After several rounds of "false labor", which were very frustrating, at last I have a beautiful baby boy born on July 10, 2008 at about 2:30 AM. Alexander Fay Douglas Northrip is doing quite well. He is feeding well and happy. He always has plenty to eat as my body seems to have prepared enough milk for twins even though I only got one! I am recovering well and at home now from my C-section after staying in the hospital through Sunday. We tried for many hours for natural childbirth, but it turned out that Xander was facing left and had his arm up by his head so he got stuck. Amazingly he was never in any distress at all, but just wouldn't come out! I am so happy to be at home with him and people keep telling me I have amazing energy for someone that had major surgery a week ago!

We had a great first check-up with the doctor. Xander’s development, reflexes and weight are just perfect. We feel so blessed to have such a healthy, beautiful child. His umbilical cord just fell off yestday morning and we got to see his cute little belly button for the first time. He is even already smiling in his sleep and is generally a happy baby.

Here is a link to two short videos of Tim and I bringing Xander home. You can see a bit of our new house, still filled with many moving boxes. My grandma is renting us a house in North Hollywood at a rate I can afford to stay home with the baby.

http://s338.photobucket.com/albums/n427/tnorthrip/

Testing at my midwife this morning showed that I have preclampsia (a condition in pregnancy which involves high blood pressure and other factors). I am doing ok, but I need to stop running around so much. I usually have really low blood pressure and have all through the rest of my pregnancy, so we are taking this spike quite seriously. I have been transferred to doctors at Saddleback, where I will deliver. Testing they did this afternoon looked much better, but they will still be monitoring me closely.

Baptism

It has been a subject of ongoing discussion in our familiy whether to baptise or not. Disciples of Christ do not do infant baptism and Lutherans do. My family wanted very much to have this child baptized as an infant, but were respecfully waiting on our decision (with frquent asking and nudging, but respectful nonetheless). I have long felt more identified as DOC or UCC myself, but I still enjoy the liturgy and traditions I was raised with in the Lutheran church. Timothy is very attached to DOC and really wasn't very comfortable with infant baptism or having a child baptized in a church we aren't going to be regular members of, even if my parents are very involved there. Suddenly he struck on an idea for compromise: UCC churches do infant baptism and that is one of the only differences between the sister churches of DOC and UCC. We can find a UCC church near our new home and have our dear one baptized there. That way, it is still a community of faith they are likely to be raised in, but my family gets to experience the baptism they so desire. I love solutions where everyone can be happy!

3rd Trimester

I am so excited to be in the third trimester. I am now entering week 30. Theoretically only 10 weeks to go, if he is on time. It would not be unusual for him to come a little early, since preemies tend to have preemies, but first babies often like to stay in the warm, comfy womb. They say anytime 2 weeks before or after the due date is still really on time. I guess he will come when he is ready.

I have been busily teaching. I am getting sad to leave my class, but so excited for Alexander to arrive! We are having fun preparing for the move to North Hollywood, but it seems like it will all happen so fast! Such a busy, happy time!

The wallpaper for the nursery arrived, but it was misprinted. Somehow the stars were outlined in black rather than antiqued gold. If it doesn't work out, we will just paint the walls as we were originally planning and use the cute border. Here are the patterns. (You will definitely have to click enlarge photo to see them well)

Border:

http://www.ihdg.net/global/content/findwallpaper/detail.asp?pid=40846160#

Paper:
http://www.ihdg.net/global/content/findwallpaper/detail.asp?pid=40845330#

I am getting so anxious to meet my son!

So glad that I'm okay now!

I had a very unpleasant experience on abou April 12th. It felt like all my internal organs were being pushed around, which does in fact make sense. Unfortunately I also had a stabbing pain anywhere from my lower belly to the top. The pain was sometimes in one location and other times wrapped around my belly. On that Saturday night through that Sunday morning, it was accompanied by cramping in my back, mostly my shoulder blades. I might have gotten half an hour of sleep all night, in five minute bursts before the pain got bad enough to awaken me again. I have a very high pain tolerance normally and do not cry in response to pain, but I was actually crying from this. I was positive that it wasn't preterm labor. In fact, it felt like the opposite of a contraction. It got better on Sunday and I only had mild pain that night and yesterday morning. Unfortunately on Monday, right about the time I was supposed to start teaching, it became accute again and I practically collapsed into a chair in the faculty lounge. My colleagues sent me home and the science teacher took my class for the day. I called the midwife and she said we needed to watch this. I had another attack at night, but it didn't last as long. The midewife thought it might be problems with my gall bladder or somesuch, and, due to insurance, sent my to see my primary care physician. Apparently it is not uncommon for women to develop problems with their gall bladder during pregnancy. I had an abdominal ultrasound and bloodtests. We determined that it was, in fact, a gall bladder attack. They are thankfully disinclined toward surgery with me being very pregnant. With lots of prayer, I got through and have not had an attack since. People kept asking about what I had been eating, but that was all really normal. Nothing super highfat or hard on my digestion. I think my darling one may just have kicked my gall bladder. Hopefully there will be no further problems.

Baby update

Wow, I have been so busy! School took over my life for awhile, but is hopefully settling down. Alexander is getting so big (and therefore so am I)! He is perfectly healthy and I'm doing well, too. He is moving so much lately and other people can feel him move now too. On Easter Sunday, he moved a lot during the liturgical dance. He always gets very active when I am watching dance or eurythmy, which is interesting. It was so beautiful to have Timothy on one side and mom on the other, each with a hand on my belly, while Alexander did his own liturgical dance.

I can't believe I am almost in the third trimester! Time has gone by so swiftly! I am already 25 weeks. I am starting to get tired again, but not the same way as I was in the first trimester and, thankfully, there isn't illness this time!

We are looking forward with great joy to moving to North Hollywood. Hopefully over Spring break (which isn't until the second week in April) we can go see the house again. I am so glad things are working out so that I can stay home with Alexander. It will truly be an amazing gift! There is so much to do, but it does all seem to be falling into place. I'm sure God's plan is going just fine for us.

Blessings!

Visit to the midwife

I had another lovely visit to the midwife. Mom came with us and Tim was able to be there, too. I am glad that Mom likes BJ. It was nice to have her there to hear the heartbeat.

We get to schedule the second ultrasound soon. I discovered that it is with a doctor who does such things all day, rather than with BJ. She said that they will measure the baby's development, hopefully be able to see what sex the baby is and such. I was also ecited to hear from mom that if we can't see on this ultrasound, she will help us get the 3-D kind. We are all really excited to know what kind of baby we are having. While we really just want a healthy one, I will say that it would be much easier to have a girl first. There are 3 families saving clothess that their baby has outgrown and all of them are girls! Of course there are always a few more neutral things that will work anyway, but it would be nice to get to use all the cute fluffy things people have given us.

Yesterday, we also signed the paperwork to turn down the birth defect screening. We decided that since they were not defects we could heal that it would only make it hard to know this early. I suppose some people decide not to have the child, but it is a decision we would not make in any event. We also decided that since I am not in the age group that routinely gets an amniocentisis, it is not worth the risk.

The week before last, I started to feel the baby move. It feels like a little hummingbird inside me. It is very magical. I can hardly wait for when other people can feel the baby move, too.

I have nearly fnished Spiritual Midwifery and I am continuing to enjoy Your Pregnancy Week-by-Week. It is fun to read how big the baby is and what is developing. We are at 18 weeks now, so about four months and two weeks. I look very pregnant already and it is fun. I will have to post pictures soon.

Well, I am now entering my 15th week of pregnancy. Thankfully the morning sickness has abated! I am feeling more energetic generally, though I haven't been sleeping as well for the past couple of days. I think getting back into the swing of teaching has been hard, but I will find the rhythm again soon. Apparently the baby was the size of a peach last week and by the end of this week will be as big as a softball! If I concentrate and gently press in where the midwife uses the baby monitor, I have just started to be able to feel movement a little bit. Apparently in the next couple of weeks I will be able to feel the child move more readily.

Over the holidays I discovered a message from my midwife that my body was in ketosis, a starvation mode, in which your body burns muscle rather than fat. Tim had been concerned that I was not eating enough, but we then tried even harder to make sure I was getting enough calories to support the baby and I. At our last visit to the midwife, she declared that what we were doing seemed to have worked and encouraged me to keep eating. We are excited that I can now eat a little bit of chicken, since in the last few months meat of any kind has sounded horrible.

I took a fall last Sunday and had a less major one on the Wednesday before. Time to slow down, make sure I am hanging on to something on stairs and uneven ground. Even though I was scared at the time, the baby and I are perfectly fine. I was so reassuring to hear our little one's heartbeat on Monday afternoon at the visit to our midwife.

I am busily reading the books Spiritual Midwifery, Active Birthing and Your Pregnancy Week-by-Week. This morning at a friend's house, I have picked up The Diaper Free Baby. There are many things that make more sense to me about how childbirth and parenting are dealt with in other societies and this is just one more example. In many countries, I have discovered, children are potty-trained by the time they are one years old. While the name of the book might lead one to think that it is about not diapering at all, in reality it is about learning to recognize the signs that your child needs to use the restroom and taking them to do that, rather than having them go in their diapers. Certainly an interesting concept and I am fascinated to learn more.

I am getting more and more excited about this baby and it is feeling ever more real!

I will try to update again soon.