Jaxon's first pictures!!!

Baby is here!!!!

On the morning of Thursday, October 23, Jaxon's due date, Megan woke up with contractions in her lower... regions, and her kind and loving husband (betcha can't guess who is authoring this portion of the blog for the first time) convinced her to get checked out. The midwife looked her over and told her early labor had started, but we needed to wait for contractions to get much closer together. So she spent the day doing what any 9month pregnant woman does... walking, cooking, making a quilt, pretty much anything but resting. But we got the house all clean and ready to come home to, packed the car, and by 3 pm, contractions were 7 minutes apart.

We went in to the hospital, got admitted, and they put Megan on a monitor. The contractions pretty much... quit right then. They nearly sent us home, but gave us an hour to walk around, and when we came back, labor had officially started. Megs waited about three hours through very painful contractions before she got the epidural. Then we both tried (unsuccessfully) sleeping as the 17 year old girl next door screamed obscenities through her particularly painful labor.

Around 1:45 am heavy labor started. The nurse came in and helped Megan position for her first practice push while the midwife was still on her way. Megan tried it and SPLOOSH!, her water broke like a super soaker blast, striking the wall (and rolling down) four feet away and dousing the nurse's hair and clothes. Another nurse had just walked past. Fate was on her side.

Soon the regular pushing began. I really thought I would be unable to watch the birth part itself, but surprisingly I did great, and was thrilled through the entire thing. Jaxon came out in about 8-12 pushes, really easy, which was a relief because he'd had a brief scare earlier when his heartrate dropped due to the cord being around his neck. He was very purple his first few minutes, but immediately cuddly with these giant chubby cheeks. Megs and I were both awestruck, proud, amazed, in love, and really really humbled by the whole experience.

Well Jaxon is now 36 hours old. He looks a bit different and has developed a small set of lungs that seemed to be absent his first day. He's having a hard time learning to feed, but is about the sweetest thing either of us have ever seen. Megan's parents are here to help now and we are thrilled.

Thank you all so much for sharing in this excitment with us! We'll post more stories and pictures once we can count the total hours of sleep we've had in three days on more than five fingers. That's both of us. Together. Five hours. Total. :D

Calling All Remedies!

Okay, we're still waiting... in an attempt to fill my time, and in an effort to bring a real gem to the pregnancy world, I am compiling a comprehensive list of Labor Inducing Strategies. I've gathered several already, but am still looking for that one of a kind strategy that will kick me into labor!

Here is the list so far:

-Take a long walk, or if you're feeling extra good, go jogging...
- Eat eggplant
- Watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc (this one is a personal favorite of mine) :)
- Have sex
- Take pulsatillia (an herb) three times a day
- Eat lasagna
- Eat spicy food
-Walk with one leg on the curb, and another on the street
- Drink caster oil
- Try nipple stimulation to trick the body into thinking you are ready to breast feed
- Walk stairs

All right all you old wives, I'd like to hear some tales! If any of you could add to my list, I would greatly appreciate it. :) Let's see if we can get Baby Jaxon born anytime soon...

Still Waiting!!

This has been a week of waiting and it is driving my nuts! So, Monday we went to the Doctor to have our weekly checkup. She told us that she typically starts checking on women's dilation progress around week 39. However, she stated that she would be willing to check me that day if we were curious. Chad and my eyes locked and in mere nanoseconds we established that YES, we were curious. She went about her business of checking and a few moments later made a "hmmm..." sound. Now, I don't know if you have ever heard the "hmmm..." sound from your doctor, but it made us a little bit anxious to say the least. "Well," she said, "It looks like you are about 70% effaced and dilated to a 3."

I wish I had a camera at this point to capture the look on Chad's face when he heard this news. His eyes became huge (please refer to Chad's individual Phantom of the Opera picture for an example of just how huge Chad's eyes can become.) He happened to be chewing on one of his nails, and his hand froze by his mouth in mid-chew. I think he might have bit down a little too hard when he heard the news because his nail bed was bleeding a little bit when he finally pulled his hand away. (I'm picking on Chad here, only because I didn't actually SEE my face, but I'm sure it was also pretty shocked.) Chad stammered, "A 3... don't you go into the hospital when you're dilated to a 4?!" Our doctor casually informed us that my current situation could mean a variety of things, but that she assummed the baby would probably come before my due date. That was the only thing we needed to hear!

The minute we left the doctor's office I called up mom. She is one of my favorite people to share news with because she just gets so darn excited. It took me a minute to get ahold of her, but once I finally did the pay off was great. There was a mixture of excitment, tears, and anxiousness in her voice as she heard the news, and instantly I could sense that she had already charged head long into what I refer to as her "Bustling, Action Mode." She stated that she had gone into labor within 24 hours of being checked with both my brother and myself. This statement REALLY did me in, and I too began my own personal Bustling Action Mode complete with rapid hand movements and an inability to carry on a conversation because my mind is too busy thinking about all the millions of possibilities I should plan for... Like mother, like daughter.

All day long, Chad and I waited for the first signs of a contraction. Nothing. That night before bed we gave ourselves a pep-talk that this might be the last night in years that we don't have a little one in the house. We fell asleep with dreams of changing diapers and midnight feedings dancing around in our heads. When we awoke, we disappointedly discovered again that NOTHING had happened. Now, it is Friday, and this pattern has continued to repeat itself for the past 5 days. NOTHING!!! It is driving us up the wall! My bustling action mode has turned into lathargic sit still mode, and it is not nearly as exciting. Maybe if we stop expecting that something will happen, it actually might... Like that will be possible... We'll keep everyone posted on the latest comings and goings (but hopefully just the comings) of Jaxon!

Nursery Madness

So, this blog is mostly for the benefit of Grandma Rasmussen... she made a special request that I post some pictures of the nursery. Grandma, if you ask, I will provide! A few notes about the nursery. Mom and Dad bought us the crib during my first trimester. I love cherry wood, so naturally I opted for the beautiful crib in the cherry wood finish. However, right before I bought the crib, a thought occurred to me, "Megan, is cherry wood just a little bit too regal for an infant? Do you think the crib in the honey finish would do the job better?" "No!" I replied to myself, "Jaxon will share his mother's love of cherry wood... it is the favorite finish of antique Chinese furniture... how could he not LOVE it?" And so I bought the cherry wood crib.

Now, lets flash forward a few months to when we began looking to decorate Jaxon's room. Originally I was thinking ducks... and then Winnie the Pooh... then my friend Ellie gave me a sign that said, "No, More Monkeys Jumping On the Bed" to hang over his crib. At that point, it hit me, "We'll decorate his room with a jungle theme!" That weekend we went to Babies R Us and fell in love with a cute jungle themed crib set. (To this day, it has been the only decorative item Chad has been really excited about. When we first spotted it he ran up to the crib and put his hands on the crib bumper and asked, "Meg, can we get it?") :) The only problem... the colors didn't look great with the cherry wood finish. However, we thought the set was too cute to pass up. We were just going to have to live with the fact that it didn't match perfectly.

Now, flash forward a few months more. We decided that we needed to buy Jaxon a dresser to go in his room. At this point, we had bought Jaxon A LOT of things, and the money supply was running slow. So, we went to Craigslist to see if we could get a good deal on a dresser. Anything we could find that was in cherry wood was super expensive. We finally found a really nice dresser in a honey finish. I figured I could just sand the dresser down and apply a cherry wood finish to it... no problem! We bought the dresser and I began to do research on refinishing furniture. To my dismay, everything I read said that a project like mine was pretty complicated and very time consuming. In the end, I opted to just have mismatched furniture in Jaxon's room. As much as I want to be a designer extraordinaire, I figured it just wasn't worth it.

Fun at Phantom

A few years ago, Chad and I went to go see the Broadway Production of the Lion King. To make the night more fun, Chad bought us a few "accessories" to wear to the big production. Chad wore a really nice suite complete with a lion tail coming out of his pants and a cute little headband with lion ears. I wore an old high school formal and had little sparkle whiskers and lion paw gloves. When we were together the people LOVED us!! As we walked downtown Spokane, people beeped their horns at us and waved. As we walked to our seats, people made way for us and stated, "Wow, you guys are fun..." The only awkward time was when we went to our various bathrooms alone. Chad especially got some strange looks as he stood at the urinal with a tail coming out of his suite jacket... However, we had a great time and that night has become one of our favorite dating memories.

So, last night when we had tickets to go see the Phantom of the Opera, we decided to resurrect the accessories idea. Our friends the Fosters were a little bit weary of the idea until they tried on the masks and saw how ridiculous they looked... At that point, they were all game! We got the boys phantom masks and the girls masquerade masks. (The best part about the girls' masks was that they were too small for our faces, so we just grabbed little bush branches and tapped them on to the masks to create a more realistic mask... Can you say "Trashy?") The people's response was a little less dramatic this time around, (several people actually asked Chad if he bought the mask at the theater and indicated that they wanted one too.) We had a great laugh walking into the theater, and the night turned out to be every bit as memorable as the Lion King.

The Ever Growing Belly

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months... But I think the picture is a bit off... that is a BIG Belly!


8 1/2 Months

I've been asked by many to post some "Preggers Meggers" pictures. We haven't taken many photos, but hopefully this this will give you at least some idea of the ever growing belly...

Jumping on the Blog Train...

Well, here it goes... we are officially jumpin on the blog train. It seems like we're way behind the pack with this one, but hopefully we can use this to keep you all updated on the comings and goings in our lives. This is it... THE ANDERSON FAMILY NEWS. Stay tuned...