all smiles

i know that there are firm believers that newborns don't smile, but i guess those newborns didn't have such an amazing mama! after he eats and i change his pee-pants, we stare at each other and smile and laugh. ascher is a smiling machine (depending greatly on the mood). you call them gas, i call them a blessed life. i try to catch his expressions on camera, but today i actually got a "laugh" on video. enjoy!



and this is just a photo from a proud mama showing off her growing boy!



more updates to follow...including the remainder of the birth story.

hello world, meet ascher david

i started this post once already, but it never materialized. something more important must have gotten in the way...a feeding, a diaper change or a necessary cuddling. things have changed so dramatically in the past two weeks...almost three weeks now.

as cliche as it sounds, i can't imagine my life before this baby. though i am more tired than i have ever been, i am also happier than i have ever been (but, please don't ask me to repeat that statement at 4:00 am after an hour-long power feeding session!). i have watched jeff morph into such an amazing father and it has brought my love for him to an all-time high. i have done more than i ever thought i was capable of and i am amazed at the changes that our family has made in such a short period of time.

and now on to the good stuff...birth story! at least the first part of it, anyway! we'll see how much i actually have time to write.

ascher david graced us with his presence on june 30th at 9:55 a.m. i threatened with the idea of induction and lo and behold, a baby was born. although most of our blog followers (all two of you, both of you being family) know the birth story, i'm writing it down so i don't forget any of it! i want to be able to remember all of the details (gory details included) and at almost three weeks out, i can assure you those details are already getting a little fuzzy!

after my last doctors appointment on thursday, june 25th, i found out that my doctor would be out of town the next week. she had booked a vacation! didn't she realize that i was overdue? didn't she realize that she was supposed to deliver my baby in the next couple of days? where did she get off scheduling a trip during my delivery? it reminded me of the movie "knocked up" where seth rogan yells at the doc over the phone because he's at a bat mitzvah and not available for the delivery. she kind of left me hanging...not cool, doc, not cool!

lucky for me, i had met with both docs in the practice throughout my pregnancy, so it wasn't as scary as it could have been. at least i knew the doc that would be bringing my son into this world. don't get me wrong, i tried everything in my power to deliver over the weekend in hopes that my original doc would be the one in the room with me. alas, it was to no avail.

i started out monday, june 29th with another false alarm. i went to the hospital only to be hooked up to the monitors and be told that i wasn't in labor. i shake my fists at you, braxton hickes! damn you! my stand-in doc asked me to come back to the office in the afternoon for an exam. this would at least help us determine whether or not we were actually close to labor. this false alarm stuff was starting to get to me. and the nurses at the hospital were probably sick of me.

during my appointment that afternoon, we discussed induction. we decided that one week was far enough overdue and that i could be induced at anytime. we decided that i would check into the hospital the next morning at 7:30 am and start on pitocin to bring on labor.

after my afternoon exam (similar to an afternoon delight, but not really...hee hee!), i started having pretty major contractions. i went home and tried to nap them away, thinking that they were just a false alarm (fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me). we decided that we would go out for one last celebratory dinner with jeff's parents. we figured by the way that i was feeling that one way or another (induction or not), i would be having this baby by the next day. turns out that the contractions didn't put me in much of a celebratory mood. i wasn't able to eat and the dinner was cut fairly short.

Amanda relaxing just before we went for our celebratory dinner at Molly's

we headed home and began timing my contractions. jeff would gauge them by mild, medium and "oh &^*%!" while they were miserable, they weren't regulating the way they should have been. regardless, we headed to the hospital around 10:30 that evening. after vomiting all over the hospital bed (let the stripping of your modesty begin), i was told once again that i wasn't in "real" labor...this was just early labor. which, i don't know about you, but that's considered "labor" in my book! so, what was that saying again? fool me once...yeah, i was sent home once again! the nurse asked that i come back to the hospital when my contractions were 5 minutes apart and lasting for more than a minute.

after several hours of intense contractions at home, i demanded that jeff call the doctor. this was around 3:00 a.m. you know the scene in the movies where the pregnant lady snaps, her head spins and she flips out on her husband? yeah, jeff had made it 41 weeks and had not seen that woman...he saw her that night, though! i think i scared him! with contractions coming every couple of minutes (still not regular though...2 minutes, 4 minutes, 7 minutes, 3 minutes), they weren't regular, but sweet baby Jesus, they were intense! we're talking 2 whole minutes of a contraction! ladies, some of you know what i'm talking about! horrible! it appeared that this was the real thing and we headed to the hospital.

so i'll follow up with the remainder of the birth story soon. i knew this post was going to long, but i wanted to at least get it started. progress has been made on the blog-front!