Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Auria's 1st Week

On July 23rd we were so blessed to have our baby come six days before her actual due date. I was discouraged just the day before when my doctor told me I was still at 2 cm 80% effaced which I had been for the past three appointments. It didn't seem like she was coming anytime soon and we set a date for Aug 8th to be induced, a week and a half after my due date! I did not want to wait two and a half weeks and lucky for us neither did our little girl.

At 4:00 am I woke up with contractions that were harder than normal (I had had contractions since I was 24 weeks pregnant and had thought many times I was getting close to going into labor.) At 4:30 I realized they were getting really close and I needed to start timing them. They ranged from 2-8 minutes and when Casey woke up at 5:50 to get ready for work I asked him, "are you ready to go to the hospital?" Which he didn't believe me since I had been convinced it was coming so many times. We waited until about 6:45 and when I started having more contractions that were only 2 minutes apart we decided to be safe and go into the hospital. Lucky for me my aunt Kathryn who is a delivery nurse was working that day. She's the reason they even kept us at the hospital. They monitored me for an hour and I only progressed to a 2.5 cm 85% effaced so Kathryn stripped my membranes and had me walk around the hospital for an hour which got me to a little over a 3. They probably would have sent me home since I was slowly progressing but since Kathryn was there as my nurse I was able to stay and try lots of things to get my labor going a little faster. My doctor was at the hospital that day but he had a couple surgeries and wanted to be there for my delivery so he wouldn't break my water or give me pitocin to speed things along. After I was dilated to a 4 at around 2:15 I got the epidural and it was smooth sailing from there! I was worried about the epidural but a lovely hard contraction came on while he was giving it to me and I didn't even feel the needle going in. My contractions were every 5 minutes which wasn't very close but they were super long. They are supposed to go up and down in 60 seconds or so and mine would last long and slowly slowly decline but as soon as I got that epidural they got closer together and a little more regular and I was in heaven not feeling them at all! Crazy natural birth people is all I gotta say. Doctor Skinner was supposed to come break my water between surgeries around 2:30 but never came in and around 3:30 (we think because I never actually felt it break) it broke on its own. When I was at a 6 it was almost time for my aunt to get off work and we were pretty upset the doctor had never come in to break my water or let me have pitocin because we really wanted her to be there for the delivery. Finally at a 6 though he agreed to let me have the pitocin and before I knew it I was at a 10 and ready to push! Doctor Skinner joined us and I pushed for a whopping 15 minutes and she was out. Apparently I had been bleeding a lot more than most people but everything went smoothly with me and the only thing was that when Auria came out, they had to suction a lot of blood out of her lungs that she had swallowed from me bleeding. Our baby girl has been so healthy since then and passed every single thing they tested on her! She did have to have her blood sugar tested a lot at the hospital because at 6lbs 9ounces she was a little small for her age but it never was a problem, she just had lots of pricks on her heels:(. I had two places tear which is no fun and a cervical prolapse where my cervix came out which they never said has been a problem since so I guess it's all good!

We spent all of Wednesday in the hospital and left at 2:30 on Thursday. In the hospital Auria did fantastic. She latched on right after delivery and we thought it was going to be smooth sailing from there. She hated my other side though and never would latch on. We had to use a nipple guard on that side and we even tried a syringe with sugar water in it to try to get her to suck on that side. Before we left she had finally latched on to it but it didn't last for long. At nights we did send her to the nursery and the first night they brought her in three times to feed which wasn't too bad and the next night I sent her to the nursery with a syringe of colostrum and they only had to bring her in once but I was up every hour anticipating them bringing her in so it didn't help me sleep too much. We had lots of visitors on Wednesday which was so wonderful but we didn't get any naps in and it was hard to find time in between to feed her. We have such great family's with lots of love and support for us!

Car ride home was a bit stressful. I think everyone is nervous about the first car ride and the hospital scares you pretty bad and tells you not to leave them in their car seat for longer than 30 minutes or it could cut off their airway. I kept thinking her head was too slouched and it was going to cut it off but of course she made it there just fine. Our nieces we live with greeted us at the fence with a welcome home Auria sign and some balloons and Heather my sister in law gave us a bag of groceries which was so nice of her. We had some tears shed when we got home because I really didn't want to use the nipple guard because I didn't want to cause lots of nipple confusion so I kept trying to go without it but my milk had already come in after two days and she couldn't latch on while I was rock solid. So after her not eating for 5 hours and lots of crying I finally gave in and used the nipple guard and have used it ever since. Today (the 30th) is the first day that I got her to latch on without it and I'm hoping its going to stay that way! First night sleeping we had an angel baby. We went to bed at 9 and woke her up every 3-4 hours to eat. She didn't wake up crying once and we thought this is going to be easy.

The next day was great and fun to have her home to ourselves. She slept lots and when Casey's parents and Cyd came to visit we tried hard to wake her up but she likes to choose when she is awake and when she is sleeping! The second and third nights were a little more rough just because she decided to be awake starting at 9 and not going to sleep until twelve and one which isn't that late but when you have to wake up every three hours to feed it is hard to go to sleep that late! The fourth night was the worst though. I think her tummy was hurting her because she was grunting and sounding close to crying until five in the morning. I got an hour of sleep between 11-6 and after that she finally peacefully went to sleep. Now I know not to eat broccoli and cauliflower anymore while breast feeding. It was Casey's first day back to work the next day so I was up taking care of her the whole night. Silly girl likes to keep us on our toys and shake things up a bit!

On Saturday we tried her in her swing, and her bouncer for the first time. She just kind of sat there with her eyes open in the swing and it seemed like she really liked the music that played from it. We will have to try it when she's really upset sometime to see if she really likes it. Right now she doesn't show to much emotion to things. The bouncer she was crying a bit in it, but the next time we tried it she again just sat there staring off. Oh we love our little munchkin, she is a pretty easy baby! We also tried tummy time for the first time. She does not like it. She kept pushing up with her legs instead of pushing up with her arms. We had me lay on one side of her and Casey on the other and just talked to her for her to move her head. she eventualy turned her head towards Casey and then we let her get up from it. She loves laying on her tummy on my legs and chest but not on the floor!

Monday the 29th was Casey's last day off of work. We are so grateful he got so much time to spend at home with us! For his last day we gave Auria her first bath which she cried while I was washing her body (which was possibly because the water wasn't warm enough, I was worried about burning her) but as soon as we started washing her hair she stopped squirming and crying and just stared off. Baby girl likes her hair done, she always likes it when we softly rub her head to calm her down too. We also took a quick trip to Wal-Mart with her and tried to get out of there really quickly and kept her covered with her car seat cover the whole time. After that we headed to my mom's to take her newborn pictures. She was six days old that day and stayed asleep basically the whole time. Casey and I had fun pretending to be photographers and we had some cute things to work with at my mom's, my favorite being an old buggie that she has that we got some of my favorite pictures in. As soon as we tried getting completely naked photos in an old fashioned cradle my mom has, Auria did not cooperate. She still doesn't like tummy time and we wanted pictures of her bum but she wouldn't stay in a cuddle position, she kept lifting her bum up with her legs. So we didn't get all the pictures we wanted but we still got plenty of cute ones! I think we did pretty good for our first "photo shoot" with our new camera. 

We are still trying to get the hang of breast feeding without the nipple guard. She latches onto the left side but for some reason does not like the right side at all and without the guard she just cries and cries even if she latches on and sucks for a second, she then pulls away and cries. I don't know if we will ever get off of the guard, but I sure hope we do! I sure wish we could figure out an awake and sleeping schedule but I guess that won't happen until she is a lot older, we never know what she's going to do and not many people have come to visit when she's actually been awake. We are so grateful for family and neighbors bringing us dinners it has helped out a lot, and we love getting visitors to show off our little girl! I would love to take her out to show her off but we are staying at home for a while longer. We've loved our first week with her and can't wait to watch her grow and develop!

More pictures of Auria!

Sleepin on the couch

We took her out for a little sun and it put her right to sleep

1st bath

snuggling between photo shoots

Naked girl, didn't like it for long!

Just pulling a funny face



Sunday, June 2, 2013

Pregnancy Update

On Friday we drove home from Vegas late at night and boy was it a tough ride home. On the way to Vegas we left in the morning which seemed to make me a lot less uncomfortable because my back wasn't hurting me for the day but driving in the evening is really hard on my back. I was so grateful we didn't have any problems while in Vegas and that we made it home without giving birth (not that I'm about to pop I just worried about being away from home and delivering.) Saturday I woke up to a big change in my stomach. Baby girl decided it was time to drop already and my stomach went down a couple of sizes. It makes me a little sad not having my big belly ha! But it is much easier to bend over now and instead of lots of back, and rib pain, I'm getting hip, pelvis, and lower abdomen pain. Oh the joys of pregnancy. But I was a little worried just because she wasn't moving as much as she normally does and the occasional movements I did feel were so tiny compared to her big kicks that have been hurting me lately. I also was leaking fluid, so just to make sure I went to the hospital to have them monitor her. Everything looks fine though and I'm not going into preterm labor yet. Hopefully since she has already dropped at 31 weeks 5 days, she will come a little bit early! I wouldn't mind if she came in four weeks, that seems like a good amount of time for me to finish getting ready for her and it would make it so I wouldn't get to a  too uncomfortable stage. If I was like my mom with her first, I would be having this baby next week! That is a little too soon for me. I had so much more energy during the second trimester and was feeling really great besides my back pain, now I am back to being so tired all the time and having to pee constantly. I have dreams about her all the time and usually she has lots of dark hair and is a very beautiful baby but one time I had a dream that she had red eyebrows, dark hair, and elf ears. She wasn't so cute that night ha and my husband in my dream said she took after him since he has a red beard and brown hair. I just can't wait to see her and finally be able to hold her! I think I will miss watching my stomach do flips all over the place though. My favorite is when I place my hand on my belly and she slowly pushes either her foot or hand right into the cup of mine and just sits with it there. I can't wait to finally be able to actually hold her! Oh and she started getting hiccups around last Saturday and this whole week she has gotten them at least once a day, sometimes twice.

27 Weeks

Beginning of 31 weeks

At the end of 31 weeks after she dropped.

Boppy Pillow Cover

Who wants to spend full price on a Boppy Pillow? Not me, $40.00 is a little much for something that you don't even know will work for your baby. So instead of buying a new one I found one at my school's garage sale for $1...hey I washed it, and then I recovered it spending $10.00 on the fabric, zipper, and thread. Basically I think $11.00 is much better than 40 and it really was in good shape otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it!

I just set the pillow on some paper, traced it, added a seam allowance, and sewed on the zipper. Lot's of patterns out there have the zipper going across the pillow instead of being on the edge, and I like this way better. Except it did bubble a little but I don't mind. It's a tiny bit big but I forgot to wash my fabric before I made it so it should shrink and fit just fine after washing it.

Las Vegas Babymoon

Before this baby comes in July we decided we needed a little getaway for just Casey and I. We had originally been planning on California but soon realized it was going to be miserable for me to drive that far. My back hurts me just driving in the car from Salem to Lehi. So we booked a condo in Vegas cutting our drive by four hours. We were expecting to have lots of time to relax by the pool and be lazy because we didn't plan much but we ended up getting a lot of free tickets and kept ourselves going the whole time. We did still swim at least once everyday which was AMAZING! I love being able to move around lots without it being strenuous on my fat pregnant body. We walked the strip more than we had planned to to get to places we got free tickets too, and my calves and hips hurt so bad by the end of the day. That's what I get for walking so much 31 weeks pregnant. We had to go to a 3 hour presentation on a sales guy trying to get us to buy into a time share condo in Vegas, but we stood strong and didn't purchase any as good as they made it sound. After that they gave us free tickets to a restaurant at the Venetian hotel, a gondola ride where we were serenaded by a guy that we couldn't tell if he was faking his accent or not, free tickets to the wax museum, and 60% off of our Tournament of Kings dinner and show. We enjoyed all of the events we were able to experience since neither of us had gone to any of these things in Vegas before, and thought the 3 hour presentation had been worth it. If you want clean fun in Vegas I would recommend any of these activities, excpet don't be expecting too much from the food at the Tournament of Kings show. It wasn't very tasty and I didn't like the fact that you had to eat it with only your hands. Fun experience though!


Chillin by the pool

Enjoying the sites of the strip (the clean parts anyway)
Always have to watch the watershow
My good looking hubby
Went and saw the Great Gatsby and were basically the only ones in the theatre. Not too impressed with the movie though which was a bummer cause I was really excited for it!
The GINORMOUS burritos we ate at Chipotle

The bathrooms at the place we ate lunch for free at were awesome! You had your own individual stall with the sinks inside of it with you. Had to take a picture:)

Not the cutest picture...but we had to get one of our gondala guy serenading us
they're buds
James Bond
My baby's real daddy...

Blocked


Oh baby, Tim Mcgraw
Can't quite pull off his moves while pregnant.

Tournament of Kings. The lighting made it so you couldn't get a good picture of the arena unfortunatley

This is what we get for not paying for them to take our picture at tournament of kings. Oh well!
It was such a fun trip for just the two of us. We kept thinking how easy it was to just pack up for the two of us and head to Vegas and how much harder it will be when we have a baby! Oh well we are ready for her.

Lock Jaw

Those that witnessed my horrifying first experience back in 9th grade of getting my jaw locked open at a birthday party, can now laugh at that experience and the fact that it happened again. Luckily I hadn't had an episode in the seven years since then but had to have an emergency visit at four in the morning a month ago from its return. Never heard of lock jaw? Neither had I the first time it happened.

In 9th grade I was at a friend's birthday party that was supposed to be a sleepover. We were on her coach taking funny pictures and I decided it would be funny to hang upside down with my mouth wide open. We took the picture, and when I stood up I felt a pop and then I realized my mouth was stuck where it was. I tried grumbling, "I can't close my mouth" which when your mouth is stuck open, is pretty hard to understand. I ran to the bathroom and stared in horror thinking my mouth would never close again. My friends all took pictures and recorded videos as a neighborhood dentist came over at 9:00pm to try to push my mouth closed. He couldn't do it even after being instructed over the phone by an oral surgeon on how to accomplish it. My parents came and picked me up and drove me at 10pm to an oral surgeon 35 minutes away. After much slobbering and hours of my mouth being open, the oral surgeon put his thumbs in my mouth and with a lot of downward pressure, he pushed and rolled my jaw shut.

After this happened I had always been a bit carful of opening my mouth too wide and after 7 years I guess I got a little careless. A month ago I got up to a routine bathroom break at 4am and layed back down in bed. Instead of a cool story like last time, all I did was yawn wide, and there my mouth stayed. I sat up in bed and just said an "Oh no." which woke my husband up. I turned the light on and he stared at my mouth stuck open. He felt the place on my jaw where it was locked and kind of sticking out and when I told him to try and roll my mouth shut he began to sweat, get dizzy, and feel like he was going to throw up. All because of a jaw!! I'm a bit worried now about how he is going to react when I go into labor. I'll probably be driving myself to the hospital asking him "how are you doing honey" as he's laying in the back seat passed out. Haha let's hope that doesn't happen! We went to the emergency room, not knowing where else to go at 4 am. Casey had to answer the questions for me when checking in but he didn't know my social security number and I had to try my best to prununciate the numbers so she could understand. They pumped me with some morphine ( I absolutely hate that stuff I don't know how people can get addicted to it) and then he rolled my jaw shut again. Hopefully this isn't a reaccuring thing because if it happens more and more often, surgery is needed to correct it. Here's to hoping it never happens again! Now you can laugh at my pictures of my mouth stuck open.


Hey nobody looks good at 4am with their mouths open.

Seriously, again?

Dinosaur Taggie

At the arrival of my most beautiful baby in the world (no joke) nephew Harrison, I wanted to bring something to the hospital. I drew up a dinosaur and made it into a little taggie toy that hopefully Harrison will want to play with soon. Here it is, and it's real easy to make your own design of whatever animal you would like.


Draw a picture and just add 1/4" seam allowance

Front

Back
I don't know why the legs curved in a little, next time I try to make one I'll have to figure that one out. Also I had never handstitched a pillow or toy closed before and I definitley need someone to teach me the best way to do that instead of attempting it on my own. 

Baby Tutus

I have loved crocheting tutus lately! I think they are just adorable. The problem is, I keep giving them for baby shower gifts and so I don't really know what they look like on because none of the babies have been born yet. I'll have to get some pictures of our baby in hers when she arrives. I'd love to make some more so if anyone is interested in getting one from me let me know!

This one went to my cousin who's baby is due in June
This one to a girl I work with who's baby is also due in June, I love the colors and am making one for my own little girl.

This one I just lined a couple layers with a color instead of making the whole ruffle a different one. It won't fit our baby until she's a year old
Idea for this tutu came from this website but I altered it a bit but it's a great one to follow if you don't know how to alter it yourself!

Hopefully we will be able to afford a nice camera soon so I can take better pictures of the things I make, cross your fingers for me;)