A New Addition

Long overdue update! We now have a baby! Eleven days after my due date I started having contractions 5 hours before we were scheduled to go in for an induction. After 15 hours of not much progress I gave in and got an epidural. Two hours later they inserted a fetal heart rate monitor and the baby's HR dropped into the 60s and didn't rebound after 5 minutes. Suddenly there were a dozen people in my room and I was being whisked away for an emergency C section. Not exactly the way we hoped it would go but 11 minutes later he came into this world crying and perfectly healthy. I awoke 30 minutes later to see Dave holding our beautiful baby boy. We did not know the gender of the baby and I had come to believe we would have a girl based on friends and family who swore that my body looked to be housing a female. So I was a bit surprised but totally in love with our new little guy.

The past 7 weeks have been an adventure. The C section recovery has been frustrating as my incision decided to open up slightly after a week. Because of the emergency nature of the surgery a blood clot likely formed beneath the incision and the accumulated fluid needed to drain. This has taken over a month and is still not fully healed but luckily I am back to feeling mostly normal and my range of motion is much better.

Most importantly though, Thomas is healthy and perfect. He unfortunately had a one night stay in the NICU (for a temperature .1 degree above the fever threshold) but has been fine since leaving the hospital. The kid eats like a champ and was back to his birth weight after 6 days.

It's amazing how much he's changed in just the past 7 weeks. He smiles and makes little cooing noises and he's much more interactive than those first couple of weeks. And his lungs have developed a little more as well so his cute little baby cries occasionally erupt into some full blown screams!


We've been trying to integrate him into our lives so he's gotten out to a couple of Farmers Markets and of course some bike races. Collegiate Nationals happened to be on Mother's Day and we got out to see the crit and visit with a lot of our friends in the cycling world. We also got to see my friend and former teammate Kaitie Antonneau take the win in the Women's D1 crit. It was fun to introduce Thomas to so many people and to bike racing!


We've also had a couple of weddings to go to and we discovered the Baby Bjorn is great for hands free baby carrying. Dave even played some lawn games with a sleeping Thomas strapped to his chest.

I had 8 weeks of maternity leave so T and I have gotten to spend a lot of time together and it's been great. Getting out and about with an infant can be kind of challenging but he loves being in the Bjorn so we've made a few trips to Trader Joe's and Target. And we've gone for lots of walks around the neighborhood with it or the BOB stroller.


So I'm not really sure if I'm going to continue this blogging business. I have to say that my motivation to keep up with it is not very high right now! I'll probably try to do occasional posts and perhaps I'll get back into a routine with it at some point. Cycling is obviously taking a back seat for the time being and it remains to be seen whether I'll race cyclocross this year or not. Either way I'm just totally grateful and happy that we are now a little family of 4 - I've got to include Cider in there - she's such a good big sister. Here she is hanging out with Thomas while he sleeps!

So perhaps this will turn into a baby blog or more likely just a very erratically updated blog on our new adventures as a family. Thus far it's been a fun ride and we can't wait to see what awaits us in the future!

A New Adventure

Okay - it's been a very long time since I had an entry on this blog. I don't know what it was with 2010 - I just couldn't get very motivated to post. And while I raced quite a bit through June a break was in store for July and beyond. I've had a ton of fun racing the past few years but we had some other plans in the works and I was ready and prepared for a change of pace. And by August I was pregnant with an early April due date.

A change of pace indeed. Dave and I have always wanted kids and have spent the first 5 years of our marriage in various athletic pursuits and enjoying our relative freedom from responsibility. We enjoyed this time but are greatly looking forward to the year ahead and all that is to come.


So despite not racing I still spent the majority of my weekends this past fall at cross races in support of Dave. He totally immersed himself in cyclocross this season and did all of the WCA races as well as the USGP in Madison and Jingle Cross in Iowa. He was a rock star and I think he surprised a lot of people (including himself!) with his success. He consistently placed top 5 in the 1/2 races all season and won the series for Cat 2s. I joked that with me on the sidelines he had to race for two while I got to eat for two. It was awesome to see him do so well and I had a great time hanging out and socializing at the races. We love the ambiance and the community of cyclocross and at this point we both have plans to race in 2011. Granted it will be a much different situation since we'll be doing baby handoffs between our races but we're up for the challenge. Having Cross Nationals in Madison for the next two years adds a little extra motivation for us.

So I'm currently just over 8 months into the pregnancy and all in all things have been going really smoothly. I was consistently commuting in to work until Thanksgiving but once the snow and sub 20 degree temps came I decided to hang up the bike and opt for the safer drive in to work. I've done some cross country skiing and kept up with half an hour trainer sessions 4-5 mornings a week. Definitely a bit different than my normal winter training routine but I'm enjoying this down time too.

So rather than try to do too much of a recap of the last 10 months I'll throw some links at you from my blogging with Women's Adventure Magazine. We at Planet Bike advertise in this cool publication and website and figured it might be a fun way to share with folks my attempts at staying active throughout the pregnancy. So I've done roughly one post a month since October. It's been a neat way to document the pregnancy and I've gotten a lot of great feedback on it.

October - A Whole New Ride

November - More Cowbell and More Miles

December - Riding for Two in the Cold and Dark

January - A New Year, A New Life

February - The Pregnant Tourist


So look for this blog to change tone a bit and still be pretty randomly updated. But I'll add some photos and other thoughts now and again. Any day now we're going to find ourselves with a tiny new bundle of joy and I can't wait. The next chapter begins soon!