Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

When we saw this trailer we realized that Charlotte would come either right before or right after the movie came out. Rich said he wanted to take her to the midnight showing, if she came before. I was considering it, because babies really do sleep a lot. It only took 2 days of late night feedings for me to realize that I am not willing to sacrifice those precious sleeping hours between midnight and 2:30 AM. However, we still wanted to take her to the movie. We prepared by watching ALL of the Harry Potter movies over the last 3 days. I actually slept during a few (all) of them, but Rich enjoyed them.

We told Charlotte that we were going to take her to the midweek matinee movie.

At first she wasn't so sure about it. She was thinking it sounded boring.

Then she came around to the idea. She was actually really good through the whole movie. She only cried once, but it was just for a second. I was SHOCKED at how loud movies are and used her headband and tissue paper to make mini earmuffs. The movie was AWESOME!!

Birth Story

WARNING: The contents of this blog will now always contain pictures of Charlotte. If you are allergic to cuteness you may want to avoid this blog! (Honestly though, I have promised friends and family that live far away that I will keep pictures of her coming. I hope I don't seem like an annoying parent, but I just can't help it.)

I always love it when friends post birth stories, so here is ours:

At work over the last week everyone kept asking if I was ready for her to come and I could honestly say that I was not overly anxious for it to come. I was just fine being pregnant. I could feel her kick, so I knew she was safe and she didn't cry while she was in there and I was sleeping well (not a bad set up). I was definitely not sending any eviction notices. My mom flew in from Utah on the night of July 7th and the next day the 8th was my due date. I went for a jog with my friends as usual that morning and then I went to work. Every patient I saw asked me when I was due and I would say, "well...today, but clearly she isn't coming today."

By the time I got home from work I was realizing that I actually really was ready for her to come because what else would I be doing until then since I wasn't going back to work. I could just picture my mom, Rich and me all sitting in the living room staring at each other waiting for any contractions.

Last side shot

I had an appointment that afternoon. I told my mom that I had a "pre race syndrome" about my appointment. I have coined the phrase "pre race syndrome" as something that I have every time I do a triathlon or run. Pre race syndrome is when I fantasize that I win the race or at least get a significantly better time than I have EVER had in training. I know it is unrealistic, but there is just this little tiny bit of hope. Well I went to my doctor's appointment with "pre race syndrome" and in this case I was hoping I would go to my appointment and she would say, "wow, you are dilated to a 6 or 7 and you are actually in labor. Let's have you go upstairs and have the baby." Then I would pop her out in an hour and life would be good. As you might imagine, this was not the case. I was still only dilated to a 1. Drat!

That night we went to dinner at KubaKuba to celebrate my birthday and I fell asleep on the couch at 9 pm. I went to bed and was dismayed that there was no action. At 3 am I woke up feeling like I was starving and got up to eat a bowl of cereal and I went back to bed. At 3:40 I woke up again thinking I had wet the bed, it was only a small amount, but when I stood up and there was a gush, I realized that I actually didn't wet the bed but my water broke. I was so excited, because I knew that she was going to be born on my birthday. I told myself that I needed to go back to sleep grabbed some towels and went back to bed. I couldn't go back to sleep and started with really minor contractions. At 5:30 I got up to shower and get dressed. Then I woke up my mom and Rich. We took all of the stuff out to the car and ate some breakfast. The contractions were every 5 minutes and they weren't too bad. Rich wanted me to open my birthday presents before we went, because he got me a kindle and he thought I might want it at the hospital. At 7:30 AM we headed to the hospital.

Opening presents

I wanted to do natural child birth and had taken a lamaze class, read three natural child birth books and written a birth plan. Now looking at my birth plan I am laughing at myself because I had written "organize/look at my photo album" and "bake cookies". I figured I could do that in the beginning and when things got more difficult I could watch You've Got Mail and listen to the playlist I had titled "push it." Then I would go to the hospital and hope that I was dilated to a 9 and have the baby quickly. Unfortunately, with the water breaking I had to go to the hospital early and the birth plan went out the window (and really....baking cookies?!?! that would have gone out the window anyway. I don't know what I thought it was going to be like).

They checked us in and started monitoring contractions and Charlotte's heart rate. The contractions were coming every 2 1/2 minutes and she was great. The doctor came in to check me and I had another "Pre race syndrome" moment and hoped to be at 7. I was actually only dilated to 2 1/2 cm. After 20 min they let me walk around. Rich and I walked the stairwell and the hallway. Rich busted out the iPhone and put the song Under Pressure on the speakers. I was laughing (between contractions) because the words were so appropriate. After two more rounds of lying down for monitoring, I was really struggling with the pain and vomiting wasn't helping things. After every contraction I wanted to rest because I was so tired and then the next one would start. I couldn't relax the way I had learned I needed to in all my books and classes and I was starting to panic that I couldn't make it. I told Rich I didn't think I could make it all the way. It was noon and I felt like I was only 4 cm. I asked the doctor to check me. I told them if I was past 4 I would continue with lamaze, otherwise I wanted an epidural. Again another "pre-race syndrome" moment. He told me I was only at 4 cm and I decided that I couldn't relax enough without the epidural. They called the anesthesiologist and he came in like a knight in shining armor with his giant needle. At 12:30 I got the epidural and sent Rich to get some lunch and then meet up with our parents in the lobbby. I felt so much better and rested peacefully until about 2 o'clock. The nurse came in to check me and told me I was fully dilated and about 30 minutes later it was time to push. I pushed for a little less than an hour and then she was here.

As soon as she came out Rich and I were both in tears and the rest of the room was silent. It was so sweet to feel her new little spirit there. It is pretty amazing to know that she was with God before coming to us. We are so in love with this precious little girl.

I have to add an addendum of praise to any women out there who are able to give birth without an epidural. Also, a special thanks to my own mother who was in labor with me for 26 hours 27 years ago to the day that Charlotte was born.

I don't know why this entire post in underlined. I can't change it.

Charlotte Kay Sedwick

Charlotte is here! We are so excited. We may or may not (we did) have taken 121 pictures over the last 3 days. Here are pics from the last two days. I will upload more and give more details later.

born: July 9, 2011 3:21 pm

weight: 6 lbs 11 oz

length: 20 1/4 in

I am wearing a hat that my dad bought for me.
This is her little old man face!

Daddy loves her!

Doodles and his princess
Nana is having a great conversation with Charlotte.
Grandma is enjoying her tongue thrusts.

Aww...sleepy time!

The BEST!!

When Rich and I were first dating he brought me home some flowers and I ran into his apartment and said, "you are the BEST!" His roommates all laughed about that and would occasionally joke about him being "the BEST" Well, he is once again the BEST! The reason?

Last night I decided I must blog all of the updates on pictures. I spent about 2 hours working on it and asked Rich to proofread it. I have poor grammar and I always like him to check over things before I publish. He read it and made changes and then I told him to publish post. Well, wouldn't you know, the dreaded ERROR page came up. I panicked then BURST in to tears, large crocidile tears with lots of snot. I knew that all my work was lost. Well I went to bed feeling quite defeated. Despite repeatedly pressing SAVE NOW, the only thing left were the pictures. Well this morning when I woke up, Rich had recreated the post. I was so impressed and he even used my same wording. I think anybody who has spent way too much time on a blog post will agree that he really is THE BEST!!!

Recent events

I feel like we have had some big events that really deserve separate posts of their own, but truthfully I am not feeling the creativity flowing. I will just post pics and you can quickly scroll through them and our moms can read all the captions (because when there is a picture overload we all know that moms are the only ones who read the captions).

Baby Showers

There have been quite a few of these, and all have been very much appreciated!! Thanks to all the ladies who planned and prepared and, where possible, attended these celebrations, they were all so great! The first baby shower was thrown by several of my good friends and it was Fancy Nancy party. For those who don't know, Fancy Nancy is a precocious little girl who likes fancy words, fancy clothes, and anything French. She is hilarious and cracks me up. Everyone at my party was asked to wear purple or pink, two of Nancy's favorite colors.

This party was so fancy, even the spoons were bejeweled! Thanks, Girls!
Joy helped plan and offered to host in her lovely home. As guests entered, they received beads. If they said the word "cute," they had to give up their beads - to me. As you can see, Charlotte got a lot of cute stuff.

I was thrown a shower at my work as well, and even though the party was on a Friday after hours, everyone was gracious and stayed, it was great! We played a funny game where I had to guess what type of candy bar had been melted and smooshed into a diaper; these photos of everyone looking are priceless. I love the look of concentration on people's faces.

Boy's Week

After graduation, two of Rich's classmates stayed an extra week to take care of a few things before heading to the West. It was me, Rich, and Two other dentists, with one little boy in tow (a son of one of the other guys). Here's some of the junk food that usually can't be found in our house. Rich and I took full advantage of it.

Yup, here's the two TV's. Of course you need two, one for video games, one for movies.

Graduation Day!!!

Finally, the day arrived, and Rich graduation from dental school! It was a long road, but I'm proud of him for finishing. Here he is after his hooding. I think they knocked his hat crooked, but I still think he's handsome!

The dental friends and their wives; great friends and great memories, we will miss these awesome people!

Here's Rich and his friend David, they have been friends since they were in diapers. It's so great that they were able to go to dental school and graduate together.
I just liked this picture. He thinks he's so cool, haha!

Father's Day

We went up to Harrisonburg for Father's Day and celebrated with Richard's Dad. It was a beautiful weekend, and we enjoyed spending the weekend up there. Richard also received a gift which he was highly anticipating, but not expecting for Father's Day, a Baby Bjorn. He's very excited, I think the picture below says it all.

Camping

I had wanted to go camping one last time before Charlotte came, and, unfortunately we were rained out on the weekend we thought we were going to get to go to the Shenandoah National Park (Father's Day Weekend), so we decided to try again, but closer to home the next weekend. We packed up the car and headed to Pocahontas State Park in the mid summer's heat.

As part of our campout, Rich had to tryout some sweet new gear he got from Therm-a-rest. Thanks to Facebook and my Husband's sweet word smithing, he won the chance to be a gear tester and got $400 worth of gear from them. First test, can a pregnant women sleep a humid VA summer night comfortably? Answer, yes!

Camp is set, now it's dinner time!

How do you feel about blackened hot diggity-dogs? Yeah, I don't like them either, thus the chicken on the flame, and it was good.

On our way down, we sent out a mass text to all of our awesome friends, and the Morris' answered the call and brought up the kids for some 'Smores. As you can see, Eva loved the giant marshmallows!

After the Morris' left, Rich remembered he brought his scrubs for a ceremonial burning. He said it was very cathartic.

Richard's 29th Birthday

On July 1st, Richard turned 29. His parent's came up for the day for the festivities. They finished icing the cake that Richard made for himself. It was a delicious German Chocolate Cake that his grandfather on his mom's side used to make.
It wouldn't be a birthday at our house without a few butts on a birthday card.
After going to the Cinebistro to see Transformers #3, Rich received this transformer as a birthday present. Look at the joy on this manchild's face.

July 3rd

We went to see the RVA fireworks down at Brown's Island in the middle of the City. Thousands of people braved the unbelievably muggy evening to see the fireworks and hear the symphony (which oddly, only played before the fireworks, and the following music during the show was questionable at best).

The Bennetts joined us for the evening, and we had a great time talking and looking up the origin of the word Yankee on the Iphone. Oh, Iphone, how did we ever get along without you!

These fireworks were dubbed the firefly fireworks by Brityn and me. They were my favorite.

Today was the Fourth of July, we had a nice get together with some friends; we had great food and great company. Since it was raining here, we decided to watch the National Fireworks show on PBS and now that it's 10:30pm, it looks like Rich's prediction on Charlotte's arrival was wrong, sorry, babe. Happy Fourth, everyone!

Annnnnnnnddddd.......DONE!!!