we woke up at around 9 or 10 am. and started our day. i was and still am swollen from the labour. I didn't realize how swollen I had gotten until i had gone to the washroom! craziness. walking was a little difficult but i took it slow.

jeremy's mom came down the next day from barrie to spend the week with us. she helped out with house work, looking after jayden and did laundry. it was soooooo nice to have her around. my parents also had the week off and brought over lunch and dinners for us. i was on a strict 'asian after labour diet' of spicy meats and rice. i wasn't allowed to have any vegetables, fruits or anything cold. everything was hot, spicy and warm. when my parents would leave after their visit, i would sneak in some fruits (YUM!), and water. i asked my parents why this was the diet for women who have just given birth. they didn't have an answer for me. their answer was basically that's what you do.. i guess that's what the tradition has been and it's just been passed down. she did say it has something to do with digestion and keeping the stomach warm so it could recover. not sure. My theory is that because women in those days who gave birth, they had to stay in bed for 1 month before they could go out or do anything. this was to keep them 'weak'. i think they fed them meat only so that they took a LONGER time to digest so they wouldn't have to go to the washroom so often and wouldn't have to do a number two so that they could heal faster :) who knows!

breast feeding was hard. first two days were pretty painful. no milk and only colostrom. so jayden was on me for hours. the night my milk came jayden was on my boob all night. it was rough. i didn't get ANY sleep and was in a foul mood when jeremy woke up. i wasn't very nice to him and i was pretty emotional.

jayden had lost 200g from birth to our first midwife home visit. by the second visit he had gained his weight back plus another 50g. the latest midwife visit jayden weighed in at 7lbs 10oz.! craziness.

after my milk came in i was having a lot of problems with engorgement. my boobs HURT! they were so swollen and filled with milk. lately it's not bad. it's tolerable. i can definately sense when it's feeding time cause my boobs will feel so swollen that they start to leak! thank goodness for disposable breast pads! we need to get stocks in them!

jeremy has been the diaper changer. he was in charge of figuring out how many poops and pees jayden was having. he was pooping and peeing a lot! one time jeremy went to change him upstairs in our room and all i heard was 'whoa!' and laughing and i went up to see what was going on. just as jeremy pulled jayden's diaper off jayden squirted some poop out and then as jeremy was trying to take care of that he peed and it sprayed all over jayden's face. what a mess! i think jeremy freaked out a little and now he's more cautious. maybe toooo cautious! but i think now he's prepared. he gets his diaper out and a cloth ready to go. :) we learn as we go! :)

sleeping hasn't been bad. i think we have it a little easy. there was only one night where jayden was being really fussy. nothing we did seemed to work. i think he just cried so much that he was so tired. and cried more. it's either that or he was super gassy.. since that night i was pretty gassy too cause i made the mistake of drinking an orange julius which contains milk... i'm lactose intolerant.

generally we've timed it so we go to bed at 12pm.. so that's the last feeding then jayden will wake up at around 3 or 4 and i'll feed him which normally takes an hour and then we'll put him down again and sleep till about 9 or 10.. sometimes 8. i've figured that jayden has two wake times. i usually have to catch him before he starts crying for a feeding. then it's easy for him to fall back to sleep. if he fully wakes up or cries so much that it wakes him up (fully) it takes 3hrs for us to put him back to sleep. trust me, i've timed it :). so a normal feeding while he's half awake takes 1 hr and a feeding where he's fully awake takes 3hrs to put him back to bed.

so far i love being a mom. it's sometimes a little difficult. i think i have some emtional break downs where i get frustrated because i'm not sure why he's being fussy or if i haven't gotten enough sleep. usually it's hard to get to sleep when it's like 8 or 9 am. so i just normally just shower and wake up. i need my shower every day. that's the only thing that keeps me sane :)

i can't wait to be normal again. there's still a little bit of swelling but other than that i'm ok.

so I got cleaned myself and then put on a depends diaper thing. we had bought a package of 16. our prenatal class was proved to be very useful. we had a list of all the things that we will need to buy and depends diaper thing was one of them. I woke jeremy up to tell him. He was a little groggy but as soon as I told him he quickly got up. He keeps telling me the only thing he remembers from that morning was the vision of me with a t-shirt on and diapers, standing there infront of him :)

We called our midwife (josee) and she basically told us to go back to bed get some rest and go about our day until she calls back at 9ish. She had to check whether I was GBS positive or not. So we went back to bed. Turned out I was GBS positive which meant that we had 12-18hrs to deliver our baby or infection % to the baby increased with each time we waited (.5% at 12hrs, and 5% after 18hrs).

She suggested we should go for a walk to try and get some contractions going as soon as we could. That day we had a scheduled midwife apt. for 4pm. It got pushed to 1:45 so our 2nd midwife (chantal) could check us out.

When we got off the phone the first thing we thought was .... Whoops! CAR SEAT! We hadn’t installed our car seat yet so jeremy quickly did that as I raked our front lawn... Dunno why I chose to do that but I figured it was getting some exercise to try and induce contractions. He got the car seat installed and headed for a long walk.

We went for a walk until our appointment and was basically told we could go to the hospital to get induced at 6pm (12hrs after water breaking) or wait till Saturday morning and hope contractions would start naturally trying homeopathic/natural induction. Chantal gave us some blue black pills to take every hour and suggest we rent a double breast pump to stimulate contractions.

So we got home and it began. Homeopathic pills each hour, breast pump 20 minutes then walking then breast pump. So this went on from 3pm till 6pm. At 6 we called josee with an update. I started getting cramps but I wasn’t sure if they were contractions. She said gave us the two options again of getting hospital induction or waiting till tomorrow and trying the breast pump and pills till 9pm. We opted to try naturally since I hated the idea of Ivs and needs (as some of you guys know :).

At 8pm I started getting contractions. They were fairly light and not really regular. At 9pm they became more regular. We called josee and told her that we thought we were in early labour. She suggested I take some gravol to try and get some rest and see how it goes tomorrow morning. Throughout the night the contractions got a little more intense and it was about 15 minutes apart. So everytime I would fall asleep a contraction would begin and wake me up. I just breathed them through.

At around 7am. We woke up. Timed the contractions. They were about 10 minutes apart but very steady. The birthing ball was my friend! At around 9 they grew to 5 minutes apart. The first few intense contractions I breathed pretty heavily but I forced myself to concentrate on the breathing rather than the pain and it worked! My breathing slowed down and the pain somehow just went away. I squeezed jeremy’s hand through every contraction.

Jeremy called our midwife and said that he thought we were in active labour. She came by at around 10 and watched as I breathed through 2 contractions while she timed them and then checked me out and said I was already 8-9cm!

So we quickly headed to the Montfort. I will spare everyone the details after this and try and keep it short. The chance of me taking the IV for the GBS was slim since I was already 8-9cm and it takes about 4hrs for the medication to take into affect to help the baby bypass the infection so we didn’t do it and took a chance that I would be ok. I didn’t have a fever (we checked throughout the morning and night).

A lot of my contractions were over the birthing ball and hanging on jeremy. Putting pressure on my tail bone helped a lot. The contractions in the ‘ANGRY’ :) phase weren’t that bad actually. A LOT of the pain was in my lower back. I tried the jacuzzi (we originally wanted a water birth) but ended up giving birth on the bed on my hands and knees. I had a hard time pushing. It felt like I wasn’t doing anything with each push. Then I had remembered our prenatal class instructor saying that it’s like trying to go for a bowel movement. So that’s what I did. I know that the days leading up to this day I knew I didn’t want to have poop floating in the tub as I gave birth so It was always in my mind. “I hope I don’t poop, I hope I don’t poop’. The last few contractions were more productive with pushing. I forced it and said to myself who cares! I don’t care if I poop in the tub :)

Jayden finally came out. He was passed underneath me and I turned over and laid on the bed. What a relief :) I think I pushed for hours!

so Jayden Daniel List was born at 4:16pm on Saturday, April 1st, 2006, weighing in at 7.1lbs. we were home by 7:30pm and were in bed by 8:00pm. we slept all night (even Jayden) and woke up in the morning.

I’ve watched many birthing shows (birth stories on TLC) and had a picture of how I wanted mine to go. Very quiet and drug free. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it and whether I would be able to handle the pain but I knew in my mind i’d rather take the pain than a needle in the spine or any type of needle. I surprised myself and didn’t realize how strong I could be. It was very empowering. Thanks guys for sharing this wonderful experience with me.  

i'll keep you all posted