Family!

Ciaran got to meet his Dershem cousins today! As you can see, he took it all in stride...

It all tired him out (even though he slept through it), so Mimi obliged him with a happy nap:

Ah, a day in the life of a newborn.

Forgive me, I've been busy.

It's amazing how much time changing poopie diapers takes.

Ciaran is 3 weeks old now, and growing so fast! I can hardly believe there was life before this little guy made his grand entrance.

And what an entrance it was ... After 48 hours of labor, he was born by emergency C-Section at 9:11 on Sunday, August 10, 2008. He was a great big kid -- 9 pounds 6 ounces and 22 1/2 inches long!

I'll post a few pics here, but there are lots more at our growing gallery of Ciaran pictures at the link on the right.

And you can consider this my return to the blogging world, now that the fog of newborn-mommyhood is slowly wearing off...

41 Weeks, 1 Day

Seriously, this has gotta end.

Induction is scheduled for Friday night/Saturday morning.

Unless my uterus blessed me be squeezing out this kid sooner. Oh, the happy thought.

Hot, Humid and Overdue = Impossibly Cranky Pregnant Lady

Six days overdue now, and though I had a lot of encouraging contractions last night, they petered out when I went to bed. We've scheduled an induction for Friday night, but we really hope this kid will find his way out before then.  We'll see how the spicy Indian curry work this evening.  

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Yet another trip to the hospital, and home again. This time it was because Ciaran was just so still for so long, I started to get worried. Spurred on by our doctor's insistence that there's no such thing as crying wolf too much at this stage, Sean and I decided to call the doctor, who recommended we go in to the hospital for a non-stress test. 

After a few words with the intake guy in the ER, who was (a) lackadaisical (at best) and (b) seemingly incompetent (looking me up twice to no avail, and failing to take down our insurance information despite the insurance card we handed him), we headed up to the Labor and Delivery unit. The non-stress test consists of two monitors on my belly, one measuring contractions and the other measuring the baby's movement and heart rate. Just about as soon as I was hooked up Ciaran started boogying, which was great.  And I had several (weak) contractions, pretty regular, but not strong or regular enough to stick around.

Who knows, maybe I'll be back sooner rather than later. What was great to know is that the nurses were fantastic and made me feel like we did the right thing coming in.