurt some people's feelings with this post and I will be very sad if everyone stops communicating with me altogether as a result, but I just couldn't take it any longer. Believe me, no one wants him here more than I do, but besides transferring my care to a physician instead of a midwife so I can be medically-induced, there is not much I can really do to control his birth date. (P.S. I wasn't dilated enough on Tuesday for the midwife to strip my membranes, so that tells you how far along I'm not.) I've already tried walking hills and sex (sorry, Daddy, if you're reading this haha) and we're going to an Italian restaurant tonight to eat Eggplant Parmesan; but the more I read about induction the more I kind of just want him to come on his own when he's ready. 

According to the Lamaze website, early induction can lead to a more painful labor and delivery as well as feeding and breathing problems for the baby. But this is what is really convincing me to wait it out: According to research, the baby himself actually initiates the labor process. When his lungs are fully mature, he releases a protein that tells his mother's body that it's time. To me, that's the way it's supposed to be and I don't think we should mess with that too much. It's definitely the greatest lesson in patience I've ever had, but I know I can do it... with a little help from my friends :)

Even though I look like crap, feel like a whale, and would rather cut my own arm off than be in a picture right now, here's some proof that Wilder has not come into the world without anyone knowing about it:

To all of my friends and family, if I haven't offended you so much that you've stopped reading by this point, I want to tell you how much of an encouragement you have been to me over the last 9 months. I have truly felt your love and support across the miles through your blog and Facebook comments, your emails, and your calls/texts. Thank you for not forgetting about me and for making me feel not so isolated. I've been so happy to share my pregnancy adventures with you and, I promise, when the big day finally arrives no one will be left out of the loop. I have a long list of people to call/text and I'm taking my computer to the hospital with me. I will so bombard you with news that you will probably be sick of hearing about it, I can assure you :) 

Happy Friday everyone and much love to you all!

I'm a Trespasser

Ever since we got married, Paul and I have always lived in houses that are set back off the street. We like houses like this because they give you more privacy, you don't have weirdos randomly knocking on your front door, and you feel like you can come and go without the whole neighborhood knowing about it. This is the first house we've lived in though that is actually the back house on a lot with another house in front of it. In central San Diego, land is at such a premium that, many years ago, people started building houses behind their street-front houses to rent out for extra income. Nowadays I would say that more than half of the houses in the city have a "back house" behind them. 

Anyway, like I said, we like this situation... most of the time. There is one drawback that we've recently discovered though. Think about it, what do you do with the back of your house if you don't have a garage? You put things back there that you aren't using or that you want out of sight. So yeah, unfortunately, "out of sight" for the front house is "directly in daily sight" for us. Not a big deal most of the time, but the front house has a bunch (we really have no idea how many people live there, I feel like I see someone new every week) of college students living there and they recently rearranged furniture or had someone new move in and consequently moved some furniture, including two old dirty mattresses, to their back porch. So, this has been the view from our front porch for the last week:

Imagine my horror when I looked out our front door last weekend and saw this! I mean, we're about to have a child; we're trying to establish a nice, grownup home; and we're about to have a lot of visitors over with the baby coming... and this is the first thing they will all see when they come into our yard. I'm the type of person that tries to be laid back and not let things bother me, but, inevitably, there are things that get under my skin and I can't stop obsessing over thinking about. The furniture doesn't bother me so much as those gross mattresses. I've been hoping all week that it was a temporary storage situation and they would move them back in, but here we are a week later and the eyesores are still there. 

I had to do something and my two choices were: A) go knock on their door and ask someone I don't even know to rearrange their back porch, probably offending them, and likely being laughed at/rejected/called a crazy person; or B) sneak over there and rearrange it myself. So, since I guess I am a crazy person, I chose B. I was planning on doing it under the cover of darkness or early in the morning when they would still be asleep, but I kept thinking about the possibility that I go into labor and have to suddenly leave for the hospital and never get the chance. So, today at lunchtime I just couldn't stand it any longer. I quietly snuck over there, let myself onto their porch, and moved some stuff around so that I could lay the mattresses down on their sides. The rest of the furniture is still in sight and the mattresses are technically still there, but at least we can't see them from our house anymore and that makes me a happy camper. I'm sure they'll notice they've been moved but I'm hoping that there are so many roommates that they will all just think one of the others did it. Either way I think I'm safe because I'm fairly certain they wouldn't imagine their neighbor is crazy enough to do it. So, yes, I'm a trespasser... I blame it on the hormones ;)

Speaking of which, I think it's about time for Mr. Wilder to stop inhabiting my body and start inhabiting his nursery. My belly is pretty miserably large and my contractions have started to get uncomfortable. On Tuesday my midwife estimated that he weighs about 6 1/2 pounds, but didn't check for dilation. I told her I really wanted to know if I'm progressing at all and she said this coming Tuesday she would check to see if I'm dilated and also strip my membranes at the same time. That's not an official induction method but it can help stimulate labor so I'm hoping we'll get to meet baby Wilder sometime next week. Also, I don't know if that's really proper to talk about but it's my blog so I don't really care, hehe (hormones again). Anyway, I'll keep you posted! Hope everyone is having a good weekend! 

Done and Done

After one week off of work I feel about 100 times more prepared for this baby (and about 1000 times more annoyed with these dogs... but let's focus on the prepared part). I got all the baby clothes and bedding washed, made one (hopefully) last big trip to Target, got extra flea meds from the vet for the dogs, finished packing for the hospital for the most part, took the car to get detailed, got Paul to install the car seat, finished thank-you notes, and completed my huge cooking/freezing undertaking. 

I made green bean casserole, hashbrown casserole, poppyseed chicken casserole, chicken/broccoli/rice casserole, tortilla chicken soup, chili, and sausage balls. I had a few other recipes I was going to make as well but, as you can see below, my freezer simply couldn't hold anything else and might possibly catch on fire from all the extra work it's doing right now. FYI, there's actually another row behind the row showing on the top shelf. I'm pretty proud of myself :) Now let's just hope that, when we go to eat all of this, it still tastes decent or I'll cry.

So now I can spend the rest of the time until Wilder decides to come sleeping in, resting, walking/yoga'ing, reading, etc. I feel so much better having gotten all of that out of the way last week. Now it's just a matter of waiting and I really feel like it won't be that long. Of course, I may bite my tongue later for saying that, but my Braxton-Hicks contractions have gotten a lot more intense and regular. For the past three nights, they have woken me up about every hour or hour and a half and I have them throughout the day pretty regularly too. I go back to my midwife tomorrow so I'm going to ask her to check if I'm dilated. Next week we'll probably start trying to self-induce if he hasn't come already. I go between feeling ready for him to get here and scared to death about delivering, but the pendulum's swinging more towards "ready" these days. 

By the way, here's where baby Wilder will be sleeping in our room for the first few weeks. It's Paul's Moses basket from when he was a baby and we have a rocking stand that it sits in. Lovie (Paul's mom) shipped it to us the other day and she had made all new bedding for it. Isn't it beautiful? :)

Well, I better go start on my resting for the day, haha! Hope everyone has a good week! 

Wilder's Nursery

Man, have I gotten a lot done this week! Along with about a million other things, I'm done with thank-you notes, almost finished washing all of the baby stuff, and yesterday I spent two hours grocery shopping. I wanted to stock up on things we use a lot as well as ingredients for about 10 different recipes I'm planning on making and freezing so I won't have to go to the store for a while after Wilder gets here. I ended up with two shopping carts and looking like I was preparing for Y2K. We'll just call it Wilder2K :) 

So, I was planning on getting up and starting my cooking marathon this morning but Posey's stomach had other plans. Apparently sometime last night she did something awful in their room and it was all over the floor, the walls, their bedding, and both dogs. It took me a couple of hours to clean up and afterwards I was so grossed out that I went on a cleaning frenzy throughout the rest of the house. Now I'm too tired to start cooking so I decided to take a break and post some pictures of the nursery since it's finally complete. 

Now all that's left is to put a baby in it! He is full-term tomorrow and hopefully not too long after that we'll get to meet him. OK, I think now it's nap-time. Adios!

The Final Countdown

It's hard to believe, but the month of November has finally arrived. Unless, God forbid, he's super late, this is the month Wilder will be born. I'm so excited to hold him and see Paul hold him and I can't wait to see his sweet little face! 

Today is also my first day off work. I'm trying to get a lot done and rest at the same time, which is a little hard to do. I have found that I can sit while folding laundry, so that's a pretty nifty discovery. I'm also alternating doing things that involve walking around or standing with things I can do sitting down, like making lists or writing thank-you notes. The good awesome news is that... miraculously last week sometime my back stopped hurting! I think the baby must have dropped, which hopefully means he's getting ready to make his debut, and he's no longer head-butting my sciatic nerve every minute of the day. What a huge relief!

We had a great Halloween weekend. Our good friend, Beau, came into town for a quick visit and it was so good to get to hang out, watch some football, and eat some good food. I've been so caught up with baby stuff lately that it was nice to take a break from it all for probably the last time. On Friday we ate dinner at The Linkery, which specializes in homemade sausages and local farm-grown ingredients. I would definitely recommend it if you're visiting San Diego. 

          

On Saturday we went to a bar down the street to watch football. Our table was totally representing the SEC, with people from Georgia, Florida, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State, so that was fun and made us feel right at home. And Mississippi State won so that was even more awesome! We're now ranked #20... Go Dawgs!!

          

Oh, I also wore the Halloween outfit that I did actually come up with the energy to make. I was so excited about it and got a lot of compliments on it! :)

                    

Saturday night we went to a Halloween party at one of Paul's classmates' houses. Paul dressed up as Kenny Powers from the show "Eastbound and Down," Beau was a caveman, and our friend Corey was The Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis commercials. They all looked great!

            

Yesterday we got some errands run and some stuff done in the nursery so now I just have one more thing to hang and it will be complete. I'll post pictures soon! Happy Monday to everyone and have a great week!