Friday, December 31, 2010

2010

This has been a really intense, crazy year for me. A lot has happened, both good and bad, and I'm thankful for all of it. I went from being a just-turned-21 year old living with my boyfriend and having a great time to finding out I was pregnant and dealing with that, to losing my job and bumming it out at home while John worked, to ending the year with a bang and becoming a Mom. Awesome.
So, in tribute to this year I made a slide show of some of my favourite photos from it (starting with New Years '10!) Also, some preggo photos because well, I was that way for almost my entire year!


Day Four

Your favourite memory so far of being a Momma:


Seeing her for the first time.

I'll be honest, I didn't feel that immediate whoosh of intense, undying love when I first saw her - and I attribute that solely to the fact that I had to have an unplanned c-section and I was pumped full of a huge amount of drugs at the time. But I do remember when they put her cute little face in front of me, and I got to kiss her and say hi for the first time, and it was amazing. She was perfect, and I was thrilled to finally meet this little creature that had been living inside me for the past however-many months.

Not undying, intense love, but it was something extremely special and it's my favourite memory so far.
 

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Day Three

How old is your baby?

3 weeks, 2 days.
& it's been the very best time of my life!!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Day Two

A picture of you and your little one:


Taking a nap!
 

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Day One

Your favourite picture of your little one:


It was really, really hard to pick a favourite.
 

Mommy thing.

I've given up on the photo challenge because I lost the list that I was going off of, and I don't really like the ones I found via Google. haha

So now I'm going to start this Mommy one, and put the list here so I can't lose it! I like this better anyways. :)

Day 1. Your FAVORITE picture of your little one.
Day 2. A picture of you and your little one.
Day 3. How old is your baby?!
Day 4. Your favorite memory so far of being a mama!
Day 5. A picture of you pregnant!
Day 6. How,Where,When,Who,Reaction,Why- When you found out you were expecting!
Day 7. What is your baby’s birthday?
Day 8. A family picture!
Day 9. How long was your labor? Who was in the room? Did your water break or were you induced? Natural-Epidural?
Day 10. What is your favorite personality trait your baby has developed??
Day 11. Your Baby’s name, and how you came up with it?
Day 12. What is your favorite thing about being a mama?
Day 13. What major milestones has your little one accomplished so far?
Day 14. What are your hopes and dreams for your baby?
Day 15. Who was the first person you told you were pregnant?
Day 16. What color are your baby’s eyes?
Day 17. What’s up with your baby’s father?
Day 18. How far along were you when you gave birth?
Day 19. What is your baby doing right now??
Day 20. HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE YOUR BABY?!?!?!

3 week weight check

Today I took Kaetana to the pediatrician for another weight check, and was met with the pleasant news that she's gained 8 ounces! Now she's at 7lb 12oz, just over her birth weight. I'm feeling pretty validated in my decision to switch to exclusive formula feeding, and am very happy to see her finally putting on weight. She's definitely still a skinny little thing, but I'm seeing a little bit of chunkiness added to it!! It's adorable. :)

She's also becoming a lot more alert, and I am loving it. She doesn't sleep as much during the day anymore (though she still sleeps A TON) and I absolutely love watching her look around all wide eyed. It's like my favourite thing. She goes all cross eyed when she looks at me and I've been told it's because she's trying to focus on my face. Seriously cute.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

photo of the day!

This is a little something I like to call the, "Wtf are you doing?" face.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Happy Christmas!

It doesn't feel much like Christmas around here today, but it's definitely been a good one nonetheless. We had a stocking for Kaetana with some small toys and stuff in it for her, but nothing too exciting. John and I got each other our gifts a few months ago (when we could actually afford them!) so today really has just been pretty laid back. John is going to be making Christmas dinner for us in a little while, and we're both very excited. I hope everyone is having a really great holiday! I'll be back with another update soon. ♥

Sleeping in. <3


Please note that this stocking really isn't big at all.

I <3 Santa

Auntie Steff

Friday, December 24, 2010

Stressful Week

Kaetana has been having some pretty stressful issues the past week and a half. At first, I was exclusively breast feeding, and it seemed to be going pretty well, but after a while we noticed that she wasn't gaining any weight. She was born at 7lb 10oz, and by her 1 week well check, she was down to about 7lb 2oz. No bueno. They say it's normal for babies to lose a little weight in the first week or so, but not necessarily that much. So the pediatrician gave me some tips to get her weight up and sent us on our way.

Well, a few days later, the little lady flat out refused to eat. Just wouldn't. We even had a bottle and some formula to try and she wouldn't take it. I was so frustrated, and with an entire day of her eating nothing, and having zero dirty diapers, I grew concerned enough to call her Dr again and they decided to have me bring her in. There we learned that she still wasn't gaining weight (had only upped by an ounce or so) and they decided to have me start supplementing with formula in between feedings. We tried that until Saturday, when we had a weight check scheduled, and learned that she had gained another couple ounces, but the Dr still wasn't happy. So, basically, we just kept on trying.

She had her 2 week appointment on Tuesday, and hadn't gained.

Now it's Friday, and we've switched exclusively to formula. I'm pretty bummed out about it, but at this point I'm thinking I just don't make enough or there's something off about my breastmilk that's not nourishing her the way it should be. All I want is for my little baby to gain some weight! So far, the exclusive formula feeding is going pretty well. She eats every 2 or so hours, 2 ounces. I'm hoping that on Tuesday (another weight check) they will tell us some good news.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Day Three

A photo that makes you happy:


This is truly a horrible photo of me, but it's the night we took Kaetana home from the hospital. :)

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Day Two

A photo of yourself at least a year ago:

Over two years ago, shopping in Phoenix with my great friend Sydney.

Awesome Owls at Target

We are going to re-do our bathroom in this fantastic new Target line! WHAT!

Monday, December 20, 2010

little update

I think Kaetana miiiight be getting a little cold or something. She's all stuffy and her poor little voice is kinda scratchy. Luckily, we have her 2 week pediatrician appointment tomorrow so they'll be able to tell me for sure and we'll be able to do something about it! I feel so bad, she's all miserable and cried for hours this afternoon before she finally passed out.


We've been having some issues over the past week or so because she stopped gaining weight and instead started losing it! She went an entire day without eating anything, and didn't have any dirty diapers at all. We ended up taking her to the pediatrician that night to have her checked out and they made us start supplementing her feeds with formula. She did well on it for a few days, but now she doesn't seem to like it and has started to refuse to drink it. Now today she hasn't had a poop at all which is probably not helping her overall fussiness and unhappiness. I'd be more worried if it wasn't for the doctor tomorrow, because they'll be able to tell me what I should do! It just makes me so sad to not be able to do anything to help her feel better. :(

I guess other than that, everything has been going really well. She'll be 2 weeks old tomorrow and I can't believe it's already been that long. This month is already absolutely flying by! Christmas is in less than a week, and before we know it she's going to be hitting the 1 month mark. It's absolute madness. I already see so much growth and change in her as compared to her first few days in the World. She seems a lot more alert, and although she still isn't quite able to focus on most things, I have a sense that she is a lot more aware of her surroundings. She holds on to her pacifier, and yesterday she pulled it out and then stuck it back in. It was weird. She almost never has her little hands in fists, either, which I thought was something all little little babies did for a while. She really seems to enjoy having her fingers all stretched out instead because she can grab on to things! Which she does in abundance. :)

She also loves The Beatles. Most of the time when she's being really fussy for no reason I can figure out, I'll put them on and sing to her and she calms right down. She especially loves the song Yesterday. It's her favourite, probably because it's so calm.

Well, now that I've written all this she's starting to stir and it's looking like time for me to go hold an upset little girl for a while. I hope everyone is having a wonderful December, and has the best Holiday ever! ♥

30 Day Photo Challenge

So, a lot of random people keep doing this and I thought I could join because it's not like I ever blog anyways and maybe this will get me back in to the habit of it. Though, I highly doubt I'll actually get on here every day to do this, so it'll be 30 days spread out over much more than 30 days Challenge, I'm sure. :)

Day One: A Photo of You Today


Super classy webcam photo taken on the couch while the baby sleeps.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Kaetana & her Daddy

I love these two together so, so much. ♥





Friday, December 17, 2010

Birth Story

It's been 10 days since Kaetana was born, so I figured it was high time for me to come write this out before I completely forget everything. Which, of course, I've already tuned out a good portion of it. Fail.

On Monday morning (the 6th), I woke up with contractions but didn't think a whole lot of them because they were mild and irregular. Plus, John and I had a doctors appointment that morning to see if Kaetana was any closer to coming out (this is 4 days post due date). W were met with the disappointing news that I hadn't progressed any more and ended up scheduling an induction for that Thursday (the 9th). Both John and I were pretty bummed out about that, because as you know I really wanted this to happen naturally, but figured my wishes weren't as important as getting her out before things went wrong in there. So we resigned ourselves to knowing that she would be born by the end of the week, and actually got really excited. So later that morning John went to work and I went grocery shopping with my friend Anna. It wasn't so bad until about halfway through when my contractions picked up and got pretty painful. I kind of lost my will to buy food so I had her take me home and soon after my contractions went almost completely away. It bummed me out, but I wasn't too surprised. I'd been having off and on contractions for the past week. The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful, and I went to bed with big plans to completely clean the house the next day and make sure everything was 100% ready for when she came home.

Little did I know that would so NOT be happening.

I woke up at about 2am on Tuesday having to use the bathroom. Got up, walked to the door and had to wait because our friend Sonny was in there (he and John were having their last "Halo Night" before baby.) So, I'm standing in the doorway of my bedroom waiting when all of a sudden I feel warm liquid pouring down my legs in to my slippers. My first thought? Shit I'm peeing my pants! So I yell for Sonny to hurry the eff up, and he moseys on out. I get in to the bathroom, sit down on the toilet, look down and notice that the "pee" is definitely not pee. It's brown, and green, and chunky and now I'm thinking I must have shit myself. Charming. So I finish up, stand up and it keeps coming. Then it starts gushing out and it dawns on me that no, this isn't from me. This is most definitely my water breaking, and baby most definitely passed A LOT of meconium in there and that just makes me completely flip my lid and panic. I yelled for John to come in and when he gets there I tell him what happened and you know what? He was the calmest person ever. I totally expected him to panic and freak out, but no. He proceeds to go get me new pants, a couple towels, and tells me to go get whatever I need to bring to the hospital while he cleans up. So we leave Sonny at the house, and head out to the Birthing Center which is in the next town over and I'm completely pissed that we have to drive all the way over there because as soon as we got in the car my contractions started getting really, really intense and really close together. It was the longest, worst car drive of my life.

We got to the Birthing Center where they confirmed that yes my water did break, yes the baby did pass meconium in it, and yes I was having her that day. Which made me completely freak out again! It was about 2:45am when I was finally admitted and put in to a room, and by then my contractions were really intense and I was having to rock on the birthing ball leaning on John to get through them. We called out doula and told her to head over, and then just waited. Once she got there, the contractions were REALLY bad, and most of the pain was in my back. Something I was really not prepared for was back labor, so of course that's what I get. I labored naturally for approximately 9 hours, trying every possible position to relieve the pain and pressure, at which point I was so exhausted I gave up and got an epidural.

The epidural was like sweet, sweet relief. It was truly an amazing feeling to go from the most pain of my life to feeling absolutely nothing. Now I thought I'd be so disappointed in myself for getting it, and I thought I'd feel really defeated by I'm not! I'm glad I got it because at that point I really couldn't have kept going the way I was. So during my natural laboring I progressed from the 2cm I came in at to 4cm. Pretty disappointing. After the epidural, and a good long nap, I progressed to 8cm by about 3 that afternoon. Everyone was really happy with the way things were going and we were all sure that she would come out within the next couple hours. But shortly after that I hit a huge brick wall, and her heartbeat started decelerating. The nurses put in an internal monitor to make sure they got the most accurate reading of her, and let me try to progress on my own.  A couple hours later the doctor came in and announced that I still hadn't gotten any further, and that she didn't like the way the baby's heartbeat was reading. So she decided that maybe the baby was too stressed out and that she wanted to give me a shot to completely stop my contractions and try giving her a little rest to see if her heart rate would go up and stabilize. They let me sit for about an hour with no contractions, and Kaetana's heart rate did in fact steady out and get so much better. Happy again, the doctor gave me a shot of pitocin to kick up my contractions again and she was pretty sure that we'd be fine. But, as soon as I got contracting again, baby's heart rate went down once more and it was decided that because I had been in active labor for a good 16 hours it was time to just go ahead with a c-section and not risk Kaetana's heart rate getting worse.

I was pretty upset about having to get the c-section. Obviously this was the last thing I had wanted, and I didn't mentally prepare myself at all for even the possibility. But that was the way it had to be so I resigned myself and John helped a lot with calming me down. So they prepped me and wheeled me off the the operating room where I laid there waiting for John to be let in so he could help me stay calm because I had the shakes really bad and I was pretty freaked out at the thought of having someone cut me open.

Lots of pressure and weird sensations later, they tell me they're going to be removing the baby and I saw John's face light up and just barely got to see her as they rushed her over to the little baby station off to my side to suck out her stomach and lungs before she really got to crying because they wanted to get as much of the meconium out of her system as possible. John left me to go be with her while the doctors sewed me back up and my shakes got worse and I was pretty freaked out because the baby didn't really cry much at all. But then they brought her over all wrapped up in a blanket and laid her next to me and I got to see and kiss her sweet little face and it was the very best feeling of my life. Then John and Kaetana left to go back to the room while they doctors finished me up and that was a horrible wait for me. When I finally got back to the room, I was so excited. They put the baby on my chest and I got to immediately breastfeed her, which she took to like a champ right away.

John was so amazing throughout the entire labor and birth process, and he is still being just as amazing while I'm recovering here at home. Kaetana looks just like him, and it makes me so happy to be able to look at her and see him so prominently shown. I am the luckiest person in the World, and I have the absolute best little family anyone could ever ask for. We are all doing amazingly, and Kaetana really is the sweetest baby I've ever met. She is beautiful, quiet, laid back and just an absolute joy to be around.

So that's my "birth story" and I realize that it's awfully written, but I'm not too great at recalling and retelling things so that's as good as it gets. :)





Tuesday, December 14, 2010

One. Week. Old.

Kaetana is 1 week old today, and I couldn't be happier. It's been the most challenging week of my life, but absolutely the most rewarding. She's just the sweetest little thing.

Hopefully I will find the time to come and post my birth story soon.

<3

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Friday, December 10, 2010

Kaetana is here!

I know I haven't been updating much lately, but I blame that on the fact that I had nothing interesting to say, and then I had a baby.
Expect me around a lot more often here once I get used to being a Momma.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Still pregnant.

Well, today is day 3 past my due date and as you can tell by the title of this post - I'm still pregnant.
It's definitely frustrating, but I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow so hopefully I'll get some good news (like progressed dilation or ANYTHING) and will be having her very very soon. We are going to schedule an induction for next Monday just in case, though. :( I am really hoping that it doesn't come down to that!!

BAH HUMBUG.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Happy Due Date to Me!

Today is my due date.
40 weeks.
Shit.

There's absolutely no indication that I'll go into labor any time soon, either, and I'm getting frustrated!

Here's hoping I'll have her really, really soon.
Like, tonight.