Sleep

I've been thinking a lot about sleep lately. Mostly about how I'm not getting it. It's funny how quickly your perspective can change. When I was pregnant nine hours a night plus a nap was barely enough sleep to keep me going. Now I feel like I've had a good night if, somewhere in between the feedings and diaper changes and trying to convince Leo that it's night time, I manage to get four or five hours. And right now he's going through a lovely stage where he'll sleep all day and all night in any position

as long as he's being held. As soon as you even think about putting him down his eyes pop right open. It's all kinds of fun.

This is going to be mostly pictures again. Sorry about that, but it's just easier that way. Ty's family left on Tuesday morning so we've been all by ourselves the past couple of days. What an adventure it's been! Leo doesn't go to sleep for the night until 3 a.m. so we've all been a bit tired. We're managing though, and looking forward to when he's on a more regular sleep schedule. His umbilical cord fell off last night so we gave him his first shower. He wasn't sure about it at first, but he definitely didn't want to get out when it was over. Any how, here's some pictures from the last few days.

He somehow managed to get his leg out during the night and would not let me put it back in. We've decided that he doesn't like to be confined.

This is the first bath that I gave to him. (We had Ty's mom do the very first one since we didn't really know what we were doing.) Just like the shower he liked it until we got him out. I think he doesn't like being cold or having lotion put on.

We teamed up for a game of "Oh, Heck" while Ty's family was still here. We like to start them young around here.

Grandma and grandpa babysat for us while we went to see Dark Knight. (Excellent movie, by the way.)

Forgotten

I love laying on my stomach! I forgot how good it feels and how much more convenient it is. I still tend to sleep on my side with a pillow between my legs, but I definitely spend a lot of time during the day on my tummy.

A Quick Picture Update

I don't have a lot of time because my little stinker has decided that today is Ten Minute Nap Day and he could wake up at any time. Here's a few of the things we've been up to.

Our garden is doing really well.

This started out as a burrito baby. First the arms came out, then the legs. Apparently Leo doesn't like to be swaddled.

This is Leo just chillin' with dad and reading a book.

This one is Leo at the hospital under the lamps to help with his jaundice. Aren't those glasses the best?

If you blow this one up you can see the four holes that were made in my back by a needle the size of a small drill bit.

Details

I guess some of you have been waiting for the juicy details of Leo's arrival. It can be a really long story, so I'll try and get in all the vital information without dragging on and on. Last Wednesday, July 9th, I went to the doctor and had my membranes stripped again. I laid around all day (the doctor said I was more likely to go into labor if I was resting) and didn't have so much as a twitch. After hours of waiting we finally decided that Leo wasn't going to make an appearance and gave up. As soon as I got into bed I started having contractions, of course. I progressed really quickly, or at least a lot more quickly than I was expecting for my first baby. After about half an hour my contractions were less than 5 minutes apart and over 30 seconds long. We didn't want to get sent home from the hospital so we waited another hour and a half before we actually left. I was hurting pretty badly by that time. Actually, I was shocked by how intense the pain was considering I was only 2 hours into the process.

(This is me right before we left for the hospital.)

So we get to the hospital and everyone is just taking their sweet time getting me checked in. I finally got changed and hooked up to the monitors and then I just laid in bed for about 10 minutes while my nurse asked me a list of stupid questions like"What's your name?" and "When is your birthday?" And I'm laying on the bed in agony thinking, "Why did I fill out the pre-registration form if you're going to make me answer all of these dumb questions agai...owwwww!" Finally the pain got unbearable and I asked when I could have an epidural. She looked at me like, "Oh, you sweet, naive thing. It's going to get much worse than this and I doubt you actually need an epidural right now." What she actually said was, "I need to make sure you're in labor first. I'll check your cervix right now and then I'll check again in an hour. If you've dilated one centimeter then you're considered to be in active labor (!!!)." So she checked (I was at 4 cm) and then continued with the list of stupid questions. She left for five minutes or so and when she came back I told her that the pain was absolutely unbearable and I had to have something for the pain, even if it wasn't an epidural. So she agreed to check me again (15 minutes later) and I was at 5 cm. She finally agreed to let me stay and went to get the doctor's permission to call the anesthesiologist.

When she came back she noticed that Leo's heart rate was dropping every time I had a contraction so she went out and got three more nurses. They then proceeded to poke and prod me, roll me over several different times and attach internal monitors so they could get better readings on the heart rate and contraction intensity. (They never did get that monitor attached by the way. The doctor did it half an hour later when he showed up. They didn't stop trying that entire half hour though.) By this point there was less than a minute between my contractions and they were more than a minute long. I spent the entirety of each contraction moaning so bad that I wasn't breathing. I swear I got told to breathe every 30 seconds by every different person in the room.

Finally one of the other nurses said, "Is the anesthesiologist on his way?" To which my nurse replied, "I haven't called him yet." (What?!?!?!) Any way, really long story a little bit shorter, the anesthesiologist got there about the same time the doctor did. The poor guy was having such a hard time getting the epidural in because the doctor and nurses kept pushing on my stomach, shifting my legs around and moving me all over the place. He had to poke me four times before he got it in and the last poke was in an area that wasn't quite numbed by the surface anaesthetic. I felt the needle go in and the tube being shoved into my spine. It didn't feel that great, but I was so happy to be numb that I didn't really care.

About that time my nurse came over with a needle and said, "We're going to give you this to slow your contractions down." (Why no one thought of this earlier I have no idea.) So I got numb and my contractions slowed down a little and then the doctor said, "Time for a c-section." The contractions had been too close together for too long and Leo's heart rate wasn't recovering. They wheeled me down to the OR and 10 minutes later my boy was here. All in all it took a little under four hours, but it was probably the worst four hours of my life. Fortunately I can't really remember what the pain was like so I'll probably do it all again in the relatively near future.

I'm Back!

Hello everyone! I'm back from my grand adventure and I'm feeling great. Slightly sleep deprived, slightly sore in the abdominal region, but feeling surprisingly normal considering that my entire life is now different. I love being a mom! Especially to this adorable little guy.

How cute is he? He makes the best little faces. This morning around 2 a.m. I went into the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had gotten about an hour of sleep at that point and I was making this ridiculous pouty face. I realised that Leo makes the same one, so maybe he got my mouth as well as my chin.

I wanted to throw in some pictures to show just how little my boy is. It's hard to tell from the pictures, even though you can see he's skinny. So the first one is him in the car seat. When we first got this I thought, "Man, that's a little car seat. I hope we can use it until he's old enough to sit in an upright one." I don't think it will be a problem.

This one is from last night.

We decided to take Leo on a walk and I wanted his legs to be covered. (Up until then he'd just been wearing the little white shirt from the hospital.) We went through all of our clothes and this is the smallest pair of shorts we have. They're 0-3 month and they absolutely drowned him! This morning I went through all of our clothes to see if there was anything that would actually fit on his tiny body. Even the newborn stuff is way too big. We had to get a couple of preemie outfits so he wouldn't be naked all the time.

Here's one of Ty's mom.

She came up to help us and she's been an absolute life saver! I would seriously be losing it right about now if she weren't here. She's been keeping Leo during the night so I can get some sleep and watching him during the day so I can nap too. She's also making all of our meals and doing all the cleaning. Basically I just sit around and feed Leo when he's hungry. It's a pretty nice set up. For me at least. :)

Any how, I guess that's all for now. We really haven't been doing much. Just chillin' with our boy and hanging out with each other. It's a good life.

Day 1 Pictures

We took some good pictures of Leo that we had to put up. In the first two you can see his huge feet and long toes.

Leo also had his cousin Sarah come for a visit, this visit cemented her role as the "favorite cousin."

As the day went on Leo got stronger and stronger. He slept most of the day, and was having a hard time regulating his body temperature. He is now a lot more energetic and vibrant.

Leo Pictures

I'll be sending these out in emails, but I'm not even going to try and get everyone, so in case it doesn't make it to you, here are some pictures of Leo. He was born at 2:56 (I think) Utah time this morning (10 July). Kristen had her very first contraction ever at 11 PM on the 9th, so labor to delivery took less than 4 hours. I'm sure Kristen will fill everyone in on the juicy details, but it was a mad rush at the end.

Deep Thoughts by Kristen

Generally I hate Helen Keller (it's a long and uninteresting story) , but I found a quote of hers that I really like. She said, "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." I have never had a great desire to change the world. I'm one of those people who cries over the suffering of others in the world but never thinks, "How can I change this?" (Isn't that horrible? Kind of a, "Sucks to be you" response.) Any how, I have always wanted to be able to make some difference in my tiny little sphere of influence. I hope that at some point in time someone or something will be better because of me. Even if no one ever knows it.

Accomplishments

I just wrote my life history, and it took me less than an hour. How cool is that? Maybe some of you are way better than me and did this a long time ago, but it always seemed like such a daunting task to me. I never knew what to include and where to start. (After "I was born on..." of course) We went to a "How to Write Your Life Story" class and they passed out a "one-hour life history" outline. It tells you exactly what to write down. Now, it's just a very basic outline, but it includes all of the important dates and facts. Then you can go back and add more details to beef it up, or you can just leave it as is. I feel like I just got a huge weight off of my chest and it wasn't even difficult. Yay for easy accomplishments!

4th of July

Yesterday was a little lame for us. Generally I really enjoy the 4th (anything that involves swimming, barbecue and fireworks is a good thing) but I'm generally not 38 weeks and 4 days pregnant. It was so hot that I pretty much refused to go outside all day long. At one point we were going to go on a walk, but when I tried to shove my fat little feet into my shoes I decided it wasn't worth it. I don't know if you can tell from this picture just how swollen my feet are, but Ty has started calling the right one (affectionately, of course) my "little piggy foot."

Yes, they are disgusting and yes it hurts to walk on them. I am so ready for this pregnancy to be over!

Any how, we spent most of the day watching the rest of The Office. It was both highly entertaining and disappointing at the same time. (We were in no way disappointed in the show, just in the fact that we're now out of new episodes to watch yet again.) So it didn't quite distract me from the "I don't have a baby yet" dilemma for as long as I was hoping it would.

Mid-afternoon we decorated my tummy with 4th of July tattoos. (I wouldn't recommend enlarging the photo unless you want to be utterly disgusted by my multitude of stretch marks.) We're now hoping that Leo makes an appearance before the tattoos wear off just because we think it will be funny to show up at the hospital like this to give birth.

We ended the day with fireworks, of course. We tramped out into the empty lot behind our house in the pitch blackness, wading through knee-high grass and weeds, carrying folding chairs and wearing sandals. It was quite an adventure, but we had a pretty good view of the Stadium of Fire show through the trees. I'm really hoping that we don't repeat this experience with any of our other kids!

JOY

I have the best news! Well, since I'm not in labor I guess I have the second best news. We found all of The Office season four online. Thank you nbc.com for making my life bearable again. Ty and I started watching The Office back in February. We were doing a 2 week trial of Netflix and we watched the first 3 seasons in about a week. It was literally all we did and we loved every second of it. Unfortunately, we gave up Netflix before season four came out and there has been an Office shaped hole in our lives since then. (Some of you probably don't watch The Office and are maybe thinking I'm a little crazy for liking so much. I'm not. It really is that good.) Any how, now that we're getting daily doses of hilarity I feel like I can even tolerate the next few days/weeks until Leo gets here.
Speaking of Leo, the doctor stripped my membranes yesterday (ouch!) and I've been having contractions on and off since then. Keep your fingers crossed!

Titles

Does anyone else hate coming up with titles for their posts? I absolutely despise it! I don't know why. I've always liked writing, especially about myself :), but coming up with titles drives me nuts. I guess I feel like they're always stupid or redundant, but at the same time I really hate when it puts the entire first sentence in the blog archive list. Any how, I'm probably going to stop with the titles.

Li'l Mousy

We have a little mouse friend living at our house. Actually, we share him with our neighbors downstairs and he seems to spend most of his time there. (We like to think it's because our house is cleaner and has less food lying around, but it's probably more likely that it's just too hot up here.) We've only seen him twice in more than a month, but Ty's worried that he's going to chew off Leo's eyelids while we sleep. Hence the trap. Any how, we set out two traps about a week ago and still no dead mouse. Bummer, huh?

Shameless Self-Promotion

I finally got a (pseudo) website up and running for the business. It's still not at the "final draft" stage yet, but you can check out some of what we've got. It's burpsnbaubles.blogspot.com

Fun Stuff

Today was squash experimentation day. Our little squash plants are growing like crazy and I decided I needed to find a way for us to eat all that squash so it wouldn't get wasted. So I looked through all of my recipe books and most of what I found involved cutting it up, cooking it and eating it as a side dish. Wow! Really? I can cook squash and use it as the vegetable portion of my meal? Who would have thought? Any how, it turns out that all the good recipes call for zucchini. I decided to see if the two were interchangeable and it turns out that they are. Hooray! So I ended up making zucchini (squash) bread and zucchini (squash) "apple" pie (two different books said it tastes like real apple pie. I haven't tried it yet, but it smells good.) If you enlarge the photo you can see how terrible my crust looks. Generally I just buy pre-made and I guess I should stick with that. Pie crust is apparently not my forte. Oh, and the bread is absolutely delicious in case you were wondering.

Busy Day

Yesterday was so crazy! And today I'm paying for it. I spent the morning sewing while Ty was at school. Once he got home we had a bunch of errands to run. We decided to walk since exercise can start labor. :) So we hiked up the hill to BYU, stopped by the library, the bookstore and the post office. Then we headed over to Provo Library, swung by the bank and then headed home. But we didn't stop there. We pulled up the pea plants in our garden (because apparently they bloom, you pick the peas and then they die. We just thought we were bad gardeners!) and replaced them with more radishes. Then we weeded and watered the rest of the garden. After that we went over to play games with our new neighbors. It was a lot of fun, but I was really tired! And I'd been having fake contractions since about the time we got halfway up the hill to campus. False labor is so much fun! Any how, today I'm paying for all of that. My body hurts and every time I move I think, "Am I dying? Oh wait, it's just from yesterday."