Baby Christopher and False Alarm

Part 1 - Baby Christopher

My darling nephew Christopher Austin Rankin was born on Friday and is the most precious thing ever! He's looks so little and smells so fresh and new! He weighed in at 8 lbs. 13 oz. and was just under 22 inches long I believe, so not a teensy baby, but still looks tiny to me! I can't imagine Mia being so tiny and new soon and she'll probably (hopefully!) be even smaller!

Here's Christopher and Mia's first pictures together. I think they're BFF's already! :)

Christopher and Mia hanging out together. Such cuteness snuggled up next to each other! They even look about the same size, don't they!?!? Yikes!!!

Oh my goodness, he could SO totally fit in there - oh me oh my!!! :)

Part 2 - False Alarm

So on Monday I went into work and worked on getting things cleaned out of my classroom. My sister Tiffany and little nephew Nathan came with to help out while Mish and Jeff were in the hospital with baby Christopher. Two good friends from work, Carrie and Stacey also came and helped - THANKS LADIES, YOU ROCK!!! :) We got a ton done and probably have just one more day to finish up. Nathan had fun playing with Stacey's cute boys and was no trouble at all.

Well, after we finished we dropped off Tiff and Nathan to Mish and Christopher at home and then I headed home and vacuumed, did the dishes, swept the kitchen floor, folded and put away laundry, sorted out the junk drawer in the kitchen, and cooked dinner. Yup, totally in the nesting phase.

Well, just before Zeus got home at 5 I started having contractions. I started timing them and they were coming at a regular 3-5 minutes apart and lasted between 20 and 60 seconds. So I'm timing them and timing them and timing them and starting to wonder what's going on with my body and wondering if maybe Mia's getting ready to come. I'd had the conversation with her earlier in the day that she needed to come before Friday or after Monday since daddy might be going out of town and we'd hate for him to miss her birth. I was wondering at that point if she'd actually been listening! :)

So, I called my mom and she didn't seem worried and since she's a nurse, Zeus wasn't worried at all either - which was SO not what I needed/wanted from him right then. I'm sitting there having contractions every 3 minutes and starting to freak out because my body's doing all these strange things that it's never done before and I start wondering if baby Mia's thinking about coming. I pulled out the baby book just before we eat dinner and it says that if you're having contractions lasting that long and that close together to go ahead and go in or call the doctor. Zeus had to go take his dad back to the nursing home and was acting like it was no big deal, so I'm starting to get frustrated and irritated and worried. I called the after hours clinic and they paged the nurse to call me back. She called me back after a while and asked me some questions and they says she'll page the doctor on call (which actually happened to be our regular doctor) and call me back. That whole process took about an hour and they said to go ahead and come in. At that point I realize that as excited as I am to become a mom, I perhaps wasn't AS ready as I thought to have her RIGHT this second! :) I still wanted to get so much done - pictures of Zeus and I with the prego belly, cleaning out the guest room for company, etc, etc, etc! :)

So I decided AT LEAST better get a belly pic before we headed in, so here's what we looked like on Monday.

Definitely getting better and more and more ready to make her awaited debut in a few weeks!

My little round basketball baby belly. Kinda cute, eh? The reason I HAD to put these tummy tank pictures up is to reassure my 2 blog viewers that the picture below is just a fluke horrid photo, and that I actually AM looking and feeling good for the most part. *WARNING* Please prepare yourself mentally before scrolling down to the following picture. It is NOT cute, so prepare yourself for an extreme physical reaction! (Don't worry, no nudity or gore, just pure UG!)

Yeah, apparently Zeus will NOT be allowed to take pictures of the birth or delivery - at least of me! (One may wonder if he did it on purpose just for that reason...) Jeez Louise that's a horrid shot! Granted, I had these two monitors strapped on my belly under the blanket to monitor Mia's heartbeat and my contractions, but hot dang! Could it really get ANY grosser? The term "beached whale" comes to mind!

So, they checked me (OUCH!) and then we waited an hour and drank lots of water and then then my doctor came in and checked me again (OWIE!) but my cervix was still closed, so we got dressed and headed home. Guess Mia's not quite ready to come yet, so mama gets to go home and finish up some things and rest up for her upcoming arrival. :) Sixteen days to go until due date!

On the up side, Zeus is very solicitous now and wants me to take it easy and rest. Easier said than done, but I'm trying to take it a LITTLE bit more easy. It's so fun to do stuff around the house, and I have extra time on my hands now with school being out so it's hard to be too idle.

On the list of things to do today are to upload some pics to COSTCO to get printed and then in a few hours we head to doctors appointments. We go to our last specialist's appointment today and will hopefully be able to get a good view of Mia in the ultrasound, and then to our regular weekly OB appointment to get checked again - oh joy!