still sleepy Harper

Sleepy Harper

4 days old

Harper at 2 days

Harper Elizabeth has arrived!

Saturday, October 25 at 11:56 am, weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces and measuring 19.5 inches long. Lots more to follow but after a 24 hour labor, including 3 hours of pushing, both mom and dad are ready for some sleep!

5 days overdue......

Well, the days keep passing and the baby stays inside. Of course it is rather frustrating but it is a good lesson in how little control we have over these things. Acupuncture is generally thought of as a great way to induce labor and as an acupuncturist, I was certainly counting on it working! But I have had 2 treatments and.....nothing! It has been a great lesson for me to see the limitations and it will give me a lot more insight into how to advise patients who come to me to be induced.

As of Monday, I was 90% effaced and 1 cm dilated. As I am learning in this process, that doesn't necessarily mean very much at all. 90% sounded good to me - that's an "A" right? But apparently you can stay at 90% for quite awhile before labor begins.

Our midwife group has a policy of not letting it's patients go over 41 + 3, so at the very latest, the baby will be here on Monday as I will be induced Sunday night. This is a situation I would very much like to avoid because I am not interested in taking any of the medications involved in induction. However, if it comes to it, I will go along with it without protest. If I'm still pregnant on Sunday there's a good chance I'll be up for anything.

We'll keep you posted!

Not quite New England colors....

But it is still pretty amazing. This picture was taken October 12 at a hiking trail through a canyon not far from our house. Oscar is wearing his fancy new harness that we had to get him to prevent him from pulling me all around in my enlarged condition. Somehow he ends up in all of our pictures but he's not much for posing for the camera. Hopefully the baby won't take after him in that way.

So long October 17!

The highly anticipated day has come and gone and our baby is still happily inside. She is kicking me in the ribs and stretching out in all kinds of directions and giving no indication that she would prefer to be anywhere else. (Not that we would really know the signs). Most, or many, first pregnancies, go overdue so we should not have been surprised. My sister Amy was a week early with both of her boys so I had gotten it into my head that there would be some kind of family similarity. There wasn't and that's okay.

We will keep you posted and hopefully our wait will not be much longer! Now that we have made it to this day, Andy has requested that she remains inside until after tomorrow Browns v. Redskins game. I will do what I can.

Thank you so much for your thoughts & prayers!