October 3, 2004
41 Weeks, 3 days
I'm officially ready now...well, the bag isn't completely packed and I still need to order my diaper bag and a sling (maybe I'll do that next). Really, I'm officially TIRED OF WAITING!!! On the other hand, the possibility exists that earlier labor may have caused some anxiety (fear of the unknown and all that). Now I'm fairly confident that labor will be met mostly with relief...especially if it starts before Thursday night when my doctor wants me to check into the hospital for some cervix ripening treatment followed by petocin sometime Friday morning. On the advise of my doula (who was similarly advised by her midwife), I'm taking a tincture of black & blue cohosh and will be making an appointment with an acupunturist on Monday.
October 6, 2004
Wedded Bliss: Year 2
I wasn't actually going to write about our 2nd wedding anniversary since Stepan did such a nice job of detailing our festivities...then I went and read what we both wrote about our first year anniversary, and I decided that I had to write something!
As usual, we went to bed late on Monday night, so I was able to wish Stepan a Happy Anniversary just after midnight. The day passed as usual - we walked the dog, went to work (though not sure why I bother anymore...I'm having trouble staying focused on the task at hand while there), came home, and walked the dog again. Stepan brought me flowers and chocolate covered strawberries (YUM!). After spicy Thai food for dinner, we came home and exchanged gifts. I got a beautiful glass sculpture with lighted base from Originals. Stepan got a fairly cool clamp-on lamp for the grill. Neither one of us actually wrapped the gifts we exchanged. I might never wrap his gifts again. I made him close his eyes and try to guess what it was by touch...he was clueless and quite pleased when he finally got to open his eyes.
Weird to think that most of my 2nd year of marriage was spent pregnant. Apologies to my darling husband for not presenting him with a child as an anniversary present. While overall I'm please to not share this day with our babe, I must confess that it would have been nice to know that I had Step's Christmas gift all taken care of!
October 12, 2004
Family Outting
All is well in the Riha homestead. Late this morning, we took Magda to the park with Homer for the first time. She slept through the whole trip though she was much admired by the few neighbors that happen to be out and about in the middle of a work week.
Stepan is working on creating photo albums. I'll link to them once they are up. In the meantime, he included a newborn picture of Little Magda when introducing her on Nonplussed.
October 25, 2004
First Solo Excursion
Well, life is slowly taking on a sense of normalcy. This week, Stepan went back to work full-time so it's only going to be me and The Baby Girl at home, alone, at a minimum from 8am-6pm everyday. Just to make sure that I don't actually spend my days on the sofa, watching soap operas, and eating bonbons (as I've told Stepan I would), Magda and I spent most of our first solo afternoon out on the town.
We had lunch with Stepan then went to the Paper Place to get the stationery for the birth announcements, to Special Additions to get a couple of nursing bras for me, to Steinmart to get a new, bigger wallet that I can consolidate my entire purse into and that can be put into the diaper bag, to Babies R Us to get car shades for the back windows and an additional cover for our changing table pad, and finally to the library to pick up a couple of copies of our book group book. Overall, I think we had a very successful excursion. And I got to breadfeed in Stepan's office, at Brick Oven Pizza where we had lunch, in the parking lot at the Paper Place, in the nursing room at Special Additions, and in the Mother's room at Babies R Us. I'm getting pretty good at baring my breasts in public!
October 26, 2004
2 Week Appointment
Magda and I went for her 2 week check up at the pediatrician's today. Of course, I should mention that the appointment was originally scheduled for yesterday, but I failed to ever write it down in my calendar. If asked, I would have sworn that the appointment was suppose to be tomorrow.
Anyway, Magda has regained her birth weight (she's at 7 pounds, 8/10 of an ounce) and is 20-1/2" long. I had to hold her while she got her foot pricked for the newborn screens that needed to be done. Thankfully, they only needed to do one prick which actually required 2 bandaids once all samples had been taken. She did fairly well with the heel prick. Sadly, she then needed to be given her hep b shot which she didn't like at all. I admit I'm one of those mothers who tears when their babies get poked...poor thing was horribly outraged at her treatment...it was very sad.
Caught Up
I hate it when I get behind in my email. Admittedly, I've had an exceptional excuse to let the email thing go for the past 2 weeks, but it has been a challenge to find the time to sit at the computer and purge the spam. This afternoon, I was finally able to completely clear my inbox. After deleting all spam messages, I went from 144 pages of mail to just 19. And of course, that included an untold number of spam comments. It's such a wonderful thing to recognize the name at the top of the Recent Comment column in the sidebar!