Long time, no blog...

It's been a long time since I last posted, so I figured it was time to update again. It's been what, almost 9 months since I last posted? Wendy is almost 10 months old now, and she's a joy. She's a big girl, at the 97th percentile in height, weight *and* head circumference. I hope that she grows tall enough to reach things for me! She's been crawling for about 3 months now, and pulling up on everything for almost that long. She's been cruising around the living room, and I suspect any day now, she'll take her first real steps. She loves to express herself with shrieks of happiness and "ba baba" and "dadadada" and that sort of thing. I can't wait for her to start talking and really expressing herself!

Here's my sweet girl:

She's here!

Gwendolyn was born at 11:07 pm on Sunday, January 31. 8 lb, 7 oz. And she has red hair like her daddy! Which is so incredibly surprising. I didn’t think it was possible, because John kept telling me that red is the most recessive hair color, and it only shows up if you get the gene from both parents. But apparently I have a recessive red hair gene somewhere in the family.

She's so sweet, here are some pictures...











Gwen & her daddy (2 days old)











Gwen at 7 days old






I had a 42 hour labor, and 30 hours into it I was given epidural & pitocin, and it all ended with an emergency c-section. It was the complete opposite of what I planned, and probably the hardest experience of my life. The 3-day stay in the hospital after the surgery was really rough, but it's getting better. My feet & legs were terribly swollen for days, because of all the fluids they were putting in me at the hospital - and aggravated by the fact that I wasn't moving around very much. But they're 95% better now. I can get in & out of bed on my own now, and I'm getting around relatively easy, although I still can't bend over very much.

Countdown... 9 days left

I'm done being pregnant. I'm So. Freaking. TIRED. I thought this stuff would plateau, you know? The exhaustion, the hormonal freak-outs, and the difficulty moving around (especially getting in and out of bed) -- That at a certain point, it would just level out. But apparently not, instead it still gets harder by the day. I hate it. I just want to have my little girl in my arms.

I'm sick of strangers giving me funny looks because my belly is so huge (No, I'm not imagining it). I'm sick of friends thinking they know everything about pregnancy and labor and babies because they have one close friend who recently had a baby (not even THEM, but someone they KNOW). One woman's experiences are not the same as mine. Everyone has completely different pregnancy and labor experiences. I don't need to hear another horror story about being induced at the last minute because of something insane, or a c-section where the baby's face was accidentally cut, or anything else. I AM JUST TRYING TO THINK POSITIVE THOUGHTS, AND I DON'T WANT ANYONE SCREWING THAT UP FOR ME!!