Waiting for Baby Boy!

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Watching Davey Grow

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Watching Evie Leigh Grow

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Monday, September 27, 2010

The Days are Long, the Years are Short

Happy One Month Baby Davey!

Oh sweet one. You are one month old! What a crazy ride we have been on with you!

FIRST of all, little bit, you have had QUITE an eventful month. You have had some legit tummy issues. What a blessing it was to have SC recommend the book Colic Solved. I'm not sure what we would have done without it! With every page turned, every symptom noted in gastroesophageal reflux, Ryan and I looked at each other and yelled, "That's our Child!" What a relief to find that there WAS a reason that a 2 1/2 week old could scream for literally 6 straight hours (other than to test mommy's faith and the working power of tylenol for headaches). All we kept hearing from the peanut gallery was, "Welcome to parenthood!" or "Must be colicky!"

Don't get me wrong, they are all well-meaning friends, but YAR. So hard when your baby finishes eating and SCREAMS bloody murder to not think you are a wretched mother with wretched milk and wretched nutrients for your newborn child. :) Here's a quick exerpt from an email I sent to family and close friends...
"I just wanted to send you all an update on our little Davey Cate. The last few weeks have been amazing, wonderful, and super tough all at the same time. We have found (we think) that Davey’s constant fussyness comes from Acid Reflux in which her tummy acids come back up after a feeding either in burps or spit ups and make her VERY unhappy. She is right now on a combination of baby Zantac and Prevacid. We have seen some real sweet moments of improvement in the last few days, but I just wanted to email you all to let you know where we are, and to continue to ask for your prayers.

Not since Ryan’s kidney surgery have I literally felt SO lifted up by the strong prayers of others. And in the face of that grace, I think about the Psalmist’s response to the grace poured out on Him from the Lord:

“How can I repay the Lord
for all his goodness to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord. “ (psalm 116:12-13)


My grateful response to your sweet prayers is continue in humility to lift up my cup and ask for more! We KNOW Davey is ok – she is healthy, beautiful and growing like a weed! (90th percentile for weight, head size and length) :) We just hate seeing her hurt."


So thankful for prayers, and we are daily seeing sweet moments of improvement, but we continue to covet them!

In the mean time, let's celebrate the things the Lord has done and the funfun things discovered in the first month of Davey's Life:

Davey Nicknames:
Cal - Little bit, sweet one, baby girl, angel kisses
Ry - Precious Princess Peanut Pumpkin Pants (And any mixture of the previous 5 words -Really?), and Davey Pants

Davey Obsession (aka Saving Grace): the Baby Swing (Thanks Pardues!)


First Cooed: Sept 25, one month and one day old. Picture caught below. A. Ma. Zing.


You smiled and followed Momma with your eyes all the way across the room while you were in Daddy's lap. Boo yah!


Things you Love: Milky Snacks, Walks in the B.O.B., the Baby Bjorn, CONSTANTLY MOVING, your passey (as long as someone else holds it in), baths, showers with mommy when you have trapped gas.




Things you hate: trapped gas :), the car. bleh. Taking your prevacid in a teaser 1 oz bottle of milk, then trying to 'wait' to eat so you won't spit up your medicine.


Things that make mommy cry: When you cry reeeeaaalllll hard. When the nurse at the doctor stretches you WAAAY out to measure you and it makes you scream, then when your daddy comforts you with so much love and tenderness it makes me hurt, when you poop on me (which you have done twice), AND when you first cooed at me (WAHOO! A sound OTHER than screaming!)


Daddy loving on you at the doctor.

Oh yes, through TWO layers of outfits.

Little bit, we just love you so much. Thank you Lord for a month with this amazing child, and we pray many more months to watch her fall passionately in love with you, live a life that glorifies your holiness, find a Godly sexy man to marry, and be best friends with your momma like she is with your T-Party. :)

Amen.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Whip 'Em Out.

Super huge thanks to KW and WW for showing me this clip. Amazing.

Knockers of the world - sit up straight and be proud!!! :)

http://devour.com/video/whip-em-out/

Sunday, September 19, 2010

A Gift for All Seasons.

Gotta share about the most amazing gift I've ever received.


Now, this is indeed a woman who has been seriously given the gift of gift-giving. However, in this she has outdone her self - love you so much MW! A friend of Ryan's mom Gayle sent this with her when she came to visit us two weekends ago.

Please, darlings. Notice that this is INDEED a celebratory outfit for EVERY. SINGLE. HOLIDAY from now until Davey Cate turns one year old.


O. M. G.
Not only that, but every outfit matches what size Davey will be wearing at that time.
First Halloween
First Thanksgiving
First Christmas
First Valentine's
First St. Patrick's Day
First Easter
First 4th of July
Happy First Birthday!!!

I'll say it again. OMG.
So excited to wear all these goodies!!! Now Davey can chillax. Please see the chillax face below.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Birth Story Part 2 - Post Partum

Soo.... the delivery was incredible, and everything I ever wanted it to be. Family came, pictures were taken, and everything was awesome. I had two minor 1st degree tears that were quickly patched up and everything looked great!!!

About 3 hours after Davey was born, I was checked again by the nurse, and she had continued to see more bleeding than she cared for. She called Cecily back in to double check and make sure that this was ok and nothing was wrong. Most painful part of entire process: Cecily looked around for about 30 minutes trying to find the source of the bleeding. Key word: freakin-oww. She couldn't find it and finally had to call in Dr. Inzer, the head honcho doc, to see if he could help find the source of the bleeding. MORE ouch. I'd say that whole business was 2.3 times more painful than actually birthing a child.

Long story short, I was losing a lot of blood, and they were growing concerned, because they couldn't find the source of the bleeding. I was just ticked that we weren't finished with this whole process! I don't think I realized how serious it started getting, but finally they looked at me and told me that I had two options: I either had to get an epidural so they could really go in and figure out what was wrong, or they could wheel me into the OR and put me under.


Are you kidding me? I just gave birth naturally and now you are telling me I have to get an EPIDURAL? But I was woman, you heard me roar! Now I have to do the stinky thing I wanted to AVOID in the first place? What if I get a spinal headache? What if I don't feel like a kick-butt woman anymore?

These were the thoughts going through my head. I didn't know anything about the amount of blood I lost, so I didn't understand the urgency. In the end I decided NOT to go into OR and Dr. Nixon (Fun coinky-dink) came in and numbed me right up. Cue BIG time blood pressure drop as result of blood loss. I will tell you folks, I have never been drunk in my life, but I can guarantee you that if you had seen me in that delivery room, you would have been convinced that I was, ahem, CA-razy faced. They quickly put my head below the rest of my body (wheee, roller coaster), and I started to feel normal again.

All in all, I lost 2 units/liters of blood, or roughly 1/3 of my blood. Crazy. I had a blood transfusion (another first, and yes I made a vampire joke in all of my awareness), and started to feel much better. So did everyone else in the room, I might add. They had kicked mom and dad out, and it was just Ryan and Davey, the docs and I. Later my parentals told me I was a lovely shade of ghostly white all over. Thank the good Lord they didn't show their nervousness. Woulda plum freaked me out. Thus, everything was over, and finally later that night I got to be wheeled up to post-partum for recovery.

What it ended up being was a ruptured blood vessel that caused a hematoma, apparently pretty uncommon. BUT the glory to God thing was that most of those things don't actually leak, and end up being SUPER painful later on (TMI?). Thank you Lord that they found mine early!

All in all, my experience was AMAZING. The delivery was exactly what I always hoped it would be, and the aftercare I received was awesome. I'm so thankful to Cecily, Dr. Inzer, and EVERYONE that cared for me during my recovery (LSHEP - BEST post-partum nurse EVER.)

Thank you guys for reading and caring, and Soli Deo Gloria, to God be the glory for the way He allows us to experience his desire for such intimacy with us through childbirth and learning how to care for some little person that you love more than the air you breathe.


Love you Baby Davey Cate.

Mumsie





P.S. - 2 week Dr. visit today!
Stats:
Weight: 9 lbs. 8 oz! GINORMOUS! Go girl!
Length: 20.5 inches. Oh good gracious. She's growing again.
Head: 36.5 in.
Noteworthies:
We can let her sleep at night for as long as she will!
She made her first visit to Watermark today! Yay women's bible study!
She HATES being awake. When sleeping, she's happy as a little lark. When awake, she's generally pissssssed. We are going to keep praying through that. Little high-maintenance thing.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Birth Story - Part 1, The Delivery

Hello Sweet Friends,

Ryan and I wanted to share with you the incredible journey that was the entrance of this little princess into the world. Fair warning, may be TMI for the menfolk, but either 'skim-read' or just dive into your primal self and enjoy it. :) I wanted to start with the first part, labor & delivery. Boo yah. Ka Sha.

Early Monday (23rd) morningat 2am I woke up with pretty consistent, positively annoying contractions that were 5-7 minutes apart, but not very intense (just enough to steal me from my slumber). Cue thought: this can't be labor. If this is labor, I'm going to OWN it. Oh cocky young padawan. They continued until about 6 or 7am, and I finally called SH our labor coach at 5am and talked to her about what was going on. She gave me amazing advice. Have a glass of red wine and try to sleep. Hah! Again, thought the woman was crazy, but I did what she said, slept for a few hours, and when I woke up, they had stopped completely. Boo. Through the rest of the day, they came and went every 10-20 minutes. Again, enough to be ANNOYING. But it was a pretty stressful day due to some family stuff, but we did get a chance to walk around the mall for awhile, trying to bring something on.

Later that evening, they started up again, mildly increased in intensity and every 10 minutes. We went to bed at 12am, and then at 2am exactly again, I was awoken by contractions every 10 minutes. But these were not the same contractions. These were game time contractions, taking more of my concentration. So for about 2 hours I worked through them on my own...in bed, in the tub, at Ryan's desk, finished packing my hospital bag (yes was still not packed. lay off me.). By 4am I had to wake The "All Time Greatest Labor Hubbin Coach" to start helping me through them, as they had moved to 5 minutes apart and again increased in intensity. We still walked around the house, finished packing, fed the dog, and he watched me 'sing/chant' through many a contraction (He later called it quasi-yodeling. SO. Rude.)

By 6am, the contractions said to themselves, 'ok team, let's get with it. let's see how serious this gal is about natural labor. muuahhahhah.' They went ahead and increased themselves down to 2 1/2 minutes apart, leaving no room for a break. I also got nauseous, vomited (TMI?) and started getting the cold sweats, a tell-tale sign that I was in the Transition stage of labor, the stage right before you start pushing. This was going fast! It was time to go to the hospital! I checked in and was dilated to 7cm at 7:30am - which was a) awesome we labored that long at home but b) a little discouraging - I thought it was game time! Turned out it was - while we were in triage still checking in I felt an urge to push and kind of did, and the nurse goes, "oh no try not to do that - we aren't ready for that yet!" YOU try not to push lady. :) By the time we checked into our room, Cecily (awesome midwife Numero Uno) checked me again and I was fully dilated to a 10 and we were ready to start pushing! (25 minutes had passed since we checked in - talk about fast moving!)

Sooo, I pushed for an hour and a half (all sorts of funny positions we can chat about later if you are interested... :) ), and then there was my little Angel pumpkin pants! (Who promptly pooed all over me as soon as she came out and they placed her on my chest. I never thought poo could be presh. It so was. The preshest poo I ever saw.

Gals, if you are even considering a natural childbirth experience, I would LOVE to talk to you about it. It was an incredible experience, fully humbling and empowering all at the same time. Never have I depended on my maker so much - and never have I depended on my husband so much! Ryan shout out - he was the most incredible help, right by my side during the whole process. My hero. I could not have done it without you my love. Davey was born, I boo hooed and we had some great family time for about an hour before we let everyone in to share in our secret!

I'm so glad this experience was amazing - because three hours later, things definitely took a turn toward the more interesting. I'll save that for Part 2. Thanks for reading! Love to you all!


Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Home Again. A Week of Firsts

Now that I've gotten one post down, I thought I would innundate you with pics to make sure I'm grossly assaulting the world wide web with pictures of my gorgeous child. Would love to share a few firsts for my little Davey this past week.

First house guests! Welcome to the best Sophomore Klife Bible Study Ever!


Thank you to Rachel and B-Train for Davey's first birthday cake!



First visit from Uncle Jeffy. Really sweet moment with an amazing Uncle.


First teary goodbye with GiGi. So glad you are coming back this weekend!


First bath time! Did little pumpkin pants scream bloody murder? Yes. Am I a bad mother if I say it was worth it to see her all snuggly wuggly squeaky clean and wrapped up in her Ducky Towel? hope not. cuz it so waz.




First walk!! Mommy needed some fresh air.

Above and Below: And finally, first outing and visit to the doctor! It is absolutley hilarious to me that planning for this one outing starting at 10pm the night before. So much preparation for such a quick event! Stats below.


Gettin' all dressed up for her big outing.



Ryan had to be the pacifier. Who wouldn't be freakin' out having to lay on a huge table with nothin' on but yer dipy waiting to be measured? Thankfully we made it through and mommy only got tears in her eyes once! :)
And finally, for the Grandfolks and others who care:
Weight: 8 lbs 8 oz - Back up from 7.10 only a few days before!
Length: Strange. 20 inches measured at the doctor. Conclusion - either a) Davey shrunk or b) the 29 WEEK PREGNANT nurse who measured her at the hospital made a little oopsie on that preliminary measurement. Let me know what your guess is. I'm stumped.
Head: 36cm
Conclusion: Practically perfect in every way.