Moving!

Yesterday late afternoon we started our move to a house! finally more space, at least for storage anyhow. its a 2 bedroom/2 bath house with a full unfinished basement and 2 car garage. its just nice to have a place to hide basically all the crap we have and not have to keep it in closets. addy will finally have her own room instead of a computer/baby/random other crap room. just excited to be loud if we want and not worry about noise all the time. also excited that i'm not going to have to scrap in the morning to go to work since i get to park in the garage!!

We started moving boxes yesterday and got all of them out of the apartment. today's goal is to get the storage garage stuff moved and all the rest of the stuff that can be moved in a pickup and car moved as well. this way tomorrow all we have to moved is the big stuff in the uhaul. thankfully we are only moving 2 blocks away so the trips are quick which is nice. also my mom and sister are coming to help keep addy entertained so i can help with the move. hard to do that on my own and keep her entertained/happy. as we speak she is talking in her loud voice at me. she is so verbal this days, its quite funny.

i will post pics soon of it all.

6m!

well i did it. 6m and still breastfeeding, yeah me!! my goal was to at least make it this long and all is still going well and hope to make it several months more. i'm finding it hard to realize that this will have to end at some point. hopefully by then the next one will be coming soon. i have to admit i really enjoy it, its peaceful and relaxing, and so fun to see them look up at you with a big grin and milk running out of the corner of their mouth. i now i understand why my mom did it for so long. but she was truely a champ she made it quite a long time with me, longer than i would like to admit in public :) love you mom!!

we started adeline on rice cereal a couple weeks ago and started baby food on sunday. its so exciting and fun to see the faces she makes with new stuff. her first food was green beans and ira started sweet potatoes tonight. so far so good.

i can't believe how old she is already, i look back at baby pics and can hardly remember the tiny person she was. she now weighs 15 pounds 2 ounces.

Reusable diapers

Adeline is now 4 months and weighs 12 pounds 5 ounces! i started to use her reusable diapers the past few days while i was home. i have a couple different brands: bum genius, fuzzibunz, happy heinys, and swaddlebees. so far i really like them. i use a disposable diaper at night since they hold more and will last all night and then use the others during the day. for right now i will let daycare use disposable since they change her so frequently and i don't have enough right now to use them at home and daycare. below are a couple pics of her in them, the top is a bumgenius and the bottom pic is a fuzzibunz. they are cute diapers on babies....by the way can you see her curls!!

walk

Today Addy and I went for a walk to get the newspaper up at the gas station. She fell asleep on the way home. she is all snuggly in the moby wrap that i use to carry her in. i swear the omaha world herald weighed 20 pounds today!!

we made it home just in time as there were some serious dark clouds closing in.

Moo

so i started pumping for the first time for an entire day on monday. i'm quite amazed to watch the whole process happen. i have pumped prior to this but usually am holding addy at the same time or its after i have fed her so i don't really see much. but now sitting in some random room on break all i can do is watch...its captivating. sometimes after i am done i am so proud of what i can do that i want to hold up the bottles and take a picture like i'm a champion breastpumper. i don't get out as much as others say they do, basically 1 1/2 - almost 2 ozs on each side depending on how long its been inbetween times. sometimes its only a little over an ounce. i have come to find that one side is a better cow than the other, which from what i read is normal. i can only imagine what someone walking by the closed door thinks is going on in there with the whooshing of the pump sound going on. plus the big open window on the 5th floor makes me feel like i'm flashing omaha LOL. so if you drive by the hospital and see boobs on the 5th floor just wave and say hi to me.

Back to work and Daycare

Addy started daycare this past monday. i know it is a worse day for moms than it is for baby but i was really dreading/stressing over it. finally the day came and i had to take her, i cried as i was trying to tell the daycare lady information about her and answer her questions. she told me i could call as much as i wanted and did her best to make me feel better. the daycare also has a webcam so i gave my mom the address and had her look at it during the day for me. my worst fear was that she would cry the entire time....i didn't want her to be sad. (as i write this i am crying just thinking about it.) i hate having to go to work and wish i could stay home with her every day, but i live in reality and thats not possible. the first time i pumped that morning i cried as i sat there. afterwards i called to check on her and could barely talk since i was in tears. they told me she was doing fine and it sounded like they were loving on her alot which made me feel tons better. after that i was better, i still missed her but wasn't crying. finally at 3:15pm ira picked her up which made me feel even better that she was going to be at her own home with him. she didn't drink/nap as much as she normally does while at daycare that day but made up for it by drinking 7ozs with ira at home and then taking a huge nap after that. so long that i had to pump a few hours after i had got home since she was dead asleep. i'm sure the new environment was stressful on her and the daycare lady had told me that this would happen and is normal until they adjust. i'm thankful they held her and loved her so she wouldn't be sad or better yet mommy wouldn't be sad.

smoke 'em if you got 'em

so i haven't posted anything for a long time and i have lots to verbalize after being home with my new baby for 2 months. its been quite the experience..motherhood. i will warn you now that i will probably talk about my boobs alot from now on since most everything revolves around them now! first of all i should start by saying her name is adeline prounounced ade-lynn NOT line. just like madeline without the M.

lets start from the beginning with labor. i went in on wednesday morning at 7am to be induced. i had to go early due to my preeclampsia was getting worse. my blood pressure was a little high but mostly because of what was showing up in my urine and blood. i was 37 weeks along exactly. we got there and when they first checked me i was like 1 cm dilated...this should have been my first clue that it was going to be a very long process. next they used cytotec to help the process along..we then had the pleasure of waiting 6 long hours for it to work...lucky me. i tried to rest but who can when you are so excited that this day is finally happening. once they checked again, which i can say now is worse than actual labor. seriously there has to be a better way to do that!! anyhow i was only at 3 cm! really thats it was all i kept thinking, luckily it was enough to start pitocin plus my friend mag sulfate. contractions started after that but they weren't too bad, once i started getting more uncomfortable at like 6pm i asked for stadol, an IV pain med. that was a mistake. i don't ever take narcotics so it pretty much knocked me out and made me feel like i was out of body. kind of hard to have a baby if you are doped up so i didn't do that again. by the time i came too it was shift change for the nurses and i was having pretty hard contractions. my new nurse asked if i wanted an epidural and i was like YES! i had always kept an open mind to having one so it wasn't that big of a deal and the anesthesiologist was wonderful, she was so quick i barely knew it had happened and felt GREAT after the med was injected...seriously i highly recommend them. so basically all night periodically they would keep checking, by then i didn't care since i was numb from the waist down...did i mention that epidurals are the greatest invention ever! so finally at 5am or so we were able to start pushing. that was so exciting as i knew we were finally getting closer to meeting our baby. although by the end i was completely exhausted since it had been basically 24 hours by the start to the time she came out. but i was sooo excited to finally get to meet her. what a beautifuland perfect baby she was. luckily she had no problems, being that she was 3 weeks early. our labor/delivery room was really nice and roomy but when we transfered to our postpartum room it was like being put in a closet. luckily we only had to be in it for one night.

i mentioned my friend mag sulfate above. if you have preeclampsia they put you on this stuff to prevent possible seizures. its the worst crap ever. basically it makes you feel drunk, have hot flashes, and weak. you are not allowed out of bed and have to be on it during labor and 24 hours after delivery. which means you are now drunk feeling, can't get up and have to take care of a new baby....good combination. its difficult to get a baby out of an isolet if you can't get out of bed. i did some interesting things to get her out of it, thankfully no one else was looking and i never dropped her. i told my nurse the night baby was born to please get orders early so i could get off that crap at exactly 6:38am the next morning. if not i was going to call the doctor myself. thankfully i had a great nurse and at 6:30am they came in and shut it off!

now its time to take our baby adeline home. what a surreal experience. i got home and remember looking at her on the couch and thinking.."now what". its the weirdest thing to realize you have to take care of this person now and you have no idea what to do or when to do it. no amount of babysitting, nursing classes, or watching others with kids prepares you for this. i have told people that now i know why its best to have kids in your 20's when you are young and dumb. no one expects much out of you then like they do when you are in your 30's plus you haven't established a couples routine as much. after 10 years of it just being ira and i its been an adjustment to not be able to just leave the house whenever. its an planned event. it takes 2 hours to get ready for a 10 minute outing LOL.

breastfeeding.. i could write forever on this. first of all i had a horrible time at it in the hospital which was frustrating and caused many tears. the nurses were all a great help but the one person that should have known the most was NO help at all, in fact they made the experience worse. finally i just decided that i was just going to figure out it on my own. if baby didn't have the "perfect lip" shape i didn't care, we would just figure it out once we got home. oh and mag sulfate is no help when you are trying to breastfeed, it slows down milk coming in. i spent numerous nights/days crying but we eventually got it down, my milk came in, and i was further affirmed after we went to adelines pediatrian that first week. she was gaining weight great so we must be doing something right! i also had a friend that i'm truely indebted to for all her help with my million of phone calls on the subject since she was an expert breastfeeder! i don't care what people say breastfeeding is not a natural thing, it takes alot of work and dedication. i understand why some mom's don't do it and do not judge them for that. i just guilt myself though into feeling like i have to do it or i'm not worthy...whatever that means. maybe i feel like there is some prize at the end of it for making it through and still being sane. don't get me wrong i do enjoy it but it causes alot of stressful days. now i am happy to say we are pros at it if thats possible. i still feel milk inadequate at times but everytime she is weighed i, the "milk machine" am reminded that the "milk monster"and i are doing fine. but that doesn't stop me from thinking and wondering if she is getting enough...its a mind game i know.

that first month at home with a new baby was rough. there are so many things that people don't tell you about, or just don't admit out loud. first of all addy wouldn't sleep anywhere but on mommy. i tried the bassinet, swing, carseat, everything finally i just gave up and let her be her. still to this day she is like that but i have talked to the pediatrian and read numerous articles on the subject and some babies are just like this. which i'm fine with, i love to snuggle her and figure i have years of her life that she won't want to snuggle mommy so i'm taking advantage of it now. why force her when she's not ready and i'm not going to just let her "cry it out". besides i hate sleeping alone why would i make her do it. she's little and i love her too much to let her cry. she is relentless when i have tried. she doesn't just calm herself to sleep, the crying just gets worse.
i have come to find that other people have this issue but just don't admit it out loud since other people are so judgemental. and if one more person says she is going to be "spoiled" i may have to rip their head off. so consider this your warning.

now 2 months later, i feel like i would like a do over. i know so much more now through experience and would be much more comfortable the second time. unfortunately the first born always is the learning experiment for moms.... i'm a first born, not sure what that says about me :) maybe thats why i'm still attached to my mom!

everyday is still a learning experience, but its getting better. she is more alert now and smiles alot which makes me melt. i love to watch her sleep and think how wonderful she is, which makes me cry happy tears.i am trying not to wish time ahead too fast since i will never get this time back, but am so looking forward to the months ahead when she will become more active.