My Ten Year Reunion

This weekend was my ten year high school reunion which forced me to take a big step, leaving Leah for the first time! Andy & Mary Rita babysat for us and Brian and I enjoyed a kid free six hours :). It's always great getting together with old friends and it was nice to get out for the first time in a long time. 

Jessi, Claudia and I met over at Melissa's first so they could see Leah.

My Dad was nice enough to be our DD after the ball game. 

Leah is now six weeks old. She is finally fitting into some other clothes besides her Carter's onesies and has been full of interactive smiles for the past week. It melts my heart when she looks up at us and gives us her big gummy smile! 

Smiling up at me 

Leah has been going at least 6 hours between feedings at night for the past week. We have also transitioned her over to her crib from the co-sleeper which has helped me get more sleep as I don't wake up from her every grunt and squawk, just when she cries. Now we need to work on the timing of when she finally falls asleep for the night as waiting until 3 am to finally go down is not going to work for this momma when I have to go back to work!! Luckily I still have five weeks left. It's scary how fast these last six weeks have gone though.

A couple weeks ago Brian was taking the morning shift and did tummy time with Leah and she rolled over for him. At four weeks it was hard for me to believe that it happened, and that I missed it!! And of course we couldn't get her to do it again. Then on Monday, she did it for me and I caught it on video! She was propped up more than she usually is on tummy time but she still did it four times in a row which is impressive for six weeks. 

 

Leah's First Month

Since I am starting this blog a little late I am going to attempt to catch up on the first month as a family of three...well four I guess with Bowzer! 

We got to go home from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon after being cleared by our pediatrician to not needing a bili blanket since Leah's Bilirubin level had gone down enough. 

    First car ride

Brian had taken the whole week off so it was nice having him home everyday while we adjusted to being parents/no sleep. Bowzer has been so good with Leah. Besides a few occasional licks (mostly after she spits up) he keeps his distance. Until this week he would keep me company on every nighttime feeding which was sweet. Now he comes out with us but then goes back to bed after a couple minutes, usually stealing my spot on the bed! 

Bowz loving his little sis:

          Right when we got home

         Making sure Leah is sleeping ok

        Joining me for a night feeding at

        Mom and Dads

       Checking things out

      Putting up with another photo shoot

     My loves!

We took our first road trip home when Leah was just a week old for Fairfax Fundays. I know it was crazy but I was feeling good and knew I would have lots of help from Gma Deaner and Papa! Plus, I knew that Brian would be really bummed if he had to miss it. While he didn't get to enjoy it as much as usual it was still a good day. Leah and I made it over to Andy & MR's for breakfast and then went back to my parents while Brian hit up the Star Bar. Then I met him back in Fairfax around noon for the parade and then we went back home to nap before the fireworks show at Brad & Jamie's that night. 

     Leah's first fireworks show. We were so close 

     that it was super loud but she still slept thru them!

The next week my mom was able to stay with us to help Monday thru Thursday. She did a few photo shoots and got some great pics of Leah. Here are just a handful! 

We had Leah's two week check up on June 26th, a little early since Dr. Boonstra was out of town the following week. Our little peanut weighed in at 6 lbs 8 oz and measured 19 inches long, putting her in the 9th percentile for weight and 10th for height. She is so small!! She has a closet full of cute outfits (special thanks to Aunt Tara and Carissa) and all she can fit into are the Carter newborn onesies and two tiny dresses! 

   Leah's closet

Then last week Mary Rita came up and stayed with us Tuesday night thru Friday. It was good timing too because Brian threw out his back playing volleyball on Monday night so she got to help take care of both Leah and Brian! 

     Leah smiling at Mary Rita

So I really have only had to be alone for 3 or 4 days total in my 4 weeks off of work so far!! We will see how things go now that I don't have helpers scheduled to stay with us :) I am very blessed with the family I have. Not only am I very close with my sisters (who are both baby whisperers) and we all live in the same town, I have amazing parents who will do anything for us. Then I was very lucky to marry into an awesome family with the Meyers clan as well!

Everyone asks if Leah is a good baby and it's a hard question to answer when I have nothing to compare to! Overall I would say yes, I think Leah is doing really well. It was amazing how quickly I adjusted to not sleeping for more than a couple hours at a time. I really wanted to breastfeed and am glad that I am able to but it is a lot of work and most days I feel like its all I do! Just in the past week I feel like she is making progress in lasting longer between feedings which is nice. Feeding her every two to three hours is very time consuming and at night it makes it impossible to get any good sleep. Nights have been getting increasingly better, especially in the last week. The past two nights she has made it 5 hours between feedings so let's hope that trend continues. Every day/night is so different though, when they are this young there is no schedule! 

One month old!

Hospital Stay

Once the C-Section was done and I was all stitched up we were moved to a new hospital room in the section recovery wing which was unfortunately about half the size of our original room. We got there a little after 2 am and Leah and I got a good couple hours of skin to skin time and had a successful first time breastfeeding. My mom left to get some sleep for the night around 4 am when we finally got Brian's cot.  Around this time Leah started crying and wouldn't stop. I didn't want to send her to the nursery at all while we were at the hospital but Brian convinced me around 5, when she was still crying, that we wouldn't be 'bad parents' if we let her stay in there for two hours so we could at least get a little sleep.  

    Skin to skin snuggling 

    In her Peach onesie Aunt Bri made for Leah. Since it took me until the day after she was born to decide on a name she was called Peach throughout the second half of my pregnancy. 

   Brian's first Fathers Day! 

Saturday was a very busy day full of visitors. We had both sides of the family in a tiny hospital room at once. Talk about chaos! Then Sunday morning we got some bad news, Leah had jaundice and would need to be under bililights for at least 24 hours. She was only allowed to come out to eat so she was basically in 'jail'. It was really hard to not be able to hold our baby girl after we finally got to meet her! Sunday was also the day that the feeding/latching issues started. Since the way babies kick jaundice is the bililights and by eating and then pooping it was really important that Leah was getting enough to eat. I refused to give her any formula so we ended up doing a combination of pumping and using a nipple shield to help her latch. Luckily it only took a week and a half to break her of the shield once we got home. She ended up being under the lights until Monday evening. Then Tuesday morning she had to go back under them for a couple hours due to her levels going back up. 

    In her 'jail'

Her Tuesday morning, 3 days after she was born, her Biliruben levels were down enough that the pediatrician cleared us to to take her off the lights and to go home! 

Leah's Birth

I had a doctors appointment on the morning of the 14th (since the week before I turned down being induced at the suggestion of my mother and by that point I was regretting it!). I was only dilated to a 2 so I had progressed from a 1 the week before, but not much. The doctor stripped my membranes in hopes of starting labor and then I had to 'pass' a non-stress test and have an ultrasound to make sure I had enough fluids and the baby was doing ok since I was a week late in order for them to let me try and make it thru the weekend. Due to my PTO being maxed out I didn't go back to work after my appointment and instead went home and tried to nap. I found that I couldn't really sleep, I tried from 12:30 to 3 but kept getting woken up by awful back pains which looking back on were probably contractions. I finally stopped trying to sleep at 3 and got up. Once I did that my back pain became pretty much constant but every few minutes it would spread to my stomach area. Since I didn't have any Braxton Hicks I didn't know for sure if they were 'real' or not but I sure was hoping they were since they hurt so bad! I started timing them with my handy contraction app and after an hour I gave in and called the expert, my mom. At that point they were 3 to 3.5 minutes apart and lasting around 30 seconds. My mom told me to take a hot shower to help with the back pain and to keep timing as she wanted them to be closer to a minute long before going to the hospital and to call back in an hour. I then texted Brian saying that he needed to come home from work soon as I thought I was having contractions. Brian got home just before 5 and my contractions had stayed consistent at 3 minutes apart and were lasting about 45 seconds. After checking in with my mom, she told me to wait another 30 minutes and then to head to the hospital. 

We got to the hospital just before 6 and I was up to a 3 and was fully effaced. They went ahead and admitted me (probably because I was a week late) and we were to our room around 6:30. I got my epidural around 8:30 which luckily took away the back pain along with the abdomen contraction pain.  They kept having problems tracking Leah's heart rate so they put a sensor thing right on her scalp to help keep an eye on her. Her heart rate kept doing decelerations with my contractions and she wasn't recovering like she should have. The nurse kept having to move me into different positions to get her back on track. The doctor threw out doing a C-section since things kept getting iffy but we turned it down since she did recover each time there was a problem, it just took a while. Then around 11, right after my dad and sisters headed out and of course my mom had stepped out of the room for the first time all night, about 15 hospital staff came rushing into the room and terrified us! This included the anesthesiologist who shot me up with a round of numbness as they were readying me for an emergency section. Just as the doctor and my mom came ino the room she recovered again so we again turned down the C-section. Over the next hour Leah had a few more decelerations and the doctor again tried to talk us into a section. The anesthesiologist was about to go start a long surgery so if Leah were to need another emergency section I would have to have it without the help of an anesthesiologist which would be even more painful. So, after talking with Brian and my mom we gave in and agreed to the section shortly before midnight. The risk of something bad happening to our daughter wasn't worth taking. I was wheeled into surgery a little before 1 and Leah Marie was born at 1:10 am weighing in at a whopping 6 lbs 10 oz and was 19.5 inches long. 

    My sisters visiting me at the hospital

    Brian cutting the umbilical cord

    Weigh in

    Meeting my daughter for the first time

    First family picture

    Proud Dad

My Pregnancy

I feel like I was very fortunate and had a fairly easy pregnancy. Looking back on it, my only complaints are that I hardly ever got to feel Leah move/kick and I had some bad back pain towards the end. Well, that and going a week late! I didn't really have any weird cravings but I did love Mr. Pibb (I'm not usually a pop person) and the blueberry muffins from Dooley's, a restaurant in my work building. Oh, and of course ice cream but that was nothing new for me!! I think we took advantage of the March buy one blizzard get one for $.99 at least once a week. Being due in early June let me escape most of the summer heat and also gets me the whole summer off for maternity leave.

Dates I remember:

October 4th: Positive pregnancy test!

November 6th: First doctors appointment and ultrasound

January 7th: It's a girl!!

February 6th: First really good kick, even Brian got to feel one!

June 14th: Contractions/labor started 

Belly pictures below

Plus, Carissa and I got to share all but about 6 weeks of our pregnancies!! And two of my other close girlfriends were also expecting at the same time. Jenna had a girl, Sage, on Feb 22nd and Ashley had a boy, Jackson, on May 17th. Four pregnant chicks made girls nights really fun the last year! 

     Here Ashley is 38 weeks, I'm 34 weeks and Carissa is 27 weeks

                       Cousins!!

I am 35 weeks to Carissa's 28 weeks.  Now I am just waiting for her to join me on maternity leave!