Welcome, Desmond Jay

Desmond Jay Sweet was born on May 31st, 2010, at 5:28 p.m. His due date was June 14, but he thought he'd beat out his sister in arriving earlier than she did (he was 2 weeks early whereas Aislin was 11 days ahead of schedule)! Thankfully I had already reached full term and it was Memorial Day, so my family was able to drive up and meet him the day he was born :)

Now for the labor story! According to my labor nurse, I wasn't really in labor. I could've finished out the early stage of labor from home, and it could've been days or weeks before anything changed, but this is how it happened:
My contractions started coming every 3 minutes for about an hour and then about every 2 minutes the following hour, so we called the doctor-on-call (it was near midnight) and she said, If this is your second child, you need to get to the hospital. So off we went with our little suitcase and Aislin, who was happy as can be to get out of the house.
When we got there, we learned I was indeed having contractions every 2 minutes and was 4 cm dilated. Since 4 cm was kind of the minimum requirement for being in labor, the nurse wanted to check me again an hour later to see if I progressed. At that time she said I had gone to 5 cm (although my labor nurse said it might've just been 4 1/2 at most), which was all the proof she needed to admit me. After that, my contractions reeeeeally slowed down. They had me walk around to get them back up again, but they were still very erratic. It was only because my contractions lasted a long time (in spite of being 8-10 minutes apart) that the doctor saw fit to start me on petocin.
Petocin goes up to level 20, which was what I ended up with after hours of sitting around and waiting for my contractions to hold onto some sort of pattern...but when that didn't happen, the doctor came in and explained that I could go home and let my body do its thing naturally or I could have my water broken--either one being perfectly fine with her; but first she needed to check me for dilation. Apparently I had gone from 4.5/5 to 6, which ruled out going home...so we broke my water!
About two hours later the contractions were grrrreat. It wasn't just back labor this time, it was all-over labor--back, front and even legs! So when squeezing Tim's hand and staring at the hospital floor stopped being effective, I requested the epidural...which turned out to be a total failure until the very last minute! Instead of removing the pain, it just relocated it. I ended up feeling sore under my left leg and a burning on my right hip. After they upped the dosage a bit and the numbness finally kicked in, it was time to push! I could still feel the contractions in my lower abdomen but it felt more like dull pressure, so I pushed as hard and for as long as the doctor asked me to and, about 12 pushes later, Desmond popped out and was placed on my chest :)
Thus was the birth of our second child!

Sweet Family Update

Since Tim and I are horrible at tracking my pregnancies, I thought I might as well post pics that others have taken of me!
In this one, I'm 21-weeks along. We went down to Kent to celebrate my parents' 29th anniversary, and my dad snapped this one of Tim and me before we all went out to dinner :)

This next one is more recent, taken at a Relief Society dinner just last week. The dinner was in celebration of marriage and family, so our hubbies were invited :) I was 26-weeks.

Our baby boy is very active and I've been feeling Braxton Hicks contractions since yesterday morning--and for the first time! With my first pregnancy, the only contractions I was ever aware of came hours before delivery and they were in my lower back...so when I felt BH contractions while still in bed yesterday, I thought maybe he was just kicking really hard. He was certainly moving more than usual so I couldn't really separate the two sensations, but one felt more like I was being poked from the outside instead of from the inside. It feels...weird and kinda hurts! Just one more trimester to go (although this pregnancy flew by anyway)!

In other news, Tim started a new job at Microsoft last week. After the hooplah with the job in Anacortes, he worked for a tiny local company that was trying to merge with another local company. While the former was so tiny that he and his boss were the only ones that were part of it, the latter was trying to survive an embezzlement issue. Things were not working out. Not only did they need Tim to help them take on their enormous work load, which had him working over 40 hrs/wk without overtime pay, his boss was a horrible manager who couldn't balance his books. He was days late in getting Tim his paycheck, and when he got the new job and tried to give his 2-weeks notice, his boss had to end his employment that same day because he couldn't even afford to pay him for his last five days. Instead, he let him keep his work phone, another cell phone and a server.

The new job, however, is one that Tim loves. It pays well (including overtime), offers health benefits and doesn't have him working with dusty computers at random businesses, like dog grooming places. The only downside is that it's in Redmond and his job doesn't really follow a 9-5 schedule. His schedule really depends on his workload and, although the extra pay from his overtime hours is awesome, it kind of sucks not knowing when he'll be home or if Aislin will get to see him before she goes to bed.

Of course the obvious solution is to move closer to his job, but we just moved here, we just got church callings, we've made friends and have even memorized street names! Usually we don't mind picking up and leaving, but we've never had to pick up and leave so soon...and we're so tired of having to start over again in a new area and a new ward.

Aislin's First Haircut

Yup, we finally cut her hair last night! Cutting her bangs when she was about 10-months-old was absolutely necessary so we never counted it as a haircut, but we weren't in a rush to cut the rest. Her hair was long enough to tie into a ponytail so we thought we could just let it grow out...but lately, looking for ponytail holders--especially before eating--has been a pain in the butt.
So last night, I just went ahead and cut her hair to her shoulders :)
Before:
After:

It's a Boy!!

I wonder if my OB will give me another ultrasound next week just to see for himself, since he had supposed (at 16 weeks) that it was a girl! It was just too early and, according to the technician we saw today, girl and boy parts tend to look the same at that stage.
So, quick side note: I strongly dislike having to drink 16 ounces of water an hour before the appointment, having to wait 20 minutes to be called in, and then having to wait through 10 minutes of measurement-taking whilst my bladder gets squished by that ultrasound-belly instrument. But of course, I was glad to know that all the measurements got a thumbs-up, the baby's spine looks good, and all is normal with him and me :)
We waited through all the measurements before finding out the sex because the baby wasn't in the right position to check the kidneys and genitals, even after I had finally emptied my bladder. I laid back down after coming back from the bathroom and the technician said, "Well, that didn't change anything... You have a stubborn one," to which Tim promptly replied, "Like his daddy!" (Jeeze, already taking after his dad....) But it didn't take him long to find the kidneys, and then the boy parts.
Before he said anything, I really wasn't expecting to hear anything new. I was ready for him to say it was a girl, but when he said, "It looks like you're going to have...a boy!" we flipped. We both looked at each other and started laughing--you know, that shocked/excited laughter that really doesn't sound like your everyday laugh? That was us--giddy and ecstatic all the way back to the car :P
No wonder the girl names we both liked never felt right...

Extra Ultrasound

My doctor is awesome :) I went in for my second appointment--routine, nothing special except getting to hear the heartbeat again--and I got another ultrasound just 'cause. Although he found the heartbeat pretty quickly and I heard it, I think he was worried that I had felt a little jipped because the static was a lot louder...so he wheeled in a little ultrasound machine and showed me the heartbeat. We also got to see the baby's spine and his/her face from the side, which already has such distinct features! You can see his/her little nose and mouth :)
According to the doctor, he's 8 cm long now, very healthy and apparently very active. He/she was moving quite a bit during the ultrasound :P