Baby's First Thanksgiving

What a tumultuous week this has been. I don't think any more could have went wrong if we tried. On Tuesday night Noel was trying to run cable to our greatroom and he went down to the basement. Well, we have these pressurized water holding tanks because we have to pump water up the hill to our house and then store it in the pressurized tanks in the basement so we have water pressure in the house. Noel comes back upstairs and tells me we have a water leak. I thought he had maybe drilled a little hole in a pipe or something and gave him Mighty Putty to fix it. Yeah right. When I went down stairs I saw that one whole tank had broken off of its pipe and was laying on the floor. I don't think Mighty Putty would save it. So Noel had to shut off the water. We used the remaining water in the other tank and then we were without. Noel went out that evening and got a part and got the tank hooked back to the pipe, but the tank still lacked pressure. We have no pump so we borrowed the neighbors' bicycle pump, yeah that did not work. We needed an air compressor. Wed. rolls around and Noel has to work. He had to go with barely any shower. He used some of my BedHead to slick down his hair. Nice. Anyway, that evening my folks felt sorry for us and came down early to help us out. When they arrived Wed. evening, Dad pumped up the tank with the air compressor but the water still would not work so they went to the bottom of the hill to check the pump. When they got in the pumphouse they saw that the pump had exploded and water was shooting out of it. Our best guess is that when Noel shut off the water at the tank the pressure built up and blew the pump. So it is too late to get a part for the pump, no water again. Thur. nothing is open to get a part so Noel and Dad go to a family owned grocery store that is above a hardware store owned by the same family. Thank goodness the owner let Noel in the hardware store to get the part. I think he felt sorry for us on Thanksgiving. So they got the part and we had water not long after that. Everything is back to normal and I start cooking for my dinner for 23 peeps on Saturday. Fast forward to Fri. All is going well on Fri. and Mom and I go to Sams and get more food for my dinner. When we get home I continue to prepare. About 8 o'clock, the house goes black. The power is out, and it's not just a flash like sometimes happens. So we get out the oil lamp and candles and wait. Oh yeah, and did I mention that our heat is electric? Our whole house runs on electricity. So about 9 something we went on to bed. Every time through the night Ruby woke me up, though I prayed, there was still no electricity. It is cold in the house at that point and the three of us are snuggled up together. Ruby sucked all the heat out of me and did not even notice it was cold! We woke in the morn with no power and decided to postpone dinner until Sun. Every time we called the power company the time power was supposed to be restored was extended. Finally about 11:15 am we got power back. So Sun. I had my dinner and it was a great time and went off without a hitch. My parents went back to White Sulphur Springs that night and my Dad got pulled over for speeding and hit a deer. After he called to tell us that, to ice the cake, I got a sick stomach and spent some quality time in the bathroom. Hell of a week.


Ruby the morning of no power. She is too cute in her little hat!


PP, Ruby, and Maxwell are worn out from all the work, or was it the turkey?


Ruby and Nannie resting.


Ruby laid back with her Unc. Check the adorable turkey day outfit!

My Baby Story Part IV

When 4:00 am rolled around, my nurse was helping her other patient deliver so I buzzed the nurses' station and told them I needed my pitocin! My nurse was done shortly and brought it to me. She put it in my IV and the fun was about to begin. I hadn't felt that birth was imminent until then. I had to admit to Noel that I was in fact scared. That was the first time since I arrived at the hospital that I was scared. Drip, drip, drip went the pitocin. At some point when the contractions started getting a good deal stronger, I noticed that pain was shooting through my left labia. I thought, wait a minute here, why am I feeling anything? I let my nurse know what was going on and was informed that I had a hot spot. I think a hot spot is caused when a nerve in the spine is not taking to the medication from the epidural. The pain in my labia was increasing as the contractions were getting stronger. In fact, when the contractions got really strong, I actually had to breathe through the pain in my labia like I learned in child birth class because it hurt pretty bad--but not as bad as without an epidural. The anesthesiologist came back in and gave me a couple more shots for the pain and told me that when you have a hot spot it feels like all of the pain is concentrated in that one little area--no kidding. None the less, time moved on and it was time for my nurse to go home. I hated to see her go because she treated me so well. You know, it's not everyone that would go wet a towel and wipe your a** every time you used a bed pan, get excited about how much you peed, and tell you to "let it rip, tater chip" every time you farted. That takes a very special nurse and we were very blessed to have her. The nurse that replaced mine was as nice as can be too, but I must admit I was a little daunted when I saw how gorgeous she was. Here I am with my legs all up in the air cresting well over 200 lbs., using a bed pan, and just in general looking nasty and I find out my new nurse is a former Miss West Virginia, yep you read right, Miss West Virginia. Well nothing to do about that so moving on, she checks my progress and finds that I am almost adequate (ready to push). My water had not broken yet and she got out the crochet hook for my doctor to break it when she arrived. However, crochet hook not needed because Miss West Virginia accidentally broke it the next time she checked me. The gush of warm liquid was a weird but welcome feeling. It meant we were one step closer....

Ruby and her Poppy, I couldn't decide which one I liked best.

1 Month Old

I can't believe it but my little baby is one month old today. It's so exciting to watch her grow, but on the other hand it breaks my heart that time passes so quickly. I swear it feels like I just had her yesterday. Today truly has been bittersweet, but I don't want to waste a day being sad.

Ruby is out of newborn clothes for sure. She can hold her head up. She grunts like no other and it's hilarious. She is the best thing that ever happened to us and we love her more than life itself. I never believed I could love someone so much.

My Baby Story Part III

When the doctor came in to give me an epidural, he had a nurse anesthetist in training with him. But since the doctor was in a hurry because he had to go to a small child in the OR he did the epidural himself and wasted no time doing it. I bet he had it done in less than two minutes. Less than two minutes to ease such pain. I call him Dr. Feelgood. The epidural kicked in almost immediately and I was feeling much better. The nice nurse I had agreed to let me see if I could pee in a bedpan instead of getting a catheter. Good news, I could pee on my own, so no catheter! The nurse had me laying flat on my back because she told me the pain medication was positional and if I sat up it would go lower than my abdomen where I needed it. So I'm laying there and watching my contractions on the monitor. The contractions were getting weaker probably because of the epidural. So the nurse called my doctor and she said to start me on a pitocin drip at 4:00 am. So now began the waiting for the pitocin. Noel managed to sleep on the bench in the room. He ripped the padding off of the wall behind the bench (it was velcro) to make the bench wider. He complained a lot too! I tried to sleep but it was hard with a million cords coming out of/ off of me. I had the epidural, the blood pressure cuff, the monitors for the baby, the heart monitor for me, the IV, and an oxygen mask. Oh yeah, I forgot about the oxygen mask and I can't exactly remember what that was for. I did fall asleep for a little bit but when I woke up I had positioned by arm all wrong and the IV was backed up. Dag that smarted. When I couldn't sleep I was lucky that there was Gunsmoke on TVLand--not just one episode either--several! I felt like we were right at home. None the less, I was just biding my time until 4:00 am....



Baby's first tub bath. She was unsure, but isn't that to be expected?

My Baby Story Part II

By the time Noel came back I was definitely in labor. When he got back the first thing he wanted to do was finish watching Gunsmoke. He now says the last two minutes tied the whole show together. Noel says this whole Gunsmoke thing is not true, but that's how I remember it. After that show, I told him to turn it off and he did. We waited here at the house until the contractions were five minutes a part for two hours. The contractions were really getting strong and actually were coming even closer together and Noel demanded we leave right then. When we got to the hospital at 5:00 pm we went to the labor and delivery floor and told the guard I was in labor. The guard then opened the doors and told me to go to triage. I had to go by myself and that was strange to be in labor and be walking down the hall looking for triage by myself! Triage was full so they went ahead and put me in a birthing room. The nurse assigned to me was all business. Noel was able to come in thirty minutes later. By this time, my contractions were really ramping up and I thought I must be getting ready to have the baby! haha! Yeah right! I was only 3 cm dilated! OMG I couldn't believe it. Luckily nurse Ratchet was off duty at 7:30 pm and the nicest nurse in the world came in and took over. I decided to go walk the halls to help the contractions along and oh boy did that help them along! They were so strong and close together I thought I was going to puke. I was in the hall holding on to Noel's neck on the verge of insanity! Oh, yeah and we had a trash can in case I puked. So I made the decision to go back to the room. We walked around the room instead of the hall. That lasted for a while and then I made the decision to get an epidural....


Our sleeping baby.

Napping with Daddy.

The past two days she has spent much more time awake--believe it or not by looking at these pics!

My Baby Story

I think I better get this down because I think some things are getting fuzzy already. So here goes...

Let me start from my due date of Thursday, October 16, 2008. On Thursday I went into the Dr.'s office for a non stress test to make sure Little Ruby was OK since she had hit her due date and had not come. After the test I was informed that she was beautiful and doing beautifully. Cool. When I came home, I continued my work out regime of walking, squats, lunges, hip swirls, and sitting on the birthing ball. Friday evening I felt the urge to make a big dinner. I ended up making a Thanksgiving type dinner on Friday and it about killed me. On Friday night, October 18, 2008, I noticed I was feeling a little strange. My back and abdomen were cramping and the cramps did not go away when I changed position or when I fell asleep and woke up again. That had never happened before so I thought maybe something was going on. Saturday morning we got out of bed and I was definitely feeling strange and I was having little bitty contractions that were completely irregular, but this was the first time I had contractions more regular than a sporadic one here and there. I got into one of my pregnancy books and found that it could still be a while until hospital time so we went about our business Saturday morning. We went to the grocery store and picked up a few items and went to the library to borrow a DVD set of Gunsmoke that Noel had been jonesing for. We came back home and began the waiting. The contractions started becoming more noticeable and regular. We watched Gunsmoke. The contractions got stronger. We took another walk and that really made the contractions stronger and every time I went to the bathroom a contraction would come on no matter how irregular. Anyway, the contractions started to get uncomfortable and maybe a little painful and Noel was still watching Gunsmoke. He wanted to hear the commentary before the show but couldn't get it to work right so we ended up listening to the theme song over and over again. I thought I might throw the DVDs out of the window! Next thing you know the phone rings and it's a tenant telling Noel that the pilot light is not lit. Noel told her that I was in labor and the girl said it could wait until the next day. Well that would not work because we'd have a newborn the next day so I told Noel to hurry up and go light the pilot and get back as fast as he could!

To be continued...

Ruby and her Great Grandfather.