Welcome to the World!

Seth Alexander Mayo was born on February 10, 2009 at 8:21pm, weighing 5lb 11oz and measuring 19 1/2 inches long. He is healthy and strong and the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I started having irregular contractions on Sunday, and on Monday they became timeable- 6-10 min apart. Monday night they got more painful and I couldn't sleep through them, and they progressed all day Tuesday. I was in active labor for 9 hours and pushed for 45 minutes, almost all of that in the birth tub, and Seth was born in the water.

We are beginning to adjust to our new life, and spending plenty of time just staring at him :) He and I are getting the hang of nursing and it's going well. I am very sore from the birth but already (24 hours later) I am feeling somewhat better and I am sure the healing process will be relatively quick.

I will post more, and pictures, another time, but I wanted to write about how happy I am to finally have my baby here!

35 weeks, and counting...

I am going to be 36 weeks on Tuesday, and I literally feel it getting closer every day. I'm always wondering when it will happen- when will I meet my son? I think he's "dropped" as people call it- or engaged in my pelvis. I don't think it is obvious by looking at the shape of my belly, but I feel a lot of pressure from his head- more pain and backaches. He is getting stronger all the time, and is still very active. Sleep is harder to come by- I guess I am being prepared for new motherhood in that respect. I went to a breastfeeding class this week, which was good and really informative. In a few weeks I'm going to "Naturopathic Care of Your Newborn" by the same teacher, who is a really great naturopathic doctor and also assists my midwife frequently, so there's a chance she could attend my birth with Connie. We are getting ready- there is a list of supplies we need to have for a home birth, and Manny and I will go shopping for those in the next few days. Connie is coming to the house for my visit this week, so she can check everything out and make sure we're ready, etc. From then on I'll have an appointment each week until the baby is born. All of this makes me realize how truly close I am to becoming a mom- it's amazing.
Here's a picture- 35 weeks 5 days:

Growing

13 weeks- August 12th

About 12 weeks- a little earlier in August

It is good to be in the second trimester. The risk of miscarriage goes way down after the 12th week, and that's a relief. I am now 15 weeks pregnant- the books say the baby is the size of a large naval orange. They use a lot of fruit analogies in those books.
I have heard the baby's heartbeat twice now at midwife appointments. Yes, we have a midwife rather than an obstetrician and we're planning a home birth, which I'm really excited about. We watched this documentary called The Business of Being Born, and it was really eye-opening as to the state of maternity care in the United States.
I have been feeling a little better- less tired, though still nauseous sometimes. I've had a couple very bad headaches, one that lasted for ten days, which is hard because I cannot take any medicine for it. I did get acupuncture though, and I think it helped.
We're finding out the baby's gender sometime in October, and I'm totally looking forward to it. Manny is about to finally start his new job, and I started online grad school classes on Monday. So life is busy, but we're happy and excited about the future.