One Month :)

Where is the time going?  Aly is one month old (doesn't she look really concerned about that fact?).  In her first month, she:

• Gained 2 pounds (considering what she lost, that was more than an ounce per day!)
• Grew 2 inches
• Learned to roll over from tummy to back pretty well (and went from back to tummy twice!)

Hmm, not a long list of accomplishments.  We are going to have to try harder next month ;)   She is nursing like a champ now, and even took her first bottle without much protest.  She's not sleeping longer than three hours at night, but she does eat and go right back to sleep, so I can't really complain. 

We are following a Babywise/Baby Whisperer plan, and its working well.  I highly recommend those books for new parents.  They get bad raps from people who obviously didn't do them right, but said they were (letting newborns CIO, feeding every 4 hours even if baby was hungry at 2.5, etc).  Obviously things have to be tweaked for each individual kid, and parents always have to use their best judgment!!  But the routine is definitely working for our family.

FINALLY!

DH's work is finally picking up :)  He has been working his tail off for the last year and a half, and its finally starting to pay off - like really pay $$!  Its crazy.  We have gone so long living off my salary only that its really weird to have his checks coming in.  I am hoping that we can start really making some progress paying down our debt and getting savings boosted up.

DH met with a real estate agent, and we decided that we are going to put our house up for sale as soon as possible.  We are upside down on our house, but its not as bad as we had originally feared ($5-10k instead of $20-30k).  While I am home on maternity leave, I am focusing on getting things cleaned up around the house and doing some minor maintenance (paint, caulk, decluttering).  But the in-laws have offered to let us move into their basement apartment once we sell this house.  Its a great space with its own entrance, and we wouldn't have to pay rent :)  And since MIL watches DD for us three days a week while I work, its perfect!  Even though they said we won't have to pay rent, we will probably pay them something since we are living there (at least for our utilities).  And we will help fix up the apartment space so that it is updated and ready to go when they go to sell. 

We also got our daycare situation almost lined out.  MIL will watch DD three days per week.  My mom offered to watch her for free the other two days - but I just don't know that I trust her to (sad as that sounds).  So we found a college student from church that can watch her at our house two days per week.  It just happened to line up perfectly with her schedule, and she is so great with little kids!!  She also does childcare for the women's ministries on those days, and we said she can take DD with her.  So she gets to work two jobs at once :)  Pretty good deal for a college student!  I know next semester might be a bit different, but we can work something out.  This at least gets us through the rest of this year.  Its killing me that I have to go back to work, but I am hoping & praying that it will only be for a few years.  By the time munchkin #2 comes around, I would like to be able to quit and SAH - or at the very least, go PT.

Put a pin in it!

I am officially in love with Pinterest.  Originally I resisted joining (not sure why...), but now that I have joined I love it!  Right now I am working on design ideas for our room.  I really want to re-do it, but we don't have a ton of $$ to spare right now.  So this is going to be a DIY project and its going to take a bit of time.  Oh well, I will have a lot of fun!!

Here are the ideas I have so far.  I love that I can add things as I find them :)  DH looked through my pictures last night and he really liked the ideas I had so I know I am on the right track.  He goes out of town on business next week, and I am hoping to get some things done while he is out (the curtains, maybe the bedding, and get the room rearranged a tad bit).

Part of re-doing our room is moving out the bassinet.  Baby girl is almost a month old now!  She has settled into a fairly predictable night-time routine, so I am feeling better about moving her to her own room now.  And the pack-n-play needs to get packed up so it can go to Grandma's for when I go back to work.  So not looking forward to going back :(  I know that I have to for now, but I really, really wish I didn't need to.  At least I know who she will be with during the day, and she is really close (about 2 miles away from work) so I can go see her over lunch if I want to :)

On Friday and Sunday we were able to get all the babies together at the in-laws house.  It was pretty fun!  Here's a pic of all of us with our babies:

I am in love :)

Baby girl is here :)

Aly was born on 7/26.  She weighed 6lbs 1oz, and was 19.5'' long.  She's our skinny little princess!!

Here's the story:


On Tuesday, I had everything at home pretty much ready to go, so I was just lounging around the house & getting kind of bored. At about 9:30 I figured I would give the dog a bath while it was still cool enough to put her outside for awhile. As I am in the middle of her bath, the phone started ringing. I couldnt answer because I was all soapy & gross from cleaning up the dog, so I stand up to start cleaning up & felt a whole bunch of water. I was pretty sure it wasn't from bathing the dog, so I started cleaning everything up. I got the dog outside to dry off, got the bathroom cleaned up, and by that time it was pretty apparent that my water had broken. So I called the nurse back - turns out she had just been calling to schedule my induction. Perfect timing I asked if I could stay home for awhile since I wasn't having contractions yet, but they wanted me to come in to get checked. So I called DH and told him he should head home - and while I waited I did the dishes, laundry, cleaned the bathroom, just anything I could to stay busy & hoping that it would start some contractions too.

DH got home and we waited for the laundry to finish washing (too hot to leave wet clothes ), tossed things in the dryer, and went to grab lunch. I knew once I got there they would admit me & not let me eat, so I wanted to get some food first. We grab some fast food & sat in the parking lot to eat. We got to the hospital around 11:30 and got checked in, and they started monitoring for an hour. They checked me & I was at 2. Still no contractions, so they wanted to start pitocin right away. I asked if we could hold off & if I could walk to see if it would start up on its own. I did 40 mins walking (as fast as I could through the halls), 40 mins monitoring until 4:30, but the contractions still were not starting. Since my water had been broken for more than 6 hours at that point, they wanted to go ahead with the pitocin. The bad part is once that started I really was confined to my room since I had the IV pole to lug around The contractions started going & were manageable at first, but by 6:30 they were getting too strong to handle. I debated getting the epi for awhile, but finally decided to go for it. I was disappointed since I really had wanted to do all of it on my own without either of the meds, but oh well. Once I got the epi I was able to relax. At 7 I was at 4, and just hanging out with DH. We figured it would take awhile since I had only gone from 2-4 in the last 5 hours.

At 8 our moms & my sister came up to see us & visit for a bit. They were all watching the contraction monitors & commenting on how high & long they were. I really couldn't feel it, so I was just having a good time hanging out Really, the epi was wonderful! About 9 I felt another pop, and told my mom to go get my nurse. Turns out my water hadn't broken completely before, so I guess that was the rest of it. The nurse came in to get me cleaned up & check again - I was at 8! The moms decided to not leave, but to go hang out in the waiting room. I could feel the pressure of the contractions getting lower & lower - it felt like she was pushing herself out. I told the nurse at 9:30 that I left like she was coming out with each contraction. She checked me again & told me to hold on - she had to call the Dr first. It was time to push!! We were shocked that it had gone that fast!! We were expecting to not get to that point until 3-4am. So the Dr comes in about 9:50 and I start pushing. By 10:12 she was out! DH did cut the cord, and amazingly enough he didn't pass out or anything It sounds dumb, but it didn't really hit me that I was having a baby until she was out. The first thing I said to DH when I saw her was "OMG - that's a BABY!! " The nurse & the Dr just laughed. I did end up needing a couple of stitches because it went so fast, but she's tiny so thankfully she didn't do too much damage!!

It all went really, really fast. And was surprisingly a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I wish some things could have gone a bit differently, but overall it was a really wonderful experience. She had some issues with nursing at first - for the first day she just was not interested at all and would just sleep. I couldn't get her to wake up, and if she did she would not open up her mouth at all. The LC came in & we tried a nursing shield a few times. That's apparently all she needed to figure out what she was supposed to be doing. The next time I tried to use it she fussed & pulled it off. She figured out how to latch on her own, and was doing great until my milk came in all the way and we had to bring back the shield.  Right now we are dealing with engorgement & a mild case of mastitis, so hopefully we can get that cleared up & go back to nursing without the shield soon.


This last week has been really, really crazy.  But for the most part I am loving every sleep-deprived second :)