Monday, December 27, 2010

You live and you learn.... and you don't buy Luvs

So, I was thinking the other day about all of the expectations that I have had for Emily before she was even born. I basically had her life and my parenting style completely planned out with no room for error. I couldn't even imagine straying from my "plan."
However, with life of course comes obstacles and adaptations and I thought that it would be nice to list all of the things that I told myself that I would never do once I had a child.

1. Formula: I was soooo against using formula when I was pregnant. I knew that breastfeeding was the best, and cheapest way to go, and I wanted Emily to have all of the many advantages of being breastfed. Breastfeeding started out really smooth, even after battling mastitis within her first week of life; and we never had a problem with it. That was until I started to go back to work. My coworkers and supervisors were very understanding and I was able to pump; however, there were times where instead of pumping 4 times during an 8 hour shift, I was only able to pump once or maybe twice. This, on top of school (during the first half of the semester, I took an 8 week class on campus), took a MAJOR impact on my supply and I started to dry up, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. I drank nothing but water, took my Prenatals and even ate oatmeal (which I hate) to try to increase my supply and nothing worked.
Fortunately though, I was able to exclusively breast feed Emily for a little over 3 mos before I had to switch to formula... it just still sucks to know that I wasn't able to go a full year breast feeding. :(

2. Co-Sleeping: Emily started out sleeping in mine and Mike's room because I was sooooo paranoid about her being in her crib. We kept her in a packnplay beside our bed... but as she got older, and as work and 16 credit hours of classes started to take a toll on me... what started as 2am feedings and cuddles with mommy turned into co-sleeping throughout the night. I was soo ashamed to tell people that I co-slept with Emily for the longest time because I didn't want people to think that I was a bad mother. But then... I decided that it didn't matter what people thought because not only did I co-sleep safely, with no covers or pillows, what works for one family... might not work for another. And truth be told, I loved the fact that during the night Emily would reach up and put her hand on my cheek as she slept. Co-sleeping only lasted for about a month and a half... and she now sleeps through the night in her crib. However, if she does wake up in the night... I will still put her in bed with me and Mike.. :)

3. No schedule... no problem: When I was pregnant and even after I had Emily I was sooo set on having a schedule for her. I read BabyWise etc and I wanted to make sure Emily was able to put her self to sleep etc. even though my mom has always told me, "you can't put a baby on a schedule, you must schedule your time around your baby."
I tried the CIO method... that lasted 2 days... lol I couldn't do it...
I took a lot of advice from BabyWise, like having Emily on the feed, play, nap routine.
However, I didn't force Emily into a schedule. She picked her own sleep, eating, playing schedule and it works sooo well for us. She sleeps through the night, wakes up happy and ready to play, and takes good naps during the day. I couldn't have asked for anything more!

I can't think of too much else that has changed in regards to my parenting style since Emily has been here... but I'm sure there will be more additions to this list as she grows older.

On a side note... one thing I SURE won't change is Emily's diapers.... we started her on Pampers and loved them. Anyway, we recieved a box of Luv's from a family member so we didn't want them to go to waste. We used them and quickly found out how much we hated them.... :)

Monday, December 20, 2010

The Beginning: Birth Story

So I decided to start a blog. I've been reading some of my friends' blogs over the past few months, and although I really wanted to create one I knew I didn't have the time with work, school and EOR.
Now that the semester is over I decided I would try it out... since I have nothing else better to do :)
I think it's fitting to start with my birth story and go from there, so here it is :

My pregnancy was very easy. I never had morning sickness or any complications. My weight gain was right where it was supposed to be and although I was tired, cranky and super hungry all the time, I was able to keep up my normal daily routine of school along with both of my jobs.
Towards the end of June my OBGYN started noticing a drop in my amniotic fluid, it wasn't nothing too big; however, he decided to keep an eye on it just in case. He advised me to drink more water and to wade in a pool for 30 minutes every day with the water up to my chin. Apparently a new study out suggests that this can increase a woman's amniotic fluid. I did this for weeks... it doesn't sound bad, but when your actually doing this every day (and most of the time alone) it starts to get old.
Because of my low amniotic fluid, I was going to the Dr's weekly for a check up, sent over to the Renaissance for a NST and monitoring for an hour and then sent home to wade in the water. It was brutal.
Anyway, even though my due date wasn't until July 21st, my OBGYN didn't want me to have to endure a dry birth so he scheduled an induction for me to begin on the 15th.
Mike and I arrived at the Renaissance on the 14th at 1pm, got put in a room and basically just relaxed all evening long. I had a great "last meal" of chicken alfredo and we spent the night watching tv and talking. I will always cherish that time.
At 6pm my nurse started me on Cervadil to help open my cervix and from there my nurse gave me a sleeping pill at 9pm to help me get a good nights rest.
At 4am I was set up on Pitocin and contractions ensued... however, they weren't that bad at all. I have always had issues with endomitriosis so the pain from the contractions were comparable to that.
Hours passed and I wasn't dilating... I was devastated because I did NOT want to have a C-Section. Finally labor started progressing and when I was 3 centimeters dilated my nurse came in and asked if I wanted my epidural. She said that she was surprised that I was so calm because normally when she has seen contractions peak to what mine were, women are begging for an epidural.
Now, I'll admit, I was in a LOT of pain, but I figured it's only going to get worse anyway... so why waste my effort when I have 7 cm's left to go.
I agreed to the Epidural, but I really hoped it didn't slow down my labor. I was in luck though because an hour later I was measuring at an 8 and within 45 minutes I was finally at a 10.
I ended up pushing for over an hour and a half... it was so exhausting...
I loved the fact that my Dr respected my wishes. He knew that I wanted to deliver her myself, and he let me. A lot of Dr's will try and push their patients to have a C-Section when they've pushed for a long time... but we BOTH knew that I could do it.
Emily was born at 6:06pm and she weighed 6pnds 7 oz. It was so amazing to feel her on my chest, there aren't even words to describe it.

After the delivery she was taken to be cleaned, measured etc. while the Dr. was working on me. I didn't quite realize it at the time but I was hemorrhaging and losing a lot of blood. Luckily My Dr. was able to fix everything... however, I wasn't able to hold my little one again for another hour.... it was literally the longest hour of my whole life.

After everything was said and done though, I was left with a beautiful little family. EOR had no problems learning to breast feed and although I swore I wouldn't give her a pacifier, I had to give in on day 2 because of her constant need to suck. I ended up getting no sleep because everytime she would put her fingers in her mouth I would try to nurse her because I thought she was hungry. After about 5 hours of "feeding" her every 30 mins, a nurse let me try a pacifier to see if she just wanted to suck on something... and finally mommy was able to get some rest!

I never understood the mother-daughter bond until I had my little EOR. She is so precious to me and I would do anything for her. July 15, 2010 was the day my life started and each day since then has been filled with so much love and joy.
So much has happened since then too, so stay tuned for more exciting tales :)