Now that I’m back in action in the blogosphere, I thought I would answer some questions and share some stories of what my pregnancy, labor/delivery, and recovery were like, how we decided on a name, and anything else that might come up in my crazy, baby scattered brain!
My pregnancy: I always feel guilty for some reason when people ask how my pregnancy went. I don’t know why I feel guilty; I think it’s because I know some women have horrible experiences and I feel bad that mine was far, far, far, far, did I mention far from it?! It was easy. There I said it. I never had any morning sickness, never had any heartburn, never really had any major symptoms or complications (thankfully!). Once I found out I was pregnant, I decided that I wanted to share my pregnancy journey with close family and friends. So I created a separate blog that I only shared with a small group of people. And recently I realized that by keeping it a private thing, I wasn’t being honest to this blog. This blog is to share my life and my pregnancy was definitely a major part of that. (Here’s the link if you want to bore yourself with the week by week pregnancy details.) Although my pregnancy went by very fast, the last 2 months seemed to drag by. I think the novelty of being pregnant had worn its welcome, I was sick of feeling like the good year blimp, and just very ready to meet my baby. My Mom said that her pregnancy’s were all very similar to mine, so I guess I can thank her for that!
- Very 9 months pregnant here
- Had Kolsen less than 48 hours after this picture was taken!
Labor/Delivery: {Disclaimer: I won’t be going into too much detail here, so no need to grab the barf bag or anything} My labor and delivery was, dare I say it again, easy. Less than 48 hours before I had Kolsen, I was a bridesmaid in my friend, Mollie’s, wedding. I honestly think that’s what helped kick start my labor. Taking pictures outside for 2 hours in 97 degree weather must be the trick! I woke up Sunday feeling like it was any other day – huge. I started to feel random contractions in the early afternoon. I figured they were Braxton Hick’s contractions (false labor contractions) and so I didn’t think anything of it. Around dinner time, the contractions started to get stronger, but at this point they were very inconsistent. After dinner, Jake and I went on an extra long walk. I was told that walking doesn’t necessarily start contractions, but if you’re already having them then it could help the labor process. So I thought, “what the heck?! It’s worth a shot.” When it was time to go to bed, I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up an extra hour. By this time, my contractions were more frequent, but in my mind I just didn’t think that this would be happening yet. 11:00pm I decided that I would try to fall asleep. Over the next 2-3 hours I woke up 2-3 times because the contractions were hurting pretty badly. (They felt like really, really bad period cramps.) At 2:00am, I started counting contractions for an hour. They were anywhere from 3-5 minutes apart, each lasting 1-1:30 minutes. At 3:00am, I called the hospital to see if I should come in or not. The nurse told me to try taking a bath to see if the contractions went away. Another hour later and a bath (I HATE baths by the way), the contractions were the same. We went to the hospital at 4:30am and I was admitted at about 6:00am. I received an epidural at about 9:30am as I was progressing at about 1cm/hour and I didn’t want to miss my window of opportunity. By this time I was about 6 cm dilated and once I got the epidural I basically hung out for the next 4.5 hours until I had to push. I pushed for about 15 minutes and then Kolsen graced us with his presence. I don’t regret getting the epidural at all. I would do it the exact same way if I were to do it again. I think it did slow down the process, but I was okay with that. I was able to save what energy I had from lack of sleep. Having Kolsen placed on my chest was one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt. It’s still hard to describe it because I feel like there just aren’t the perfect words to explain it. I was flooded with overwhelming emotions of happiness, relief that everything went well, love, and just pure joy. It’s an amazing experience and I am so glad that it’s something that Jake and I can share forever.
- Our first picture together….*tears of overwhelming happiness*
- First family photo
- Jake and Kolsen’s first picture together
Recovery: Not gonna lie, the recovery sucks. I’m so thankful I didn’t have to have a c-section. Ladies that have had one, kudos to you. I can’t imagine. The first two weeks were probably the hardest. Life is hard adjusting to all of the changes. Emotionally, I felt like I was all over the place. Physically, I didn’t have a baby in my belly anymore, but your body still isn’t “yours.” Mentally, I was drained. I didn’t know what day of the week it was or what had happened in the last hour. I was all over the place. Luckily for me, I was able to drop a large portion of my baby weight within the first two weeks (30 lbs in 2 weeks!..I gained 36 lbs total). Wish I could make a diet pill for that gave results like that, I’d be rich! 🙂 I contribute my overall sense of well being to that weight loss as maybe shallow as that might sound. It just made me feel more like myself and I had been longing for that for so long. I’m now actually under my pre-pregnancy weight, so that’s prettttty awesome! 🙂 It also helped that at about that time, Kolsen started to sleep a little more at night. I love my sleep and it’s crazy what lack of sleep can do to a person. Those first few weeks were hard. As soon as I got up in the morning, I would dread the upcoming night consumed with thoughts of my lack of sleep and the amount of time I would be up that night. My Mom was a life saver for those first two weeks. She was literally over every afternoon. I was able to sleep, shower, clean, run to Target. It was the little things that made me feel more like myself. Jake’s mom helped a ton as well with making us dinners and treats. I am so thankful that we both had family close to us. 8 weeks later and those first few weeks now seem like they were a lifetime ago. There were many times where I had listen to my body and stop pushing myself so hard to get back to “normal”. I had to realize that I wasn’t going to feel better overnight and it would take time. My body had just gone through a huge thing – I made another human being!! – it would all come together in time. Even if it wasn’t as fast as I wanted, I needed to take it easy.
- Right before we left the hospital
- Going home picture!
What’s in a name? Kolsen Jakob Overby. “Jakob” should be pretty obvious as to where we got it. Jake’s family has a thing for K’s and so I always knew we would somehow incorporate that into our baby’s name. We had always liked the name Kole, but there was a part of me that wanted something a little more unique. In the 4th grade, there was another “Amy” in my class and I hated having to be “Amy H”, I hated that there was another Amy in my class. I can only imagine how Jake felt with an even more popular name. So I was looking online one day and Kolsen came up as a variation of Kole and I was kind of hooked from there. There are quite a few different spellings out there, but this one just seemed to work for us. When I first brought up the name to Jake, he initially wasn’t a huge fan. He didn’t hate it, but I was a little disappointed that he didn’t like it as much as I did. It got put on our short list of maybes. A few months later and only a couple of weeks before Kolsen was born, we were having a conversation on gchat and I threw it out there again. Hook, line and sinker! We had ourselves a winner!! I was thrilled that Jake was on board and it didn’t take any convincing. It just seemed to fit. It was unique and I figured the chances were slim for there to ever be another Kolsen in his classes and yet it wasn’t too crazy or made up. I’m glad we kept his name a secret, I wasn’t really wanting too many opinions. We liked it, it’s just as perfect as he is, and I am so happy that we stuck with something that we liked. Here are some other names we had considered: Palmer Jakob (Palmer is after Jake’s great uncle), Abram Kristian, Owen Jakob, there were more but I can’t remember. Funny how once we decided, the other ones were so quickly forgotten.
- Kolsen means “having dark features” or “people of victory”
- One of the criteria that Jake wanted with a name is for it to be Norwegian. Kolsen isn’t, but Kol is. Even though we don’t call him Kol (although that may become a nickname in the future…we want him to learn and recognize Kolsen first), Jake approved. Kolsen ended up meeting both of our requirements 🙂
Before you even ask, “When are you going to have the next one?”Not any time soon 🙂
THANK YOU to everyone who has been there supporting us along this way. We appreciate it more than you may ever know. Blessed, thankful, happy, loved – the list goes on and on! When I think about Kolsen and the future, I get excited to share it with you. ❤
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