Sophie

We're all in love with baby Sophie. She's just beautiful, adorable, funny, cute, etc.

Whenever Tali looks at her she says, "She's SO pretty!" She also constantly reminds me to tell her when I'm changing her diaper because she wants to watch. I don't know what's so enthralling about it, but she stands there the whole time, analyzes the color and size, and always takes the diaper to the trash for me.

Tali has had a few moments of looking for attention, but for having been the "baby" for four years, she's doing remarkable well having a new baby in the house. Toby, on the other hand, acted like a jealous freak dog for three days. I guess he thought he was the baby.

Josh and Liz are totally in love with Sophie also and are very helpful. Liz has been my around-the-house helper. She folded a giant pile of laundry for $10. Josh has been great with letting Tali tag along with him and taking her for walks when he can tall she's starting to get a little clingy or irritating.

Matt has been the biggest blessing of all. He's an amazing dad and a super hard worker. If you know Matt, you know he doesn't like to sit still. He's been hanging with me or the kids, cleaning, bringing me food constantly and taking care of Sophie whenever I can't seem to squeeze in a shower or a nap otherwise.

Sophie seems as healthy as can be. She lost less than half a pound before she started gaining weight again. She eats like a champ and sleeps great for a 6-day-old. I have high hopes that she will continue with that pattern. She has just started really opening her eyes wide and looking around contently.

I am feeling great ... for being 6 days post partum. I feel a little better everyday and will probably do a triathon next week...haha. I did go for a walk around the block yesterday!

We have some incredible friends who have brought us food, shuttled Josh and Liz around, taken Toby for long hikes, and probably convinced Tali to not leave the yard when I wasn't paying attention. All in all, everyone is well...just a little tired...and so happy that Sophie is finally here!

Baby Sophie

Welcome to the world Sophia Ann Novakovich. We'll call her Sophie. She was born June 17, 2010, 20 inches long. I guessed that she weighed 8 lbs even. On her way to the scale, she pooped on the nurse and ended up weighing 7 lbs, 15 ozs. Am I good or what?

The kids have visited her twice. The girls love her, of course. My favorite reaction was Josh's. He wasn't too excited about having another girl in the house, but he was immediately so enthralled with her. He is just in love and ready to take care of me until I'm feeling better. As they left after meeting her for the first time, Josh said, "Thanks for having Sophie, mom!" I have a great video of Tali and Liz inspecting her toes and fingers. Tali is so impressed with how small everything is. I will post it soon.

Sophie and I are both doing well. I'm feeling good and she's just sleepy so far. But when she wakes up, she opens her eyes wide!

The Real Countdown

6:30 p.m. - Matt and I decide to get spicy Thai food for dinner to try to put me into labor.

7:30 p.m. - We leave for the restaurant and I have two really painful contractions on the way there and a few during dinner. Just the thought of Thai food did it!

9:00 p.m. - We get home and I'm having contractions every nine minutes. I watch the end of Planet 51 with the kids, get a little irritable when Liz won't stop tickling my feet, but then giggle with them as they dance to the end credits. Matt puts the kids to bed and calls the babysitter to see if she wants to spend the night. She says yes.

11:00 p.m. - The contractions are about seven minutes apart. They slow if I lay down, but we decide to try to get a little sleep anyway. Matt sleeps soundly and I sleep pretty well despite waking up for every contraction.

2:00 a.m. - I can't "sleep" anymore so I decide to get up and write all this down. The contractions are now eight minutes apart and about a minute long.


How I'm feeling:

The contractions hurt, not too terribly bad but bad enough that I remember what labor feels like and I'm not very excited about it. I kind of wish I had no experience with this so I didn't know what's in store :) I wish baby would go to sleep because all her movement is almost as uncomfortable as the contractions.

I am deciding whether I want to get back in bed and try to sleep through this or walk around the neighborhood to try to speed things up. It's dark right now. It's almost summer solstice so the sun set at 11:40pm and will rise again at 4:20am, which means it should be getting a little bit light in about an hour. Maybe I'll wait 'til then. Toby is hanging out with me but he can't stay awake either :)


3:00 a.m. - I decide to go back to bed and sleep reasonably well for another hour and a half before the contractions get a lot stronger.


4:30 a.m. - I get up and time a few contractions, but they're still seven minutes apart. I'm starving. I have a bowl of Cheerios, write this and time some more contractions.


How I'm feeling:

The contractions are more painful, but I'm doing well breathing through them. It can't get much worse, right? haha The baby is still awake and moving around a lot. It feels like she's trying to kick her way out. I don't feel as tired as I should since it's 5am and I've slept less than four hours broken into small chunks. I just hope the baby is here in a few hours.


5:00 a.m. - The contractions seem to be steadily five minutes apart, so I guess it's time to head to the birth center. Hip hip hooray!! Like I said, I hope the rest of this happens quickly. I've waited long enough!

5:30 a.m. - We meet the midwife and nurse at the Birth Center. I am dilated to 6 cm. Dang it! I was hoping for more like 8! I thought having the fourth baby would be quick!

How I'm feeling:
I'm pretty tired from being up all night! I try to keep walking around because whenever I sit or lay down, I fall asleep between contractions and they start to space out again. The biggest feeling I'm having is impatience. I can't believe how long this is taking! The contractions are painful and my method of getting through them is counting my breaths and telling myself, "It doesn't hurt." Interesting how lying to myself works . . . kinda.

10:30 a.m. - I am finally dilated to 9 cm and am SO ready to have this baby. 11 days overdue and 15 hours into this labor process! I totally didn't expect this. I am a good person, don't I deserve a break?

11:20 a.m. - Sophia "Sophie" Ann Novakovich is born!!!

Why are you still pregnant?

This is the reason I've stopped going to church or anywhere that people know me. They don't always say it so bluntly, but they're wondering is, "Why are you still pregnant? Don't you know that you can schedule babies these days?"

I'll tell you why I'm still pregnant. It's my mom's fault! My midwife said it's hereditary. I might be quicker than average at some things, but it takes me longer than average to cook a baby. Come to think of it, it takes me longer than average to cook a lot of things, like dinner. I don't mean that it takes me two hours to make spaghetti. I mean it takes me about a week to decide I should make dinner one night.

Okay, back on topic . . . why haven't I been induced yet? That's my fault. I knew when I got pregnant that I would probably carry this baby longer than normal. I was induced with Josh when he was seven days late. By some miracle, Liz was just one day late, but then Tali was 10 days late. Knowing full-well that this might happen again, I still chose to see a midwife instead of a doctor and midwives don't induce (at least not the typical pitocin way).

My midwives' office doesn't do anything to induce labor until you're a week late. I think that's general protocol for doctors also, but doctors are more likely to just schedule your induction for their hospital day, especially if you whine enough.

On Monday I had an appointment and was eight days overdue. They checked my anmiotic fluid level - A-okay. They did a non-stress test on the baby - A-okay also! Of course everything is just peachy in there. I have really created a comfortable environment where this girl wants to stay. Then the midwife gave me the option of continuing to be patient or trying to get things rolling along. I was running thin on patience, so we took the roll along option. She stripped my membranes, which helps thin the cervix and employed the use of a balloon catheter. If you're really interested in how that works, you can Google it. Simply put, at the least, it helps you dilate to 4cm. At best it will cause you to go into labor. It was pretty uncomfortable for most of the day, so I thought it was definitely going to put me into labor. At about 6pm, all the discomfort went away and once again, baby was A-okay and totally comfortable. And I was still pregnant.

24 hours later (last night) I was feeling quite crampy and had a terrible headache. I had just been telling Matt that one of the perks of being pregnant for me is that I never get headaches. The sudden change made me think things were changing and I was for sure going into labor soon. I went to bed and woke up at 6am with some pretty strong contractions that were eight minutes apart. Yee haw! This must be it. I stayed in bed until 8am and the contractions continued until about 10am. Then, of course, they just went away. This is about the fourth time this has happened. I'm thinking that since my body seems to have already done all this work, when it finally is time, it will happen very quickly . . . knock on wood.

I can't fathom that I won't have this baby within 1-2 days. It's getting a little ridiculous! But, if I'm not in labor by Friday, I'll go back in for another appointment and we'll decide what to do. Hopefully my next post will go something like this, "Wow, I woke up Thursday morning having contractions, went to the birth center and she was born 45 minutes later!" (Knock on wood again.) Either way, I'll keep you posted.

No baby yet...

The cute little widget disappeared nine days ago because it said, "Your baby is 1 day old." Go figure the perfect little pregnant girl had her baby on her due date :)

Here I am 10 days past my due date and baby girl still isn't one day old. She's still cooking, but I think today might be the day. I've been thinking that for the last two weeks, but today seems like a good day to have a baby! I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, here is another random sampling of what we've been up to over the last month. I thought the last random sampling would tide over until after the baby was born, just like I thought the last four house cleanings and the last 20 loads of laundry would be my last until we had another little girl in our family. No such luck. Every time I get everything ready to go . . . we don't go anywhere. Luckily I'm still laughing about it, most of the time.

In April I spent the weekend in San Francisco with some of my high school best buddies - Pam, Heather and Lizette. We saw all the sights and did all the fun touristy stuff. We went to China Town, shopped and ate at Fisherman's Wharf, biked across the Golden Gate Bridge, visited the Castro District, jumped on the hotel beds and took a nighttime cruise to Alcatraz. It was so much fun to spend time with those three!

Coincidentally, I had three girlfriends from Alaska who were in San Francisco doing the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon that weekend. I watched their race one morning and after Pam, Heather and Lizette had to fly home, I joined my AK friends for dinner. Corrie and Deana went home that night also, but BethAnne and I hung out in SF for another three days of tourism, food and lots of shopping.

After San Francisco, I came home ready for all the activities that happen in the last two weeks of school.

A chilly field-trip to the zoo with Liz's first grade class:

No baby yet (cont'd.)...

Hiking with the kids.

When we get to the big uphills and downhills, Tali gets out while Josh and Liz push the jogger. It's a workout for all of us! The creek is always the ultimate destination. It's not very far away, so we usually pass it on the way out with promises of stopping on the way back. On this particular day I wouldn't let them cross it because I knew if someone fell I was in no position to stage a rescue :) A few days later, we went with Matt. He let them cross so they would know how strong a current can be, even in a shallow creek. Toby was the smartest one in the group. He deemed the creek un-crossable and kept demonstrating how to use the bridge. Josh made it across, but got wet all the way up to his waist. Liz went next and had to be rescued by Matt. She started falling apart when her skirt got wet. Then she lost her shoe and all composure. Matt helped her across but her brand new shoe floated quickly downstream and is lost forever. Luckily it was an $11 pair from Target.

Tali's end of pre-school picnic, complete with pony rides (and hot dogs at 10am).

Tali started off this year of pre-school a little bit shy. Her teacher always told me that she didn't talk much. I thought that was funny because she talks non-stop at home. By the end of the year, she started talking . . . a lot . . . and Mrs. Anissa had become one of her "best friends," along with Mimi and Randy. Tali LOVES animals, so the pony rides were a big hit for her!

Tali & Mrs. Anissa

Field Day for Josh & Liz

Field Day is always a blast. When I was a kid my neighbor, Marie, and I would practice for the 3-legged race for at least a week in advance of field day. I think we were the only ones who practiced at all, so we always won. Every year I try to get Josh and Liz to practice with a friend so we can keep the 3-legged legacy alive, but they just think I'm crazy.