Just Relaxing...

Too cute...just had to share! I swear this girl is growing an inch a day!

Saying Goodbye to Grandma

So reality is really about to set in now that my mommy is gone. I am going to miss her so much, I don't think I could have done these past few weeks without her help. She was a lifesaver and a huge reassurance. It was sad to say goodbye today at the airport but Christmas will be here before we know it and we'll get to see each other again. I will say this though, saying goodbye is a whole different ball game when a grandchild is involved! Here are some pictures of Mom and Y before we left for the airport.

Y's Blessing

On Sunday we had Y blessed and were really happy to have so much of our family to and share the day with us. Here are some pictures from that day.

Gladys (Great Grandma)

Paul & Queta (Grandparents)

Aunt Janice & Uncle Rick

Relief

Okay, so I am ever slowly growing more confident in my ability to breastfeed. After taking Yanna to her appointment with her pediatrician and talking with a few friends who offered advice I must say that I feel much better about it. I was very worried and extremely distraught at the thought of not being able to provide the amount of food she needed. However, after going to see her doctor and talking to him about it he explained to me that she is now 9lbs 9oz which would mean that she is gaining an ounce a day which is exactly where she should be. Apparently that's a sign that she is indeed getting enough to eat. He said that as far as her always wanting to be at the breast is probably just a comfort thing and then he told me how to tell if she's eating or just treating me as her personal pacifier. Since the visit I think we've been doing fairly well with it and somehow, by no real effort on my behalf, she takes each side for about 20 minutes and then she's done. And we do this only every 2 hours now!!! I guess typically it should be every 2.5 hours, but hey, I'm happy with whatever I can get at this point. Eventually we will be able to stretch it out to 2.5 hours but for now I'm satisfied. He also asked me about how much I am able to pump at one time and I told him between an ounce and 1.5oz so he explained that she's probably definitely getting enough because she can suck out 2 or 3 times that amount. I also found that very comforting. Since I was so worried and concerned we're gonna go back in 2 weeks and weigh her again to make sure she is still progressing as she should be.

Here is a picture from last weekend which I thought was cute...of Y at least, I could have been better. haha. Tomorrow we're having her blessed so we'll post more pictures from that later.

Frustrated and Happy Too!

So we've been parents for almost 3 weeks now, when does it start to get easier?!?! I've never really been the type to just up and quit something but I'm seriously considering quiting this breastfeeding stuff. I went to see the lactation consultant last week and she was great! We got all of the latching problems worked out and she really helped me to know that it was nothing that I was doing wrong and that I was correct when I thought that Y was not opening wide enough to latch on correctly and without causing me pain. So I left that meeting feeling great, really empowered but now I am just frustrated that I don't think I'm producing enough milk for my baby. She will suck for an hour or more and she still still be upset and cranky after which she will drink formula and be absolutely fine. I really don't know if it's milk supply or just a baby with a huge appetite, I really have no clue, but it is frustrating nonetheless. I will ask her pediatrician tomorrow and see what he thinks. I just get so sad and frustrated sometimes because all I really want is to be able to feed my baby and have that be enough. I don't want to have to give her formula, honestly I hate when she has a bottle of formula. But when faced with the decision of letting her have formula or having her crying because she didn't get enough, I think the decision is easy. I also read somewhere that maybe it has nothing to do with the amount she's eating and more that she just feels the need to be close to me or has a strong desire to suck. If it's the latter then you'd think she'd take a pacifier...she seems to hate the thing though. I really don't know and honestly I've been so emotional about it lately that I probably have some skewed perspective of whatever it is that is going on. Well since she goes to the doctor tomorrow I will try to find some time to post and update you guys on how she's doing.

As for how I'm doing...I've recovered pretty well. Last week when I went to my OB/GYN my blood pressure was better but still not great. Also last week when I went to the doctor we discovered that I had lost a total of 26 pounds since I had her (11lbs the first week and 15 pounds the second). Needless to say that I'm very happy about that and the fact that I've been in my smallest jeans for about a week and a half now! At least that can comfort me in my times of distressing about breastfeeding!

Week One

We've officially been home from the hospital for one week and boy has it been a long one! We've had a couple of never ending nights, as well as some very cranky periods but all in all everything is going well. Y had her Dr. appointment on Wednesday and she was up to 8lbs 12oz so she only had 2 more ounces to go until she reaches her birth weight (which I'm sure she's gained by now). So everything went great at her appointment. I also has an appointment on Wednesday but mine was to have my staples taken out. I was horrified at the thought, all I could imagine was someone taking a staple remover to my flesh. However, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't feel a thing! So that was the good news from the appointment. The bad news is that my blood pressure was really high. We speculate that it could have been from me being nervous about having the staples out. The doctor said that usually blood pressure drops as the swelling in the legs and feet go down and mine are still pretty huge. Until it drops though he has me on blood pressure medication. I've been monitoring my BP at home for the last several days and whereas my systolic numbers are great, my diastolic numbers have been pretty high. Hopefully they begin to drop though, I go back on Wednesday to have my BP checked again.

As for us at home, my mom arrived on Tuesday and that's been a huge relief. We've started experiencing some nipple confusion so we're going to try to meet with the lactation consultant about that as well as a couple other concerns in the coming days. She's a relatively happy baby though. My goal is to get her back to the point where she can fall asleep in her crib all on her own. She did it great while in the hospital but once we got home she kinda stopped. So if any of you moms out there have any suggestions, they'd be highly appreciated. I guess I don't wanna always nurse her to sleep or rock her to sleep, although I enjoy it, it would be nice if I didn't always have to do it. But maybe I'm just asking for too much too fast...I dunno, you tell me. I know for a fact that there are some great moms reading this blog, so by all means give me your advice!

Did I Make the Right Choice?

Okay, so this is a story for my fellow Hokies, but the rest of you can enjoy it and read it as well. On my very first visit with my doctor (you know the one where you go in his office and meet him for the first time) I was in his office waiting for him and the first thing I notice hanging on his wall is his Bachelor's degree and Medical School Degree hanging on his wall. Well, that's pretty common, right? Well what caught my eye was the fact that they were both from the University of Virginia. So for those of you who aren't familiar with UVa and Virginia Tech, they are HUGE rival schools. So I guess the first thought was whether I should just get a new doctor period. wasn't too sure I wanted a Wahoo delivering my kid. Well anyways, I stayed, and I just happened to be wearing a VT t-shirt that day. Boy did the insults start flying then. Luckily we're both very sarcastic and no one got offended. Actually we insulted each other throughout my entire pregnancy for our choice of schools. So before I was discharged from the hospital I definitely wanted to have a picture taken of him holding Y and he was more than willing to oblige. So I had some VT stuff bought to the hospital and he refused to actually touch any of the stuff, so that is why I am in the photo (without my hair done) holding it for him!

For what it's worth and as an answer to the title of this post, Yes, I made the right choice! I don't think I truly appreciated my doctor until I was in labor. If he's around and I'm still in Michigan he'll definitely be delivering my next child. But for the record, he's about the only Wahoo that I can compliment, haha. Just kidding, they're really not so bad. They just made a questionable decision in choice of schools. Goodnight...

Adorable!

Ok, so I need to go to bed but I just had to post this! If you've been reading our blog since the start then you probably remember reading about the most horrifying night of my pregnancy. If you haven't been reading if that long then here's the post: "Just When You Think Life is Getting Boring". Anyway, in that post I also posted a few ultrasound pictures of Y, kinda like this one...

...and in the pictures you can see how she had her hand beside her face in almost every one of the pictures, and that was at 11.5 weeks gestation. Well today, while laying on the couch, guess what we see her doing...

...look familiar?!?! I think it's absolutely adorable and one of my favorite pictures I might add!

Baby's First Day

Here are some pics from our first day with Y......

All the Details

So even though B posted a quick post before with pictures and all the basic details of Y, I like to give more details and I know many of you want to know the details. With that said, we arrived here at the hospital about 15 minutes late at 6:45am. They quickly showed us to our room, got us settled, and hooked up my IV and pitocin. This really started the waiting game. I began to feel the contractions, mildly, right away. I let them know that I would definitely want an epidural and was curious when they typically give it. The nurse told me that they don't really give it at a specific time, it's more that they give it to me whenever I felt I needed it. That made me feel more relaxed because I wasn't worried about it being too late when I wanted it or whatever. So, since I arrived at the hospital dilated to 3cm we were thinking that I'd probably progress rather quickly...wrong! Three to four hours later with the pitocin near it's highest level I was still at 3cm. At this point I knew we were in for a long day. Once we reached 4cm (about 6 hours in) I started feeling the contractions more strongly, but still they were very tolerable. The doctor came in and decided it was time to break my water after which he warned that the contractions would get a lot worse so he went ahead and ordered my epidural. Looking back, I wish I had've gotten the epidural before he broke my water! Even after he ordered the epidural it was still an hour and a half before the anesthesiologist showed up. Needless to say, the doctor was write, my contractions did get a lot worst. For that hour and a half I was in hell. I will admit that at first it was fairly easy for me to tolerate but towards the end I couldn't take it anymore. B just sat there wondering what he could do to help and I could tell just by the look on his face how awful he felt having to watch me in pain and be unable to do anything about it. I have never felt such horrible pain as that and at the end all I could really do was cry. But once I got that epidural, I was in pure heaven! He said typically it can take up to an hour to kick in but for me it was instantaneous. I didn't feel a single thing, not even pressure, until later that is. So progression continued to come very slowly and by 11pm I was still only at 6.5cm. I was really feeling the pressure by midnight so they came in and gave me more drugs. I began progressing faster but the pressure was unbearable. Her head was really low in my lower back/butt area and that made it impossible to get comfortable and made the contractions and pressure that much more intense. Anyway, to speed this story up, the doctor finally let me start pushing around 12:30am when I was 10cm, we pushed for 2 hours and made very little progress. We had only managed to get her from a -1 station to a +3 station. So at that point, around 3am, the doctor comes in and gives me my options. He tells me that using forceps is not an option for me because of the gestational diabetes. He also tells me that I can continue to push her out vaginally but that if I chose to do that it would likely result in a 3rd or 4th degree tear. He said my second option was to have a C-section. He was honest to say that either way it wouldn't be easy because if we did the c-section since she was already at a +3 there would be some difficulties in getting her out that way as well. So I chose the c-section even with as much as I didn't want it because the truth is that I prefer a c-section over a really bad tear.

So at that point everything went well and she was born 49 minutes later. I was so exhausted that I ended up sleeping through the entire process, and no, they did not put me under. I went to sleep all on my own. In fact, the entire time I was pushing I would somehow manage to fall asleep between contractions even though they were only like a minute apart. There were several times when I ended up vomiting and others where I ended up having these uncontrollable shakes. But she's here now and it was all worth it. Now I'm just waiting for it to set in that I'm a mom. Life will never be the same, that's for sure! Anyway, Brandon posted all the other details and a couple of pictures below. Don't worry, there will be more to come. She's adorable and has really really thick hair. Right now she is in the nursery because he temperature keeps falling and they need to put her under the warmer. Also because I had gestational diabetes she now has hypoglycemia but they expect that to correct itself in the next couple of days. I'll try to keep you guys updated. Love ya!