Our Halloween/ Abram's 2nd B-day
The last two weeks have been a hectic, great time with a holiday, a wedding, a birthday, and Julip turning 3 months old the day of Halloween! For the sake of this post, let's start at the very beginning. Abram's birthday party was set for the day after Halloween months ago; due to our good friend getting married the weekend of his actual birthday.
Party Pics {Abram's Up/ Adventure Birthday Party}
I made a GIANT tissue paper garland that I hung over our island and the appetizers. It took some time, but I am going to split it up and put one in the game room and keep some for holidays or something. I also had a timeline of pics on the fireplace and Abram's Ikea tent and teepee set up for the young kids adventure areas.
Introducing Abram Mack!
On Wednesday, November 7th, we ate one last quiet meal with our families and then headed to the hospital, at 8 pm, to be induced. On the way to the room I reminded Matt to take it all in because the day we had been so excited about was finally here and would pass way to quickly.
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They hooked me up to the machines, and gave me the IV and Cervidil. The plan was to watch a movie, get some rest, and get an epideral after they gave me the pitocin at 2 am. At 11 pm {in the middle of the movie}, the intense contractions started and there was no turning back...I didn't know what hit me at first. Something felt seriously wrong! I tried not to be a baby so I was holding off on asking for an epideral. I hate the 1-10 pain scale...they say 10 is death and I don't know about you but I have no clue what death feels like! When the nurse realized that I was crying at every contraction, she informed me that it may take half an hour to get the anesthesiologist ..I told her to make the call.
At 12:30 am, after an hour and a half of breathing/crying through intense contractions my savior walked into the room to give me the epideral. I am so glad Matt and I knew some breathing techniques to get us through the hard times. Getting the epideral wasn't nearly as bad as the contractions, but it is really hard to round your back when you have a big belly in the way. I held as still as possible through several contractions while the guy did his thing to my back. The right side never fully went numb so I tried laying on that side to get more medicine to it so I could rest. I was 4 cm at this point.
At 2 am they started a light dose of pitocin, and by 4 am I was 10 cm and fully effaced. I know. My body worked pretty quickly. Abram was still pretty high {story of my pregnancy} so they had me continue to labor him down until 7 am, when the doctor came in to finish breaking my water {which had partially broken a couple hours before} and up the pitocin a little. He estimated that I would have the baby by noon. He had several patients in the hospital that day so he was trying to plan around everyone. A few minutes later I started feeling intense contractions on my right side, and then the epideral machine started to beep that it was out of medication.
You have got to be kidding me!
Again, I am so glad I had learned the basics of breathing through contractions. Since I could feel them at almost full force again, I felt like the time was coming to push. I commend the women of the past/present that do this naturally. I once thought that I may be one of those, but after having felt both ways I will take the drugs thanks! At 7:45 I got a booster shot to help with the pain so I could start pushing. After 10 minutes of pushing, Abram Mack was here, at 8:06 am...weighing 7 lbs. 12 oz. and 20 inches long. Oh and did I mention he came about 4 hours before the doctor estimated? Our boy was ready and was the first of our doctors patients to be born that day! Over achiever...
Afterwards the dr. worked his magic while Matt cut the cord and held Abram for the first time. I let him announce the name to everyone. We had a few other names on a list (Grey and Easton), but had liked the name Abram since I got pregnant and finally realized that it was his name no matter how much we looked around for others. We liked that it wasn't common, but not made up sounding either. It is a strong, masculine name and it doesn't end in a "t" (Matt's requirement). Mack was Matt's grandpa's nickname that his grandma always called him.
No one could tell who he looked like...the perfect combination. When they placed him on the scale all you could see was the quad and calf muscles on his long, bow legs. His feet are long {unlike mine} and his thumb nail looks like a miniature duplicate of Matt's. He has a definite widow's peak which he gets from both momma and daddy, as well as his top lip. His ball chin is totally Matt's and his ears are more like mine. The verdict is still out on his nose and the final color his eyes will be {born with dark blue}. His coloring is much lighter than many people thought it would be...I guess my light genes are stronger than some thought.
The first time I held him in my arms was amazing. I thought I would cry {like I always think}, and honestly if there wasn't a room full of medical people, I would have. As soon as I spoke he looked straight at me with his slightly crossed, blue eyes and mouth open like he recognized my voice and knew it was me. It is a moment I never want to forget.
We are having a....!
Yay, now I can go shopping and start decorating ;).
Two Boxes of Candles
It has been a busy couple of weeks on the Design/ Build front. The week before this past one we started our pre-assembly of our steel structure in the shop; putting up columns and the compound beam which weighed over 1,000 pounds. We also finished my "boats" for the inside of my form work.
This past weekend was a studio friend's Pub Golf Birthday Party and Matt's 25th Birthday. Friday night we played pub golf which basically required us to go from bar to bar in Mid Town, Houston and order specific drink and take them in a certain number of sips (par). Matt won because he was the only one still worried about par by the end...and because he bought Jennifer a shot. The next morning we left for Lafayette to celebrate Matt's birthday. We grilled some burgers at his house and while sitting there talking, decided to take his dad's new rug van out on the town. It became our "club in a van" and was so much fun!
This past week at school, we began assembling our floor and roof beams. Putting a beams above our heads completely changed the feel of our entire structure. We also...da da da....FINISHED THE CISTERN form work and wire mesh reinforcement...it is now affectionately known as my 800 pound baby. While working on our cistern copper pipes, Aatique, Simone, and I were photographed and made it to the front page of our school newspaper. Now it just has to be fitted to the site and poured. We are still behind schedule due to our engineer at the beginning and have started working until 6:30 to try and get more work done. We shall see...let's cross our fingers that some magic happens. Until next time...
Niks
