Yesterday afternoon, Grandpa Elmo and my auntie Bev pulled into town. Elmo had two insightful comments upon seeing his granddaughter for the first time.

His first thought….. “Wow, she’s much cuter than I thought she’d be.”

His second thought….. “Look at that dark black hair. It looks just like yours Chrissie. I wonder where she got that from?”

Ok, in his defense, he was tired from driving all day but I still think it was pretty funny none the less.

Leina continues to amaze. I think my favorite thing she does right now is her pooping face. She looks like she’s trying to move heaven and earth which is pretty funny since the results are much smaller. Who knew something as simple as a poop could be so entertaining?

Yes, I can finally report that my sweet baby girl is finally here. After yearning and dreaming for the last nine months, all my wishes came true, and I held her in my arms for the first time on August 7th at 2:20am. Unbelievable.

The action actually began early Wed morning when we checked into the hospital a litttle after 12am for an induction. The drugs began and the race was off! Most of Wed was pretty easy. Kevin and I were just waiting for my body to warm up and get the labor started. We watched tv and even read! Contractions were mild and every 5 minutes apart so they were easy to handle. Unfortunately, “easy” labor does not equal a baby so they brought in the pitocin to speed things up. And boy did it! By 7pm the contractions had gone from mild/annoying to painful so I called in the big gun and got my first epidural around 8:30pm.

Yup, that’s right, my first epi. That one only lasted about an hour and wasn’t very effective. I kept waiting for the elusive numbing but it never came. Instead, everything got stronger. Now, once you get an epidural you are bed bound because at that point you can’t feel your legs which makes walking a little hard. For me, I found my labor getting harder and harder, and I couldn’t get up and move around to try and easy the pain. Instead, all I could do was stay in the bed and try to cope. Thankfully, we had a wonderful nurse who saw my distress and said, “honey, if you’re going to get an epidural, get the Cadillac version.” And with that she left to find the anesthesialogist. He fiddled with the equipment and up’d my dose but it wasn’t working so around 10:30 pm he took it out and decided to try again.

Now, when that epi was removed, whoa baby! I got a taste of what some real labor pain was like and it was unreal. Thankfully, the epi man moved quickly and this time he hit the nerve right on the head. By 1am, I was a happy happy girl with absolutely no sensation below my belly button. Since I looked so good, the nurse decided to take her break and Kevin decided to take a nap.

You can see this coming, right?

No sooner had the nurse closed the door and Kevin closed his eyes when something really strange happened. Mini-Me did what felt like a crazy dance in my belly and I suddenly felt the need to push. Bad. So at 1:10am after everyone had settled into a break, baby decided to make her move. Our temp nurse checked me and flew into action. I had gone from 5cm to fully dilated and effaced in about two hours. In fact, baby was at +2 station which meant she had fully decended and her head was ready to pop. Only problem was, dad was asleep, nurse was on break, and doctor was at home.

This kid had us moving fast which turned out to be a good thing! We roused Kevin, recalled the nurse, and paged the doctor. Within minutes, everyone was ready and it was time to push. Now, after watching Maternity Ward for the last 9 months, I was ready for the worst. But baby was ready and there was no holding back. Under an hour later, out she came. My 8 lb 8 oz bundle of joy was here! Leina Jane McLaughlin.

So 26 hours, 2 epis, and a ton of pitocin later, our daughter is here.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

This is not a test of the emergency pregnancy system. This is the real thing! Chrissie is officially past her due date (last Sunday) and is ready to pop. Everything is looking good so JT wanted to get one last shot of the belly. I like to think of this picture setup as my homage to Andy Warhol. Like the soup cans printed in different colors here is chrissie with different stomachs.

		4 Months
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	7 Months					9 Months

It’s hard to keep a pregnant women down. Between gardening in the cool mornings, walking the dog and keeping up with JT I’m surprised Chrissie still has time to be pregnant. Hopefully just a few more days until the baby arrives. We’ll keep you updated.

So this morning, I fell down the stairs. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sound. I actually only fell down two stairs but it was enought to scare the beegeebees out of Kevin and Artie.

The last few weeks, Mini-Me has settled her cubby little butt right on my bladder. This means that about every three hours I have to pee. It gets especially bad at night because I think she likes to practice her kick boxing moves on my bladder while I’m trying sleep. As a result, I’ve been having lots of dreams where I’m looking for a bathroom. I ignore it as long as I can but eventually I have to lug my huge belly out of bed. Since we sleep in a converted attic, the nearest bathroom is down a flight of steps. Normally, I can manuever these no problem. But then, I’m not exactly “normal” right now, eh?

The real problem is that I can’t see my feet anymore when I walk. I feel like one of the Ms. USA contestents who have to walk down the steps to the stage in a long gown and heels without looking at their feet. You can tell they’re really concentrating. Now, this analogy doesn’t quite hold up as I am 1)not in a gown 2) not wearing heels and 3) the farthest thing from beautiful at 3am. So I pretty much stumble out of bed and slowly lumber down the stairs like a blind person. Feel for the stair, plant foot, shift weight, THUNK. Feel for stair, plant foot, shift weight, THUNK. It’s a slow process made even more maddening by the fact that I reeeeeeealy need to pee.

This morning, it was the usual pregnant shuffle but when I got to the end of the stairs, I got lazy. I’m not sure what happened really. I put my foot out and somehow it missed the stair and next thing I knew I was flying forward. Luckily for baby, I landed in my hands and knees with a very loud THUD. Poor Kevin immediately called downstairs, “Chrissie, are you ok?” To which I replied (while lying at the bottom of the stairs), “yeah, I just fell down the stairs.”

“You WHAT?!?!!!!” Kevin yelled as I heard him jump out of bed and run to the stairs. Artie, of course, was also roused by Kevin’s yell and I could hear him pounding across the room as well.

Suddenly I had this mental image of Kevin and Artie running head first down the stairwell only to land on me as I lay on the ground below wondering how I was going to get up. (Another side benefit of being hugely pregnant is that rising from a lying positions takes extreme will power. Sort of like breaking the gravitational pull of the the earth.)

Thankfully, Kevin and Artie both managed to miss be when they reached the bottom of the stairs. Kevin pulled me up and we examed my poor self. The only damage was to my poor bruised knees and stained wrists. Baby was fine and seemed to enjoy the ride because she began kick boxing my bladder with her usual force.

Needless to say, we had a hard time falling back to sleep after that little adventure. Well, Artie didn’t seem to have a problem but I don’t think he really counts. Kevin wants me to sleep downstairs from now on so he won’t have to worry about me making to the bathroom anymore. I think my poor knees join in his request. But hey, I’m a live on the wild side kind of girl, what can I say? Besides, the is bound to pop soon, right? Right?

Little known fact about ice cream – it’s the fifth food group. Nobody ever talks about it but every nutritionalist worth his/her salt knows you can’t live without ice cream.

After a long hard day at the office, a warm comforting meal from your loving spouse, and a jaunty walk with the pooch there’s nothing like settling down to a hot night with a cool bowl of ice cream. Unless, of course, there isn’t any. Unless, it’s all been eaten by that loving spouse. Now I’m not complaining, no sir. If your loving spouse has been carrying around a baby that is, as JT puts it, “content where she is” then that spouse has a perfect right, on these hot summer days, to eat ice cream morning, noon and night. But, I do take offense that the warning about the serious lack of ice cream in the freezer came not after the dishes were done, not after the blog was blogged, but AFTER the dog was walked and it was time to settle down for the evening. This is not the time to point out there is no chocolate, there is no vanilla, there is no carmel fudge cherry sorbet. For those wondering, the time is when the husband walks in the door from the long hard day at work:

“Hi dear, dinner’s cooking – and I ate all the ice cream (tee hee).”

“That’s ok my incredibly wonderful and adoring wife. I know it’s hot and you’ve been working hard even though that cute little baby just won’t budge. There’s nothing like a cool bowl of ice cream to make you feel a better, isn’t there. I’ll stop by the store after I walk to dog and pick us up some more!”

Now in a perfect world, that’s the way it should be. But alas we don’t live in a perfect world, we actually live in a house without ice cream. Luckily the store is just around the corner, and I’m about to go get me some 🙂

Thanks to our awesome friends, Kat and Josh, we got to see a sneak preview of Russell Crowe’s new movie Master and Commander: Farside of the World. It has the worlds longest title but it was great!

It’s based on the books by Patrick O’Brian about Capt. “Lucky” Jack Aubry and his good friend Dr. Stephen Maturin aboard the HMS Surprise. The movie centers around Aubry’s pursuit of the French (American in the book) privateer Echeron around the Horn (of South America) and into the Pacific (aka the Farside of the World). There are amazing naval battles, brutal in their intensity and realism, with guns blazing and pistols cracking. The sound was magnificent, it made you feel the cannonballs go wizzing by. I had very high expectations for the movie, if it was to live up to the books and it delivered. It isn’t a watered down pirate movie, but a realistic historical drama. It captures the horror and drudgery of life aboard a King’s ship as well as the glory and the honor.

But be warned, this movie is not for the faint of heart. It’s not gory by any means but it is realistic – there are broken bones and gunshots but not a lot of blood. If you’re an Aubry fan you won’t be dissapointed, and you’ll be happy to know they included the spotted dog…