december, 2008

december 23

hooray! she's here. zoe arrived just after 10am on december 17th at BC women's hospital. she was 8lbs 2oz. once we'd managed to track down a hospital bed somewhere in the lower mainland and made it through the snow, everything went very well.

i was due to be induced on the 17th or 18th as long as there was room at the hospital so i was very pleased to go into labour naturally. my waters broke around 2am and we made it to the hospital at about 3.30am. we did go to richmond hospital [the hospital i was supposed to give birth at] but by the time we got there they wouldn't even take me for assessment. unfortunately this all meant that my midwife was unable to deliver the baby because she only has privileges at richmond so she had to send her partner to meet me at bc women's. of course by this time i don't think i would have cared who delivered the baby! i went the usual epidural route and managed to get some sleep right before she was delivered. it took a while to successfully get the epidural in which means i have a very bruised back from all the stabbing by the resident anesthesiologist before she finally called in someone who knew what they were doing. i freaked everyone out again by delivering in a couple of minutes. a nurse managed to make it back just in time to help catch but the trainee doctor missed the whole thing. she truly was a christmas baby - watching the sun come up and the snow falling while i was in labour was a very beautiful experience [especially once the epidural was working!]

anyway, she's gorgeous. i'm madly in love and we're all enjoying our new hobby of baby watching - 'ooh look she hiccupped', 'what a cute sneeze', 'hey she opened both eyes at once' etc. etc. she loves to feed so she didn't loose any weight after the birth. she loves to sleep [mostly during the day of course!] but is pretty happy to stay quiet as long as someone is holding her!

she also was timed to perfection [i won the baby pool at work].

as for my assessment of british v american v canadian maternity systems - this birth was certainly a whole lot cheaper than toby's in california but a lot more like the british in terms of trying to find a hospital bed! you've got to love national health services.

december 14

waiting and waiting and waiting. getting bigger and bigger and bigger. i'm looking very mr. greedy-esq. nothing fits - i take that back - i have one pair of pants and 2 sweaters that sort of fit - absolutely everything else leaves me with a gap - a very chilly gap at the moment since it's snowing here at the moment! i'm off for some baby monitoring at the hospital tomorrow so i'll let you know if there's any news.

fortunately my mum and dad are here so they've been taking very good care of me - my dad has been doing all the driving to and from school etc. and my mum has supplied me with endless games of scrabble to take my mind off the waiting!

it was the olympic oval opening here in richmond on friday evening and toby [and his hockey team] had been invited to participate. it was a very popular event, so after an hour or so of queueing we were very fortunate to get the last few seats to watch the opening ceremony. it's a pretty spectacular building and everyone had a great time. in fact aly and sascha went back on saturday to one of the public skating sessions which they enjoyed. i'm very jealous.

it snowed last night so aly and i went out to play in it this afternoon while the boys were out at hockey. it was only after i had got outside that i realised that at the moment i can't reach the floor to make snowballs or a snowman. fortunately aly was very understanding and let me make snowballs from the snow on the patio table before pelting me with snowballs!

december 2

exactly one week until my due date. i'm still convinced she's going to be late though. my mum and dad arrive on the 8th so i think i'll be pretty content waiting until they are here. after that i'm sure i'll go very quickly insane!

i think we now have all the baby equipment we need. we just need to try and find the other half of our baby monitor. i know it's in the house somewhere. i had 2 lovely baby showers - one hosted by my friend renukha and one at work which were wonderful - i'd never had a baby shower before so i felt honored to have 2. they were a lot of fun and i got some great gifts.

i finished work on friday so it's been a very strange week. i've definitely had plenty to do - lots of appointments and things to squeeze in before the chaos begins. the children finish school at 2.30pm each day and i pulled them out of after school care at the end of november, so having to be back in time to get them is a bit of an adjustment! it feels like i only just dropped them off there when it's time to pick them up again. however, it's wonderful to have all that extra time for them to get their homework done, make dinner, make school lunches for the next day and actually have time to have a bit of fun.

we put most of our christmas decorations up this weekend, i mailed all my christmas cards last week and at least know what everyone is getting for christmas [my side of the family anyway - sascha likes to leave buying for his family until a day or 2 before christmas!] so i think we're good to go. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

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