I've become a bit neurotic (I know, I know, you've known I'm neurotic for some time now but I'm just coming to terms with it) about posting pictures and other information on the internet which is one of the many reasons I'm not on Facebook anymore and have no plans on going back. Even though this blog isn't searchable on Google, I still don't want my sweets getting out there for the use of others.
But here, for your viewing pleasure are some pictures of my lovelies.
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| Outside playing after dark. |
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| One day old. One funky looking mama. |
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| The boys couldn't get enough of their little sis! |
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| Grumpy and Em |
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| Ready to head home. 2 days old. |
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| Just got home. J is in love! |
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| In her coming home outfit. |
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| This was going to be her announcement picture but Mommy let herself get talked out of it. |
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| To date, the only time she's slept in her crib, she has a pack n' play in our room. |
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| A boy and his cars. |
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| Some little fingers smudged the lens. |
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| All stretched out! |
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| Excavating a triceratops. |
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| L is really bummed he didn't get to hold her first. Poor guy. |
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| A promised late night camp out in the living room to celebrate the end of school. |
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| Big smiles after eating. (That big bump is my nursing pillow.) |
I hope it is not a weird that I stalk you blog occasionally. :)
ReplyDeleteEmeline is just beautiful. I should have come by and told you that sooner. She is so wonderful!
I read that you did not get a VBAC. May I ask why? I'm just curious. VABC is always in the back of my mind so I was wondering why you weren't able to have one.
I'm glad to have a place that I can talk to you. I miss you on FB. :)
Stalk by any time. I'm pretty boring and don't write much but you are certainly welcome here. :)
ReplyDeleteWe're pretty proud of Em, too. She is really just how I pictured (hoped) she would be. She is the easiest baby, too! She's been sleeping 6 hrs. a night since she was 4 weeks old and 8 hours by 2.5 months or so. Now she goes to bed around 8 and sleeps until 5-ish, eats and goes back to sleep. Such an easy baby!
I keep meaning to post my birth story but sitting down at the computer, much less typing, is quite a skill. :)
The short of it is, early labor started on Friday morning with contractions most of the day. They were kind of all over the place but were mostly consistent. In the afternoon they slacked off but picked up in the evening. I woke up around 1 or 2 in the morning Saturday with pretty bad contractions. I couldn't go back to sleep so I started timing them. I had a couple of hours of contractions less than 10 minutes apart and the eventually got to around 5 minutes apart and some were closer together than that. I was kind of freaked out because they were starting to hurt pretty good and we had to get the boys to my dad so we called the hospital and made sure we should come in. In the car they calmed down again. I was still contracting when we got to hospital and had made a little progress from my last dr. appt so we were hoping we were on our way. They let me stay and try and walk to bring on the heavier contractions and further progression but for the time being, I was just in L & D for observation and hadn't been admitted yet. After being in the hospital for most of the morning, the on-call doc and my doc decide that I'm not progressing and that this is just false labor. Granted, my contractions had picked up and dropped off again by this point. My doctor called and talked to me and told me that actual contractions will be much more painful, etc and that he's actually relieved I'm not in actual labor yet since he has had a VERY RARE family emergency come up and that he wouldn't be in town until Monday. He tells me to rest through the weekend and we will see if she's ready to show up on Monday. They give me an Ambien and tell me to get some rest and I make plans to stay in bed all weekend so that labor doesn't progress and I can get my VBAC. (There were no other doctors that have privileges to deliver VBAC so if I came in again I would have to have a c/s). Anyway I had some painful contractions on the way home and headed straight to bed. I'm really tired and hope I can sleep. Chad made some lunch and decided to watch some TV. I would dose off and wake up in serious pain every 5 minutes or so. I stopped timing them because I was really trying to ignore them and sleep. Chad was in the living room with the tv on and could hear me cry when I had a contraction…..
Guess I’m not doing well at keeping this short... After that I tried taking a shower and a bath to get my muscles to relax. Nothing worked. I finally just told him to call the on-call doctor and tell her that I was heading in that I knew what it meant but that there was no way I could make it through the weekend like this and I had a hunch that I'd been making progress, too. Anyway, so after about 4 hours or so at home we headed back to the hospital. I was a whole cm more dilated and the on-call doctor was going to allow me to labor some more but Em was having decels on these early contractions and the doctor decided against it. I think she'd been hoping that my doctor would be able to get free and come deliver me if I could make it until later in the evening. Anyway, because of my pain and the decels we decided to go ahead with the c/s. Once they got in there they found my uterine scar had thinned out tremendously and was likely why even "small" contractions were causing so much toe-curling pain. He impressed upon me when he saw me the next day how good it was that I went ahead with the c/s because the way that scar looked I likely would have had a rupture. I'm so glad I went into labor on my own and gave VBAC a chance but following my gut was the best thing of it all. She arrived at almost 8 pm on Saturday the 14th (4 mos. today!). She took a big gulp of amniotic fluid on her way out and I didn't get to see her again until around 10 or 10:30. She nearly got admitted to the NICU but they got her breathing stabilized and avoided that. We left the hospital Monday afternoon. :)
DeleteNursing is going great this time around (with Lennon I started on the minipill, which supposedly doesn't affect nursing--liars, and my supply dried up). This time we are hormone-free and all is going well. She's quite a squishy little baby. Tomorrow is her well-check and I can't wait to see how big she is.
Hey, do you know anything about baby-led weaning? I'm going to talk to the pediatrician tomorrow about it. It skips the purees when starting solids. I'm very curious about it.
I love chatting with you so check in a little more frequently and I'll try and post more, too. I used to check your blog, too but you haven't updated in forever. Do you have a new one?
Well,that's great that it all worked out! She is a doll!
ReplyDeleteI know about those babies gulping fluid. Isaiah spent 10 days in the NICU from that very thing. But it is my understanding the baby girls lungs are more developed than boys, so I bet that played in your favor too! :-)
I am SO happy to hear that the nursing is successful! I had such a hard time with all three. I hope if there is another one, that it will be better.
I know nothing about weening. Sorry. :-( I never made it that far. I don't know if you have a way of contacting her, but Jessica Strader would be a good one to ask. She helped me a lot with nursing.
Do you mean a new blog? I do, but rarely write on it. I tell myself I need to get writing, but never make the time. Plus I often feel I have nothing to say worth reading. Ha ha ha!
I'm glad to have a place to get to chat with you as well. I look forward to reading more. :-)
Yeah, I asked the pediatrician about Baby Led Weaning and she hadn't heard of it yet. I guess it's a big thing in Europe, hence the "weaning" term. It doesn't mean cutting back on nursing like it would here in the States but they use it to mean introduction of solid food. I think I'm just going to see if the library has anything about it. I mean, we still have 2 months before she'll even be eating any purees so I can decide which way we want to go with it. Starting with table foods sounds much more appealing than purees so I'm thinking that even if we might have to wait a few extra months to start, I like the thought of it. I mean most of her nutrition is coming from the milk anyway. I'll probably write a post of what we decide. I found out about it from an article on healthy eating habits/weights for children and I guess that kids that are introduced to food this way have lower incidence of obesity and are better eaters. So I'm definitely going to look into it. We may not decide it's for us but then again maybe we will.
DeleteMy goal is to at least make it to a year nursing. Jude decided at 9 mos. that he was done with it and with Lennon we found out around 3 mos. that my milk was waning and I spent the following month pumping like a mad woman trying to bring back my supply but I couldn't, damn "safe"birth control. So I'm hoping that she will continue to nurse until a year and I'd love to continue after that as long as she's up for it.
Right now I'm not discouraged but I guess bummed out since I NEVER see anyone else nurse in public. Other than my sisters-in-law, I have only seen one other mom nursing in public and that is over the course of the 6 years I've been a mom. I'm probably just being silly but when I feed her in public I feel like all eyes are on me and that people are disgusted that I dare feed my baby in public. Thankfully I've never been approached about it though! FWIW, I have a great nursing cover and don't just whip it out, though I often wish I had the cojones. It's just one more thing I hate about living in OK and the US for that matter with its ridiculous priorities and prudishness applied toward nursing but not when it comes to wearing next to nothing in public. I've heard that there are much more breastfeeding friendly places in the US and oh how I wish I lived there.