Almost One Month

So I totally meant to blog at one week, two weeks, and three weeks after Tucker was born, but, well...I guess I'm not that great at blogging with three kids!  So now that he's almost a month (how is that even possible?), I guess I should post some pictures!

The first month has been overall, great!  There have been some trying times, but really, Tucker is a pretty awesome baby and the girls love him, so that's all that really matters!  Grant went back to work last week, but I had an easy transition, because my mom came the day he went back to work, and his mom came a couple of days after that.  So this has really been my first week on my own, and it's gone better than I expected! 

We made it out to the library and post office on Monday, and then the library again on Wednesday.  I've done my little version of "school" with the girls one day, and I plan on doing it again today.  Just because I've hit these high points, doesn't mean there haven't been low points.  I'm just choosing to focus on the positives, though.

Even though I still feel like we haven't totally gotten settled here in Crestview, we have come across some very generous people - Grant's parent's church (the church he grew up in) provided us with a meal, and so did a friend from my quilt guild.  Michelle, even though she's all the way out in California, provided us with a meal via my mom, which I thought was not only thoughtful, but clever.  And our church made up several crock pot meals for us to freeze and use whenever we need.  The only time I've made something so far is this past weekend, when Grant and I made pizzas for us and my parents.  It's been pretty amazing!

I mentioned it earlier, but the girls really do love having a brother.  They each tell me at least once a day, "I love our brother" or, "I love having a little brother."  That makes me so happy!  I hear horror stories of older siblings telling their moms that they want the baby to go away or go back in their mama's bellies, but we haven't had any of that.

Okay, enough jibber jabber, onto some pictures!

Grandma Betty, Aunt Mere and Uncle Tony, and Papa David meeting Tucker for the first time, a few hours after he was born.

Uncle Tony and Kendall holding Tucker

Our first trip to the hospital, for his newborn checkup.  Grant made the comment that usually, this would be the "going home from the hospital" picture, but it's the opposite for us.

Checking out his mama.

Just being handsome...

Valentine's Day

Daddy reading to all three of his kiddos

Tucker is a great sleeper!

First bath

Here's a little video of what has become a nightly tradition for us.  Every evening, after dinner, and after we read the Bible, Grant dances Tucker around.  The girls love it, and crack up every night like it was their first time seeing it.

And here's another funny little video.  The background - several months ago, when we were still living with my parents before we bought our house, Grant was about to brush Cami's teeth.  He had her standing up on the sink, and she randomly started doing this little dance and saying, "Ah ah tay, ah ah tay!"  We don't understand it, but it's pretty cute.  She still does it, along with Kendall, and the other night before bed, they were pretty hyper, and started doing it topless (don't ask me why).  They're funny little girls and they make us laugh.  Before I had kids, I would always hear about other people's kids putting on shows for the family, and I always hoped my kids would do that.  I'm glad they're more than happy to perform for us.

Tucker Williams Spear - A Home Birth Story

Most of the people who read my blog already know this, but I'm very happy to announce that our Baby Boy was born on Saturday, February 4th at 6:01 am, weighing in at 9 lbs, 8 oz, and measuring 21 1/4" long.  I think I mentioned here before that we were going to do a home birth, so I thought I'd start out by talking about why we chose that.

Let me first say that I have nothing against hospitals, or having babies in the hospital.  However, what I do have a problem with is how alot of hospitals treat women who are in labor, especially women who choose to labor naturally, with no drugs, and no intervention (unless necessary, of course).  I feel that if a woman has a low risk pregnancy, and there are no signs that anything is going wrong during delivery, she should be able to labor the way she wants to, without having to fight for it. 

With Kendall's birth, I had a hospital birth, but used the midwife that was on staff.  Overall, everything was fine, but they did end up using a vacuum to get her out.  At the time, I thought that was a necessary intervention, but now I'm not so sure.  I just can't help but wonder if I had her in a birthing center or at home if everything would have been fine.  Yes, I had a midwife, but she was a hospital employee, and I'm sure she had to follow hospital protocol.  Of course, I'll never know for sure, but I do wonder.

Cami's birth was something entirely different.  I didn't have a midwife, but my doctor was supposedly "natural friendly" (although she did a couple of things during the late stages of my pregnancy that weren't so natural), and when I showed her my birth plan, she was fine with everything on it.  She did suggest that I take it to the hospital before the birth, to give the nurses a head's up on everything I expected.  I went in for a non-stress test and took the birth plan, and the nurses there said they were fine with everything.  However, when I went to the hospital during very hard labor, the nurse I had wasn't fine with my birth plan, and we literally had to fight with her to not hook me up to the IV, not have me strapped to the monitor, etc.  The last thing you want to do during hard labor is fight for something you thought would be fine.  For what it's worth, this particular nurse had a bad reputation, so if I had a different nurse, my whole experience would have been different.  But I had her, so I really look back at Cami's birth with not so pleasant thoughts.

As far as home birth goes, I never wanted to do one.  I didn't think there was anything wrong with them - I just didn't feel that home birth was for me.  It wasn't until I was complaining to Megan about Cami's birth that I even considered doing a home birth.  And that was because Megan (who loves her epidurals!) suggested I do one.  She said that if she didn't want the epidural, she wouldn't go to the hospital.  That really got me thinking - Why do I go to the hospital?

I still wasn't necessarily leaning towards home birth.  I was thinking more of going to a birthing center.

When I found out I was pregnant in California, I started looking up midwives in Florida, and if there were any birthing centers near where we would be moving.  I found a midwife, but couldn't really figure out if there was a birthing center.

Once we moved here, we talked with the midwife and found out that she was opening a birthing center, hopefully in January of 2012.  That would mean that we could birth there if we wanted to, but I was unsure if the birthing center would be up and running by then.  So we just decided to go ahead and plan for the home birth.

So that's the background.  Now let's get to the actual birth story...

A couple weeks before my due date, Grant had to go out of town for work, two weeks in a row.  The first week he was gone, my mom came and stayed here for a couple of days.  The second week he was gone, the girls and I went to Pensacola to stay with my parents.  That was just to make it easier on me, since I was so close to my due date (February 4).  That second week, while I was in Pensacola, I went to Wal-Mart.  As you know, Wal-Mart is huge, and I felt every step that I took in that store.  After that, I started feeling all sorts of "stuff" that kind of freaked me out.  I did not want to have this baby while Grant was on the other side of the country.  Obviously, it turned out to be nothing, and once he was home, I felt more at ease.  I still felt "stuff" and even started having contractions every now and then, but nothing ever progressed.  This was so different than how it was with either of the girls.  With them, I didn't feel anything until the day I went into labor - and that was past my due date, so I knew that it was the real thing.  All of this stuff that was happening now was before my due date, and I never knew what it all meant.

All day long on Friday, February 3, I sewed.  I could.not.stop.sewing!  Grant's mom was here watching the girls, so I just holed up in my sewing room and sewed, sewed, sewed!  My plan was to make Valentine's Day pillows for our couch, and I was only going to finish what I had started earlier in the week, but I just kept going, making 4 pillows altogether.  I wanted to finish so I could clean up the room, because that was the room we were going to set up the birthing tub in.  Oh, how I wished I would've just stopped at 2 pillows, or even 3!  But it was that fourth pillow that did me in.  When I finally finished with it, I was too exhausted to clean up the room.

We had dinner, and after dinner, Grant randomly got the camera out to take pictures of my ginormous baby!  That ended up being so providential, though.  We've hardly taken any pictures of my belly throughout this pregnancy (sorry, Tucker), so it was cool that he thought to do this, without knowing that I would be going into labor in just a few hours!

After we put the girls to bed, Grant and I watched a movie.  I noticed around 8:15 or 8:30 that I was having contractions, but since I had been having some here and there, I didn't really think too much of them.  Also, they weren't really defined - I couldn't tell when they started and stopped.  But they kept going.  So after about 45 minutes, I told Grant, "By the way, I've been having contractions for the past 45 minutes."  Then I fell asleep on the couch, while Grant kept watching the movie.  Woke up about 30-45 minutes later, and noticed that I was still having those weird, running-all-together contractions.  I decided that if the baby was coming, I should probably go to bed to get some real sleep.  So we both got to bed around 10:30.  I noticed that once I laid down, they were becoming more defined.  I stayed awake for two of them, and told Grant when they started and stopped.  But none of these contractions had been painful, so I still didn't know if this was a false alarm.

Went to sleep, and then woke up around 1:45 am with a painful contraction.  I got up to go to the bathroom, and noticed that there was a little blood.  This was it!  I decided to let Grant get some sleep, and I'd go clean up that stupid sewing room, so we could get the tub set up.  Dumb, dumb, Valentine's pillows!

Well, the contractions were painful enough, and coming very close together that I couldn't really focus on cleaning up the room.  And I didn't wait long to wake Grant up.  I woke him up at 2:00.  When I started telling him how often the contractions were coming, he just kept saying, "What?!  Another one already?!"  So we also didn't wait long to call the midwife.  She lives about an hour away, so we figured the sooner, the better.  We called her around 2:30.

Grant diligently cleaned up the sewing room, and started setting up the tub.  It had to be inflated, and then filled with water.  Right as he was about to hook the hose up to a sink, the midwife and her team of 3 other people arrived.  This was about 3:45 or so, and my contractions were hurting.  The team quickly started filling the tub with water.

At one point Grant asked if I wanted to go walk outside, which I did.  So we walked for a couple minutes, and I apologized for leaving that room for him to clean up.  He just kept telling me to forget about it, because it was done now and the tub was set up.

It wasn't too long before I started getting antsy to get in the tub.  Even though I had never wanted to do a home birth, one thing I was always curious about was laboring in water - even with Kendall's birth - but was never able to do it.  I really just wanted to know if it made a difference in my comfort level.  The tub wasn't filled up yet, but I asked Cindi if I could get in.  She said yes, and they would just continue to fill the tub once I was in it.

I did feel relief when I got in the water.  Not total relief, but more of an overall comfort.  The contractions still hurt, but in between contractions, I was much more comfortable.  It was in the tub that I started to feel the urge to push.  I pushed a couple of times, then told Grant that maybe he should go get the girls up.  Kendall had been insistent on seeing the baby come out.  Given how early in the morning it was, I was hesitant to wake her up, but I knew that she would have been disappointed if she missed it.  I didn't know how she was going to react to seeing me in pain, but I wanted to give her the chance to be there.  So he got the girls up.  This was around 4:45 or 5:00. 

When the girls came into the room, I was so happy to see them!  And they were so excited, too.  They had huge smiles on their faces, and were just so happy.  Cindi suggested a few weeks ago that if the girls were going to be there during the birth, I should probably prep them by letting them watch some home birth videos.  I did that, and their response was mixed - sometimes they seemed scared, other times they were interested, other times they were happy...so I didn't really know how it would go.  They were great the whole time, though!  Excited and happy and ready to meet their baby brother.  They never once got scared - I was so proud of them!  They may have also been excited to be able to color on the lining of the tub.

I stayed in the tub for a while longer, pushing every now and then.  I reached a point where I felt like I had been doing a lot of work, but couldn't really feel the baby moving down, so I got extremely negative.  I started saying outloud that the baby wasn't coming, he was stuck, etc.  I said these things alot.  It was almost like a chant.  Everyone was encouraging me that those things weren't true, but I just knew they were!

At one point during the pushing, Cindi told me she thought my water broke, because there was some blood in the water that came out during a push.  That gave me hope, but again, I couldn't feel him moving down, so it was back to being Negative Nancy!

Because I got so negative, Cindi said that she would give me a few more pushes, but then I would probably need to get out.  I didn't care if I actually gave birth in the tub or not, so I was fine with getting out.  So we moved to the bed that was in that room.  I pushed a few times.  At one point, she pointed out that she could see the head while I was pushing.  I didn't believe her, so I asked Grant if that was true (I'm telling you - Negative Nancy!).  He felt pressured to tell me the right answer, but breathed a sigh of relief during the next push when he actually did see something, so he emphatically said, "Yes!  I can see it!"

While I was pushing on the bed, Cindi told me that I wasn't pushing the right way - I was focusing more in my neck, instead of my bottom.  So she wanted me to sit on the toilet, to get the feel of pushing in the right spot.  So we moved to our bathroom.  I only pushed a few times there before we moved to our bedroom.

Cindi told me to squat, and brought out a stool for me to prop one foot up on.  She said that would encourage the baby to move down more during my pushing. 

A couple of minutes later, my water actually broke.  So it never broke in the water, like she originally thought.  Once the water broke, I definitely could feel him moving down, and I knew it would be soon.  Sure enough, during one of the pushes, I felt his head come out.  We had talked before the birth about who would catch him, and it was decided that Grant would.  So Grant had his hands ready, and once the head was out, he supported it.  With the next push, the rest of him came out, Grant caught him, and then handed him up to me.  It was the most amazing experience!

So of course, all of those negative feelings I had were just a sign that the baby was, in fact, very close - even though I couldn't feel it.  All in all, my labor was just about 4 hours, which isn't long at all, so I really had no reason to be so negative.  But try telling me that when I was in that state!

Grant had called my parents around 3:30 or so, and then again around 5.  They arrived maybe a minute or two after the baby came, which was awesome.  I was still sitting on the floor holding him.

When it came to naming him, we weren't quite sure what it would be.  After he was born, Grant got out the list that we had made up.  I quickly vetoed pretty much everything on the list.  Then he got out a baby name book, and came across Tucker.  It was like a light bulb went off in my head - Tucker!  That was it!  Grant wasn't so sure, though.  He was pretty stuck on Schaeffer.  So for the next couple of days, he was stuck on Schaeffer and I was stuck on Tucker.  Finally, on Monday morning, Grant caved in and we settled on Tucker.  Williams is Grant's dad's middle name, and somewhere down the line, it was the maiden name of someone in the family (that's why there's an "s" on the end).  So there you have it - Tucker Williams Spear.

He's a very content baby - and only cries when he's getting his diaper changed.  He sleeps and eats like a champ, and is just super cute.  The girls are completely taken with him, and can't get enough of him.

As far as the whole home birth experience goes - if you've ever considered it, and you have a normal, low-risk pregnancy, I would definitely recommend it!  It was so nice to be in the comfort of our own home, and not have to worry about random people coming in and out of the room, or not listening to beeping machines, or being disrupted while I'm trying to sleep...it was all worth it.  And if we have a fourth baby, we'll do it again.  Our midwife and the whole team was just fantastic - they were nurturing, encouraging, comforting...but most of all, they allowed us to have the birth we wanted to have.  I can't say enough great things about them or the experience as a whole!

New England Trip

Back in October, we went to New England for Grant's brother's wedding.  But, in true Spear fashion, we couldn't just go up there for a wedding and come back.  We had to make a real vacation out of it!  Especially since I had never been to New England before.

We flew into Hartford, Connecticut on Monday, October 3, a week before the wedding.  We arrived at night, so all we did was rent a car and go to a hotel to sleep.  The next morning, we started our journey.  I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but once again, we had the chance to see alot of things from 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.  Believe it or not, the tiny little town of Essex, CT was in the book!  So we stopped there to see some of the things that the book pointed out.  The first place was The Griswold Inn, which is one of the oldest inns in the country.  I love hearing the creaking of the wood floors, that were a couple hundred years old, and thinking about the history of this place.  It was very charming.

There was also a restaurant at the Inn, which was just as charming.  Since it wasn't really a mealtime when we were there, we were able to just walk around and look at everything.

After the Inn, we walked around the main part of town and just took in New England.  This was our first stop, and I was already in love!

After leaving Essex, we headed toward Mystic, another place listed in 1,000 Places.  However, I had actually heard about Mystic before, thanks to Jen and Cheri.  After seeing their pictures from Mystic a couple of years ago, I said to myself that if I ever visited New England, I would definitely stop in Mystic.  About a month or so before this trip, Grant and I rented Mystic Pizza, because we figured you can't visit Mystic without seeing a movie named after it!  The movie was horrible, by the way.  Mystic itself, was once again, a charming, quintessential New England town.  I was starting to see a trend with falling in love with every place we visited!  And yes, we did eat at Mystic Pizza.  The pizza was better than the movie, thankfully.

Once we left Mystic, we started making our way towards Newport, Rhode Island, which was going to be where we stayed that night.  On the way there, I remembered that the movie, Dan in Real Life was filmed in Rhode Island, near the coast.  So I got the idea to look up the address to the house that most of the movie took place in (yes, I am a nerd like that).  Sure enough, I found it, and it was only about 5 minutes out of our way.  Grant and I both love that movie, and we loved that house, so there was not even a discussion about whether or not to do it - we both wanted to!  Aren't smart phones amazing?

But yeah, we got lost on the way to the house, so it ended up taking way longer than 5 minutes to go there, but it was still worth it.  The house is a rental property, and happened to be vacant, so we just pulled up in the driveway, and took a few pictures.  Although, Grant was more brave than I was.  I noticed the same car driving by a couple of times, and I started to get nervous, but Grant took his time looking through the windows.

The house was in Jamestown, RI, and Newport was just down the road.  But before we got to our hotel, we decided to - say it with me, now - visit yet another place from "The Book."  This time, it was the Cliff Walk, which is a, um, walk on the cliffs, right on the coast.  The view is beautiful, but you're also walking among beautiful mansions built by families like the Rockefeller's and the Vanderbilt's.  The weather wasn't the greatest, but we really enjoyed the walk.

After a long day of driving, it was finally time to head to our hotel.  We were awakened the next morning by Kendall crying.  I realized through my sleepiness that I've heard "that" cry before, and that it meant she was sick.  Like, puking sick.  Sure enough, right after she cried, she threw up.  This is not what we needed on our trip!  The episode was actually kind of scary.  At one point, she had gone totally limp, and we thought she might have passed out.  Being on vacation, we didn't really know what to do as far as going to a hospital.  So we called our insurance to see what our best option was.  That actually turned into a series of very long, very confusing phone calls.  While Grant was on the phone, I was giving Kendall water, and encouraging her to respond to us, even if she didn't feel like it.  Her color started coming back a little, which was a relief.  Our plan for the day was to drive to Boston, but we really weren't sure what to do.  There was a Walmart near our hotel, so we got packed up and went there so I could get some Children's Tylenol and Pedialyte.  I ended up getting a call from a nurse while I was in Walmart, and I asked her what we should do.  She said that as long as Kendall was drinking fluids and seemed to be getting better, not worse, she would advise us to not go to the hospital.  So, that's what we did.  I gave Kendall her first dose of Tylenol and her first drink of Pedialyte, and we headed off towards Boston.  She pretty much slept the whole way, and by the time we got there, she was feeling and acting much better, which made us feel better!

This picture was taken at our first stop in Boston, at Bunker Hill, and you can't even tell that just a few hours before she was laying limp in Grant's arms!

So, Bunker Hill...that's a pretty tall tower, right?  Yeah...there's almost 300 steps inside that monument.  I was 5 months pregnant, and we had two small children, yet we still decided to go to the top.  It was not easy!  But once we got up there, the views were incredible!

At the top, there was this grate in the floor that you could look through and see all the way to the bottom of the monument.  Cami liked to jump stand on it.  Mom and Dad didn't like that so much.

We went back down to the bottom, and were getting ready to leave, but I really wanted my picture in front of this house.  I just loved it, and I loved the neighborhood that the monument was in.  I hadn't been in Boston but for a couple hours, and already, I was falling in love!

It was getting pretty close to lunchtime, and we weren't able to check into our hotel yet, so we decided to go...you know the drill by now.  Legal Sea Foods was listed in the book, so we went there.  We got a table with a great view, and the food was great.  The only thing that wasn't great was Kendall was not feeling so hot again.  And at one point, while the waitress was taking our order, I thought Kendall was about to throw up, which our waitress was thrilled about.  Thankfully, she didn't, but she just wanted to be held through the whole lunch.

After lunch, we finally decided it was time to check in to our hotel.  Now let me back up and say that as I was looking for hotel reservations, I came to the realization that Boston is not a cheap city.  Hotels there were expensive!  There were a couple of "cheaper" options that would have been great, but by the time I got around to making the reservations, they were booked up.  So we finally realized that we would just have to bite the bullet and pay more than we usually would.  That being said, I absolutely loved the hotel we stayed at, which was the Beacon Hill Hotel.  The location was great - Beacon Hill is a beautiful, historic Boston neighborhood.  It was close to Boston Common, which is where we had to park.  And breakfast at the Bistro attached to the hotel was included in the price.  And it wasn't just a normal hotel breakfast, it was an off-the-menu breakfast!  And you know how in most hotels, you wouldn't dream of taking anything from the mini bar in the room?  Well here, that was all included.  Fancy bottled water whenever we wanted it was just given to us.  Yes, it was pricey, but there were lots of nice little perks for staying there.  The room was tiny, but they gave us a roll away bed for Kendall, and Cami just slept on the floor.  Kendall loved her little bed!  This first picture was the view from our room.

Okay, enough about the hotel.  But seriously, if you're in Boston, I recommend it.

Our first night in Boston, we went to Mike's Pastry.  Honestly, at this point I can't keep track of what was in the stupid book, but we had at least heard good things about this place.  The only problem is, we walked to it from our hotel.  And it wasn't a close walk.  And it was cold.  But the pastries were worth it!  And Kendall, who was hardly able to eat all day, somehow managed to eat a chocolate covered pretzel.  Go figure!

Grant, by far, got the best thing, though.  It was the Florentine Cannoli, and it was soooooo goooooood!

The next day, we decided to do the Freedom Trail, which is a must-do when you go to Boston!  These are pictures from the sites we saw on the Trail...

That night for dinner, we drove to Essex - not Connecticut this time, though.  Essex, Massachusetts.  Yadda, yadda, yadda....1,000 Places...Woodman's.  They're known for their fried clams, but honestly, I wasn't impressed.  Grant really liked it, but for me, it was just okay.  Something we didn't know about Woodman's until we got there was that part of the movie Grownups was filmed there.  We found that out quickly, because they were playing the movie on several TVs throughout the restaurant.

The next day, we were finally heading back to Connecticut, where John and Sarah's wedding was going to be.  On our way, we stopped to see Walden Pond and Concord (Concord is where several authors had houses - Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, etc.).

Also in Concord is the famous battlefield wherein the Revolutionary War was started.  You would never know it by looking at it, though.  It was so beautiful!  This ended up being one of my favorite stops on our whole trip.

We made one more non-wedding stop on our way to the festivities...Litchfield Hills, CT.  Any guesses why we stopped there?  I think driving through this area was my favorite drive - all of New England (at least the parts we drove through) were beautiful, but there's a reason this area made it into "The Book."  It truly was breathtaking.  Amazingly, I don't have too many pictures of this area, but I did get one of Grant and the girls with some fall colors.

And now, if you're still reading, I'm sure you're glad to know that this ridiculously long post has come to an end. The next post will be all about the wedding!  Hopefully I can write about that before this baby comes!