Updates

Wow – It’s been a while since I last posted. I honestly think about posting frequently but it always seems like something comes up that needs my attention or the baby starts crying or wants to nurse. So here are a few bullet points to catch everyone up:

• Last week we took Kelsey to the doctor and she was up to 6lbs 0.5oz so I would say that nursing is going extremely well. I’m taking the boy for his belated 4 year checkup tomorrow and the doctor said we could weigh Kelsey “just for fun.”
• Baby girl wants to be held all the time, even when she’s asleep. While I certainly don’t mind holding her 24/7, I am feeling a little bit of guilt at the dishes and laundry piling up so eventually I succumb to the guilt and let her fuss a little bit. Like today when we ran out of forks. Plus I need the occasional shower. She won’t take a pacifier either – unless you count the breast.
• Braden is adjusting nicely at home, but he is being very aggressive and getting in trouble at daycare. Things should really get interesting next month. Since he’ll be starting pre-K in the fall, we have to change daycares to one much closer to our house that will provide transportation to and from school. He starts at the new daycare in 2 weeks.
• I cannot describe the extreme guilt I am feeling at the thought of going back to work in 3 weeks. The school where the boy will be going to pre-K is right around the corner from our house and I would love nothing more than to walk him to school every day. We made a budget and it just doesn’t look like it’s possible right now though, even when you consider that after paying for 2 kids in daycare and gas to and from work I’m only contributing about $6,500 a year to the household. I looked into some of the work at home scenarios but they all seem to involve some type of direct marketing situation, and I am definitely not a salesperson.
• One word: hormones. I think a certain amount of tears and sleep deprivation-induced irritability is pretty normal after having a baby, but it still sucks. I don’t really feel like I have full-blown PPD yet, but we’ll see how things are going in a couple of months.
• The other night my husband was upstairs with both kids while I was trying to get 5 minutes on the computer to respond to a few emails. Apparently the girl got fussy so he sent the boy downstairs to tell me, “Mom, the baby needs a boob!” Nice… I can’t wait for him to say that in public.
• Mother’s Day was kind of a bust here at our house. The hubby didn’t get me a card or a gift, and as an afterthought decided to take me out to eat. Which is fine really because it’s not as if I NEED cards or gifts, but at least an acknowledgement of Mother’s Day would have been good. Or not acting like an asshole – that would have been a great gift too. But perhaps I set my standards a bit too high. Oh well, that’s ok. Father’s Day is coming soon.
  
  And that’s really about it. Here are some pics to enjoy:

These last two show the booties that Meira made. Aren't they gorgeous?

We have a baby!

Miss Kelsey Rene was born on Thursday, April 27th at 7:44pm, weighing 5lbs 9oz and measuring 18 ¾“ long. She’s absolutely perfect and at the risk of jinxing myself, seems to be a very easy baby so far. For those interested in the birth story, keep reading.

I went to my doctor’s appointment at 11:00am on Thursday and my water conveniently broke in the waiting room. It wasn’t a gush or anything, but by the time I got to see the doctor it was getting pretty messy. Her office is in one of the physician buildings that is attached to the hospital so she sent me up to Labor & Delivery. I was only dilated to 3cm and not fully effaced so they decided to give me a small dose of pitocin to get things started and that’s when I made the mistake of asking for an epidural. Actually, it wouldn’t have been a mistake if I had had a decent anesthesiologist, but when it took him 3 sticks in my back to get the thing in place, I had serious misgivings. Then there’s the fact that it numbed everything except the vaginal region, but I’ll get to that later. I am grateful to the nurse who held my hand and tried to comfort me as I cried from the pain since hubby was out in the hallway with our son. I did NOT want the boy to witness anything like that. So anyway, we started the pitocin and discovered that every time the baby’s head would engage, her heart rate would drop dramatically. Pitocin was promptly stopped and there was talk of a possible c-section. I said that was fine – whatever gave us a healthy baby. So we waited for a couple of hours for labor to progress naturally and I stalled at 5cm. My doctor came to check on me around 5:00 and said we would go ahead and give the pitocin one more try. Guess what? It worked! And have I mentioned that I wasn’t numbed in the vaginal region? The nurse checked me at 6:30 and I was still at 5cm. At 7:30 I was in an indescribable amount of pain due to back to back contractions so the anesthesiologist was called again to push more meds that again didn’t work. The nurse checked me again and I was complete and baby was on her way. Thus began 14 minutes of panic and rushing around the room and calling for the doctor, a scrub tech, and a baby advocate. My friend KatyaR was outside the room and said my doctor came running down the hallway. By the time she got there I could feel the baby crowning and I was NOT pushing. I was holding onto my husband’s hand and trying to concentrate on breathing and not totally losing my shit because have I mentioned the pain? The good news is they told me to push and I only had to do it once and she plopped out, and then all of a sudden there was no more pain. But pain or no, if I had to do it all over again I would because she was totally worth it.



I have to brag on my husband now. I couldn’t have done this without him. He stayed with me and held my hand and tried to help me hang in there when I said “I can’t do this anymore.” And now when I watch him holding his tiny daughter and talking to her sweetly and snuggling with her, I fall in love all over again. Our son is not so enamored of his new little sister yet, but he’s making comments like “I like that baby” so I think there is hope he will come around.



We had an appointment this morning with the pediatrician for a weight check and she weighed 5lbs 4oz, but since my milk just came in yesterday and we have to wake her to eat, there hasn’t really been time yet to put more weight on her. However, I nursed her at the doctor’s office today and then they re-weighed her to see how many ounces she was drinking (1.5oz) and the doctor seemed happy with that. We will go back again in a week for another weight check but I expect her to be well above her birth weight by then.



A very special thank you to Meira for the adorable knitted booties. I will try to get a picture of them tomorrow and send it to you. Thank you so much!