Picture Day

Picture Day is over and I am relieved! I always get so nervous before I take pictures for fear that something will go wrong and the pictures will be a disaster. I thought for sure either my face would break out or the baby would scratch herself across the face, but all that worry was for nothing! The pictures came out just fine. We frequent Q Studio at the mall because they are so much cheaper than everywhere else and you can buy a CD of all the pictures too then print them on your photo printer. I'm sure we could end up with much nicer pictures at a better place, but you definitely get good pictures for your money at Q Studio. I am also glad we had a trial run of our outfits at church a couple weeks ago or else I would have never known how baggy the baby's stocking were. I found a cotton pair at Babies R Us and shrank them in the dryer so they weren't totally puddled around her ankles. I would say today turned out pretty good and the best part was, Keira did NOT spit up on her dress! That was my biggest worry because every time we stick her in the car seat, she spits up- without fail.


I am glad the baby's pictures turned out pretty good. I am unbelievably picky about baby pictures. For example, I won't take naked pictures of my baby because to me, it's no different than taking naked pictures of a grown person. It's ok if you want to take naked pictures of YOUR baby, but my baby wears clothes. I also don't like newborn pictures where the baby is sprawled helplessly on the ground instead of propped up in an aware-looking position or pictures of newborns with their eyes closed because they look like they are dead. I am also not fond of pictures where both people are kissing the baby's cheeks, because either the baby's cheeks are totally squished or the parents' kissy faces look silly. Most of all, I don't like messy food face baby pictures. Like I said, that's fine if you want to do your baby's pictures like that, and they will be totally cute, but I am just especially particular about my own baby's pictures for some reason. My mom was the same way about her baby's pictures so that's probably where I got it from.

Anyway I am proud to report that I got my Christmas tree up last weekend. It's the earliest I have ever put my tree up- ever. It usually doesn't appear until a couple weeks into December. I bought a fake tree last year and I figured since I already have the tree and I will be on leave to enjoy it, I might as well get it set up. Too bad there will be a scarcity of presents under it this year! Santa's too broke.

I love your SMILE

- 6 weeks old -

My Little Kicker

Today I got out the rainforest play mat that Felicia bought for Keira to see if she had any interest in it yet. I didn't think she would care for it much yet, but she seemed to have a pretty good time. She only managed to reach the toys a couple times but she was kickin' like crazy! She had those legs going and she was "talking". Click on this video I took on my cell phone.

That should give you an understanding of what it was like having her in my belly! That girl would kick me like crazy. Every time I went to the doctor they would say, "Wow! You have a gymnast in there!" She loves to be awake and loves to play. I sure love my little kicker.

Yesterday I had a test run of the clothes I bought for us to wear in our family picture. I was quite pleased with my outfit and the dress I got for the baby fit her perfectly. I learned that Art is hard to restrain when he sees me in black nylons, and I learned that the baby's nylons are WAY too baggy! I am definitely going to have to find either some smaller stockings or some black ruffle socks. It is really hard to find black clothing for babies so I hope I can find a substitute. When we got home from church I wanted to take a couple pictures of her before I changed her clothes and she was starving so most of the pictures I got look like this...

I am pretty sure she waited in the cuteness line in heaven twice

but skipped the patience line altogether.

Note the baggy stockings.

Her shoes are so big you have to make sure they don't fall off.

She is now 5 weeks old and doing really well. The only time she ever cries is when she's hungry which is every 3 hours like clockwork. She still doesn't sleep for longer stretches at night, but she has gotten better about going right back to sleep. I still haven't taken her to a checkup at the doctor because we're in between insurance, but I got on the scale with her and she is about 9 pounds! I can't believe how fast she is growing. I guess my little girl can't stay little forever. I am sad to report though, that my breastfeeding attempts have failed completely. At best I could only get her to latch on for about 15 minutes, only after pumping, and being that she would still finish a full bottle afterward I could tell she couldn't suck hard enough to get anything out. I was going to keep pumping until she got the hang of nursing, but my milk supply dwindled down to insignificant amounts faster than she improved. It was taking me 3-4 days of pumping to get enough for one bottle. As sad as it makes me to give up, at least she was able to get some of my milk for the first 5 weeks. That's better than nothing, and it sure hasn't kept her from growing!

Crazy Eights

8 Shows I Love

1. Heroes
2. CSI Las Vegas
3. Stargate SG-1
4. Stargate Atlantis
6. CSI Miami
7. Other CSI-like shows such as Law and Order
8. Jesse Stone TV series of movies

8 Thing I Did Today (I'm going to change this to this week so its not so boring.)

1. Sunday- went to church
2. Monday- went to my postpardum appointment
3. Monday- went to dinner and Family Home Evening at the Pauline's house
4. Tuesday- went shopping at the mall with Keira and my mom
5. Wednesday- bought my mom an opal ring for her birthday
6. Wednesday- went to dinner at Cool Hand Luke's for mom's birthday
7. Friday- bought a file cabinet and fireproof/waterproof safe in an attempt to get organized and satisfy my recent paranoia of apartment fires
8. Saturday- I filed everything in the new file cabinet

8 Things I look Forward to:

1. Putting up my Christmas tree soon
2. Owning a house someday
3. Taking a family picture in the next week or so
4. Thanksgiving
5. Christmas
6. Getting 8 consecutive hours of sleep again
7. Moving out of this tiny apartment
8. Going to the temple to be sealed

8 Favorite Resturants

1. F. McLintock's
2. Plaza Ventana
3. Luna's
4. Me n Ed's
5. Cool Hand Luke's
6. DiCicco's
7. Bobby Salazar's
8. Sun Sun Kitchen

8 Things On My Wish List

1. To be able to stay home and raise my baby
2. A bigger place to live
3. A second car
4. To be debt free
5. More sleep
6. Someone to cook for me every day
7. Power locks in my car
8. Cable TV

8 People I Tag

I don't think I have 8 friends but I tag Michelle, Shalee, and Kathy.

Neglect and Deprivation

It's now been one month since I pushed my baby out and I am TIRED. I'm still trying to convince Keira that we don't need to be up all night like Daddy but she still gets up to eat every 3 hours, which means I get to sleep for about 2 hours at a time if I'm lucky. She loves to be awake, especially at night.

My sleep deprivation was accentuated by the fact that I had to finish my real estate finance course and have the certificate of completion at the Department of Real Estate by this Wednesday or else everything I worked so hard for would have gone down the drain. So I spent all last week studying and took the final exam last night, which I proudly passed with a 97%. I will shortly have my unconditional real estate sales license although I'm not sure when I will utilize it.

I have learned that motherhood requires a skill for prioritizing that I have not yet mastered. With only 2 free hours at a time, you must carefully choose what you wish to accomplish in that window. The list usually consists of bathing and other personal hygiene, eating, pumping, house cleaning, errands, and laundry. It seems like eating keeps getting pushed farther and farther down the list. Sometimes I get to the end of the day and realized I haven't even brushed my teeth, or that I haven't eaten all day. You might call it self-neglect. I have also sworn off cooking until further notice, so feel free to take pity on me and bring me a nutritious meal any time.

Even lower on the list of priorities is my poor Bunny. He has not seen much time outside of his cage in the past 4 weeks. To top it off, he was out of hay and banana chips for a couple weeks. This has resulted in very low Bunny morale, so much so that a few days ago when I lowered his dinner into his cage he angrily bit my hand! Yes, he bit the hand that feeds him. I think Bunny's isolation is pushing him toward insanity, as he has begun hurling himself against the cage walls like some kind of crazed wall kick or body slam. Hopefully I can get him to forgive me.

One thing I am happy about though is how surprisingly resilient my body is, with the exception of my bad butt skin. My belly got really flat really fast. By the end of week 2 or so, I had dropped 20 lbs. and I thought I looked pretty dang good. I would be completely content at my present weight but I would still like to get in the habit of exercising. Every time I go into public, people tell me I don't even look like I had a baby. Art says not to let it go to my head, but I think he is impressed too.

I totally meant to take pictures of the baby yesterday to commemorate her 4 week birthday but that fell too low on the priority list and didn't happen. We are planning on taking a family picture to give to everyone for Christmas but I contracted a gnarly eye infection in both eyes and have to wait until that clears up. That will give me some time to decide where I want to have them taken and figure out something to wear. I have a dress that's ok but I wore it while I was pregnant and although it isn't a maternity dress it has maternity karma. Also, I am quite nervous about timing it so that she isn't starving to death or asleep upon our arrival. Anyways, here are a couple pictures from Week 3. Nothing fancy...

Her birthmark looks like a tattoo to me.

I want to know what color her eyes are going to be!

She likes playing with her ladybug toy.

Cuddling with Daddy.

Chinese Water Torture

I have come to realize that to Keira, breastfeeding is like Chinese Water Torture. With the combination of her high arched palate and weak suck and my lack of substantial milk supply, it was inevitable that breastfeeding wouldn't work out for us. Try as she may, she just can't latch on well enough and suck hard enough to get enough to eat. She even has trouble sucking on a bottle or pacifier. With the flow from a bottle being so abundant, I really can't blame her for being discontent with my slow drip. I have, however, been pumping what little milk I have for her and she seems to enjoy it much more than I enjoy pumping. A couple weeks ago, I had read about how babies go through a growth spurt around 3 weeks old where they will eat every hour around the clock and shuddered at the thought. Then a moment ago, the baby was fussing and Art asked if she might be hungry and I said, "She just ate an hour ago!" Surprisingly, Art remembered our conversation about the growth spurt and suggested that might be why she is hungry and I responded, "But that's not supposed to happen until they are 3 weeks old! Oh..." When I read about it, it seemed so far away but these 3 weeks have gone by so fast!

Even though she is only a couple weeks old, her personality is definitely forming and I have learned a few things about her. She does NOT like to have her arms confined. She will go to extraordinary lengths to free them. Also, she does not have "hunger cues." The moment her eyes open, you have to run and get a bottle. She doesn't mess around- she gets straight down to business. I have also learned that she inherited Art's crude digestive system. You wouln't believe the foul stench that comes out of such a cute girl and she lets out some amazing belches. I will certainly pray she becomes more refined as she grows. Lastly, when I was pregnant with her I knew that when she was really kicking it was because she was mad and sure enough, when she gets mad those legs are kick-a-kickin'!

Recovery has been much more long and drawn out than I anticipated. I got a bladder infection a few days after I got home from the hospital and a few days later, developed a Bartholin's cyst. It is a cyst on the gland in your women parts that is responsible for lubrication of the area. I had to have it cut open to drain. Only 2% of women ever get one of these cysts, and I am lucky enough to be part of that percentage. I had one about 4 years ago that didn't hurt nearly as much as this one did. This one felt like it was going to explode every time I stood up. It's been over a week since they cut it open and I am feeling better every day, but I am still afraid at the possibility it could come back as well as the bladder infection. At this point, Keira is still worth all the trouble, but check back with me after the week long growth spurt of hourly feedings! My answer may have changed by then.

Here are my favorite photos from Week 2...

Look at that sad face! lol

She actually enjoys taking a bath.

I caught her smiling!

My little cute bug!

I love her little fuzzy head.

One Week

Today is Keira's one week birthday! I can't believe it's been a week already, and quite an eventful week at that. We got home from the hospital on Monday and the next day we went to her checkup at Kaiser and they told us that her jaundice level at the hospital was borderline high and they wanted to do a blood test to see if it had gone up or down. We got a phone call with the results that evening and they told us her levels were so high that they wanted us to go back to the hospital for 24 hours of light therapy. This news was very unwelcome. In addition to her jaundice levels being high, they told us she had already lost 10% of her birthweight and that's not supposed to happen until about day 6. I also told the doctor that she won't latch on to breastfeed and they determined she has a high palate and weak suck but didn't offer any advice other than to keep trying and supplement with formula. So we went back to the hospital and I cried all night. It was so hard not being able to be with her all the time. Plus, my milk was finally trying to come in, and for those of you who don't know, it feels like lightning bolt cramps shooting from your armpits to your nipples and your boobs turn rock hard and are so sore you can't move your arms. I was SO miserable and just wanted to be home with my baby. Thankfully her jaundice went down by the next evening and we were able to take her home.

With my milk supply lagging, the lethargy caused by jaundice, and baby's inability to latch on, I have been having a heck of a time trying to feed her. Instead of being able to just breastfeed or just bottlefeed, feedings consist of all of the above plus pumping. Every time I try to breastfeed her she gets really impatient and frustrated that she can't latch on and starts crying, and you can't get a crying baby to close their mouth and suck! I have been praying and praying that she will catch on to breastfeeding and she seems to be making some improvement.

On Wednesday night, I was running a fever all night and by morning I realized I had a bladder infection. Back to the doctor again! I was so upset to have more pain and discomfort down there than I already had. I've been taking my antibiotics for four days now and they don't seem to be helping much, but the doctor over the phone is convinced that this antibiotic should work and wants me to keep taking them until I hear from my doctor tomorrow. I'm hoping to feel better soon. I had never put much thought into what recovery from childbirth would be like and it's worse than I anticipated. The first several days I could hardly walk. Now I'm gaining speed, but I'm still in considerable pain especially when I'm standing. Art is getting really impatient with me and has a hard time understanding why I'm not up and running like normal. My response to him was, imagine if you just pushed a melon out of your rectum! You would be in pain too! I think that just because he can't see how I hurt, he can't imagine what it's like.

As far as my labor story, it all started Saturday night after I dropped off my sister at the church dance. I was driving home and noticed I was having a lot of strong contractions. I started timing them at 10:00 pm and they were at 8 minutes apart. I didn't think too much of it yet but kept writing down the times. By 11:30 they picked up to 6 minutes apart, and by 12:30 they were coming every couple minutes. They tell you to wait at home while your contractions are 5 minutes apart for an hour, but mine were getting so fast, strong, and painful that I knew I better not procrastinate getting to the hospital. I texted Art at work and said, "Baby you need to come home now. These contractions are the real deal!" He couldn't believe it. I called my mom and she and Art were at my house by 1:00 am. Art drove like a mad man to get me to the hospital and we arrived at 1:30. At this point it was all I could do to walk and talk between contractions and they were coming every 2 minutes. When they checked me I was dilated to 4 cm. By 2:30 they transferred me to a delivery room and checked me again and I was at 6 cm. By this point I was in a LOT of pain and asked for some pain medication if only to keep Art's hands from being broken from me squeezing them and yelling. They gave me stadol which made me throw up almost immediately and didn't do much for the pain. My water broke on it's own sometime around this point. It was a lot more fluid than I thought it would be! They brought the anesthesiologist in to give me an epidural and it didn't work right even with a double dose. They probably couldn't get it in right because I had such a hard time holding still from the pain of my contractions which were back to back with no break in between. Another hour later and I was dilated to 10 cm when the epidural finally started to take effect and when it did, it almost stopped my labor! The nurse had me try pushing for 15 minutes to see if the baby would come down and she really wasn't moving so they had me rest for an hour while they stopped the epidural so my contractions would come back. It wasn't a very restful hour because every time I would doze off, I would stop breathing then jolt awake to breathe. I was also still very nauseous and throwing up. A new nurse named Terri came in after the hour and had me start pushing again. She came in the room with such a positive attitude and said, "Ok, I can see from your contraction pattern that it's time to get this baby out now!" She told me not to doubt that I can do it, to just focus all my energy on pushing instead of complaining and yelling. I really internalized what she said and even when I thought I couldn't work any harder, I kept going and stayed focused. Thankfully the epidural wore off enough for me to push but not so much that I was in unbearable pain. My mom was holding one leg while Art held the other and I pushed for about 45 minutes. I told them not to peek but I don't think they listened. They were concerned that the baby's heart rate was dropping and I was tired and wanted a way to get her out faster so I suggested using a vacuum. They went and got a doctor and he said it looked like she was running into a bone and we just needed to help guide her head in the right direction. I was probably having such a hard time getting her out because she was born face up. 15 minutes later, with the help of the vacuum and a few more pushes, out came my beautiful baby girl at 8:31 am. I only got one tiny tear and needed a couple stitches. I was in labor at the hospital for 7 hours.

When she was born, I immediately started bawling. I just couldn't believe that was my beautiful baby and that I had created her. She was absolutely perfect from the start. She didn't have a cone head, even with using the vacuum, and she hardly had any white vernix coating on her even though she was one week early. She was not crying and was a little purple so they took her under the warmer to try to get her to cry to increase her circulation. Getting her to cry was not an easy task. They tried suctioning out her lungs and even that wouldn't work. She is too easy going I guess. She had a round blue mark on her left arm that they thought was a bruise at first but when the pediatrician looked at her he told us it is a birthmark called a Mongolian Spot which should disappear within a few years. He said that Mexican babies get them. She had a full head of dark hair which was surprising to me, but it suits her well since her name means dark-haired. Speaking of her hair, it is totally curly when it's wet and straight when it's dry! It will be interesting to see if it ends up curly or not.

As intense as my labor was, I know God lets us experience things the way we need to. It's like the difference between hiking to the top of Half Dome and enjoying the view versus being flown to the top in a helicopter. You get the same reward in the end, but you have a strong sense of accomplishment if you hiked instead of flew. I know now I was not meant to experience a pain free labor and I wouldn't trade my experience for any other. I endured and accomplished more than I ever thought I was capable and I know it was thanks to the support I got from my mom, husband, the nurse, and my Heavenly Father. You wouldn't believe how great of a coach Art was. He was right by me the whole time, talking me through each contraction and each push and reminding me to keep my breathing slow and steady instead of panicking. I couldn't have hired a better helper. He said the worst part of everything was holding the puke bucket for me. In the end, I was soaking wet with sweat and amniotic fluid, and absolutely exhausted but so happy to have my little girl in my arms. It's amazing how fast you can love someone so much. I wouldn't trade her for anything and I would go through that pain for her a hundred times over if I had to.