Wow!

I slept for a record-breaking eight hours last night! Mommy couldn't believe it, she kept waking up to make sure I was asleep. Here was the agenda for the night, in case Mom and Dad might want to recreate the scene:

8:20 Feeding

8:40 Bath

9:20 Put down

2:00 Mom wakes up, still sleeping!

4:40 Dad wakes up, it's been 7 hours!

5:50 8 1/2 hours!! I finally wake up, feed for ten minutes, then fall back asleep til 7:30. Wow!

I haven't decided yet if this is a one-time thing or if I'll continue sleeping through the night. Guess I'll put Mom and Dad in suspense to find out!

A Day in the Life

I'm halfway through my maternity leave now and wondering where did all the time go. I feel like I've been so unproductive during the past 2 months but of course I've just been busy taking care of a new baby. I'm pretty sure years or even months from now I will wonder what the heck did I do with all my "free" time during mat leave, so here it is - a day in my life as a new mommy.

6am - 7am: K wakes up for her morning diaper change/feeding. This is Prentice's shift and he'll change her, give her a bottle, and play with her if she stays awake, while I try to pump milk and catch some more sleep.

7am - 8am: I hold K in bed and after about 20 min she falls back asleep for her morning nap. Since she's still in my arms and I don't want to wake her by putting her down, I end up falling asleep in a half laying down/half sitting up position. We sleep like this for up to three more hours.

10am - 11am: We wake up. My neck is sore. I feed and change K, then place her back in her crib so she can stare at her sheep mobile while I wash up, make tea, grab a bite, and get changed. She loves her sheep. I haven't fully tested how long she'll stare at them for, but I've left her there for up to 20 minutes without hearing a complaint.

11am - 1pm: Activity time - K is wide awake so we walk around the house or sit on the couch together while watching Martha Stewart and The Doctors on TV.

1pm - 4pm: An outing of some sort, whether it's a trip to Target, Babies r' Us, mall, or our weekly mother-infant group. We may also take a stroller walk to Starbucks, or Grandma comes to visit and hang out. (During the first month before I was leaving the house, it was a 3-hours Grey's Anatomy marathon on the Lifetime channel everyday. I never watched so much TV in my life.)

4pm - 6pm: Combination of napping, activity, or just plain fussing.

6pm: Daddy comes home and I'm excited to finally have my hands free.

7pm - 9pm: We take turns eating dinner while the other holds K, watch TV, and more activity time.

9pm - 10pm: Our nightly bedtime routine: bath (2-3 times/week), change into pj's/sleepsack, read a story, nurse, and rocking until she falls asleep. Some nights this routine takes 30 minutes, other nights it takes up to 2 hours.

10pm - 5am: Ideally sleeping through the night, but may still wake up once or twice for additional feedings.

Phew, what a busy 24 hours. And it repeats itself again and again and again...

k-a-i-t-l-y-n

I am excited to write about one of my first craft projects! When I was fixing up Kaitlyn's room, I really wanted some nursery letters spelling out her name on the wall. But the only letters I really liked were the wooden ones from PB Kids, and I was too cheap to pay $10/letter. Michael's had wooden letters for about $3/letter, but I didn't like the font. With not a lot of other options, I decided to channel my inner Martha Stewart and do it myself!

Since I don't have one of those jigsaw wood cutters, I thought about cutting out some cardboard and painting them, but then I got inspired by a piece of flat styrofoam I found among all our packaging materials in the garage. I bought a new clean piece at Michael's and got to work. I didn't really know what I was doing so made the steps up along the way - at least I took a few photos to document the process!

Step 1: In MS Word, type out the letters you need in your desired font. Increase the font size to 750, so there's one letter on each page. Print out and using scissors, cut each letter out.

Step 2: Attach letters to the styrofoam piece (I used push pins) and with a pen, trace each letter out.

Step 3: Using a styrofoam cutter, carefully follow the pen lines and cut out each letter. I didn't even know styrofoam cutters existed but after some googling on how to cut styrofoam I discovered I could buy one at Michael's for twenty bucks. It was so easy and actually fun to use.

Step 4: Cover the letters with paper mache. Since the styrofoam is porous, it would have been really hard to paint the letters, so I had to figure out a way to coat them so they could easily be painted. I used scraps of tissue paper and Mod Podge (thinned out with water) and covered each letter with two coats. This was the most grueling, time-consuming part of the project and it took me a whole week to get all the letters completely covered. The tissue kept sticking to my fingers instead of to the styrofoam, and it was so hard to get it to stick to those little corners and curves. Also I had to wait overnight for the glue to dry in between coats. In the end though, after everything had dried, I had some solid pieces of paper mache'd styrofoam ready to be painted.

Step 6: Paint the letters. Easy and fun. I used acrylic paint in an ivory color. The project could have easily just ended here. But then I decided that just ivory was too plain and wanted to add to it even more.

Step 7: Decorate. I stenciled each letter on the back of a piece of scrapbook paper, then cut the paper out and glued it onto the letters.

The whole project from start to finish probably took me about 3 weeks, but that's because I also had my hands full with Kaitlyn and could only work on it in small pieces at a time. If I had all the free time in the world I probably could have finished it in 2 days. Here is a cost breakdown and how it compares to $70 for PB Kids letters:

Styrofoam piece: $5

Styrofoam cutter*: $12 ($20 with 40% coupon from Michael's!)

Bottle of mod podge: $5

Acrylic paint: $2

Foam/paint brushes: $3

Scrapbook paper: $0 (leftover from another project)

Total cost: $27

For under $30, I can't complain and I'm very pleased with the result. Here it is in action:

I guess I have been productive during my maternity leave. And there you have it. DIY nursery letters!

* Not counting the second styrofoam cutter I bought because I got too excited with the first one and broke it after the first use. Including the second cutter, the total project cost was actually $39.

The Bjorn Ultimatum

"You can either sit in the Bjorn or you can lay on the bouncy seat and cry...your choice"

Those were my words to Katie-bear, who for the better part of an hour, decided to huff, puff and fuss her way into frustration. Too alert to calm down, too tired to relax, there was just no way around it.

And so it was there, this mix of mesh, foam, fabric and plastic. Resembling a pistol holster or a rock climbing harness, who knew that this contraption could solve a problem of magnitudes equaling world peace or hunger? Yes, the cry of a baby, the shrill noise continuing into perpetuity, often with no cause or no cure.

So despite her protests (more screaming, crying, head shaking, and stiff arming), I slipped her into the harness and buckled her in. After a couple of short bounces and hops, she looked me with soulful eyes if to say "why are you doing this to me?" A few minutes later, the look was more "ok, I'm not sure what this is, but its not so bad." Before we knew it, it was 45 minutes later, she was still awake and alert, but she was just in amazement.

Since then? 5 minutes after strapping her in, she's fast asleep. You can't escape the powers of the Bjorn.

-dad

Six Week Update

Kaitlyn is six weeks old now and has grown so much. I definitely don't consider her as a newborn anymore. At her 1 month checkup she weighed 9 lbs 4 oz - she gained 3 lbs in 2 weeks! Her head has gotten so much bigger and she's developed those chubby baby thighs - she's so soft and cuddly now.

She doesn't have her evening crying spells as often as she did her first few weeks, and her gas pains seem to have gotten a little better/less frequent. But in general she has been really fussy lately - constantly crying, always wanting to be held (but not happy with whatever position she's in), constantly wanting to nurse. I'm assuming it's related to the 6-week growth spurt and hope it ends soon.

Last week she started sleeping for over three hours at a time, sometimes even four. It's been a lot easier since I only have to wake up once a night to feed her. But now our newest problem is just getting her to sleep at all. Every night it takes at least two hours to put her down, it's ridiculous. We've tried to establish a nightly routine so she knows it's bedtime, but I'm not sure if it's helping. Every night at around 8pm, we bathe her, change her, turn on soft music, read a story, and cuddle. When she appears drowsy we finally put her in the crib. Most of the time, if she doesn't start crying right away when we've put her down, she'll close her eyes and go to sleep on her own. But 30 minutes later she'll wake up screaming and crying. It takes us another 20 minutes of holding, shushing, patting her back, and cuddling until she's calm again and we can put her back in the crib. Then another 20-30 minutes later she'll wake up again and the whole cycle will repeat...and this goes on for 2 hours. Usually by 10 or 11pm she finally sleeps solidly until her 3am feeding. I just don't understand why it takes two hours to put her down in the first place.

During the day, Kaitlyn is awake for longer periods of time now, which means less down time for me. I'll spend 1-2 hours at a time holding her, walking her around the house, playing on the activity mat. I feel guilty if I just leave her in the bouncy seat and do my own thing (even then, it's 20 minutes tops in the bouncy seat), and feel like I need to constantly be engaging her as long as she's awake. I'm running out of things to say and do with her... I don't even get a break during naps. Kaitlyn insists on being held all day, even when sleeping. If she falls asleep in my arms and I try to put her down, she'll wake up crying until she's picked back up again. The Pack n' Play and the swing have both gone unused. She requires 100% of my attention all day long, I barely have two free hands to eat, type, or do anything, and it's pretty frustrating. Is it supposed to be this hard?

My Labor Story

A few people have asked me how my labor went and my short answer is "it wasn't as bad as I expected." I ended up writing about my labor experience to some friends, so for those interested in the details, this is how it all went down.

My water broke at 6am while I was half asleep in bed. Although I wasn't feeling any contractions yet I called the hospital and they told me to go in (I tested positive for Group B strep so needed antibiotics prior to delivery). I was totally caught off guard because we had learned in our childbirth prep class that we would go through the early stage of labor for about 8-12 hours before even having to go to the hospital. I guess I completely skipped that stage. Anyway for some reason we took our time going to the hospital - I took a shower, did a load of laundry, we even stopped at Starbucks. But by 8am I started to feel minor contractions and by the time we got to the hospital they were really strong and 5 minutes apart. I had always expected it to feel like bad menstrual cramps but (and sorry if this is TMI) instead the pressure was more in the rectal area, like an intense urge to have a bowel movement. Then I was tripping because I couldn't remember if I had had a bowel movement the night before, and I didn't want to have one while I was delivering.

I was admitted, hooked up with the IV, and sent to my room. I had been 1cm dilated and 90% effaced the day before, and when I went in I was only 2cm dilated. Since I wanted the flexibility of being able to use the restroom and move around, I told them I didn't want the epidural until I was 5cm dilated. In the meantime they gave me fentanyl to take the edge off my contractions. That felt really good, except each dose only lasted about an hour each and by the third dose it was becoming less effective. I tried walking around and changing positions but by 2pm the contractions were so unbearable I told them I was ready for the epidural. Luckily I was 5cm dilated by that point. Once I got the epidural I didn't feel a thing and got to relax. The only thing I thought was annoying was the catheter because I was still able to feel it every time I moved in bed. It took another six hours until I was fully dilated. I was getting antsy to start pushing so at 7pm I gave in and let them administer pitocin to speed up the process.

In terms of hunger, I was able to have jello and fruit juice before the epidural but after that I was limited to ice chips. I wish I had brought some hard candy to suck on while in labor. The taste of Jolly Ranchers would have definitely been welcome after eating ice chips for six hours. I think the hospital had popsicles as well but they had run out when we were there. I snuck in a feel sips of broth and it was probably the best broth I had ever tasted.

Although the pushing lasted two hours it really didn't seem like that long. In the beginning it seemed like I was pushing and nothing was happening. Right before the baby crowned I actually got to watch in the mirror to see how things were progressing. Not for the faint of heart but it was amazing to see as the head came closer and closer to the opening with each push. So I don't know if the epidural just wasn't as strong, but I was really unprepared for the pain when the baby crowned. For me it was probably the worst part of the whole labor process, especially that in-between stage when she had crowned but her head wasn't out completely. I just wanted to keep pushing but had to wait for the next contraction. Once I felt her head come out the rest was a blur. I remember my OB holding her up and then placing her on my chest. All I felt was this tremendous sense of relief, shock, and happiness all at the same time. It really was an amazing moment. I don't even remember pushing to deliver the placenta, it seems like the OB just pulled it out of me, but it actually felt pretty good coming out. I had some very minor tearing and got stitched up.

I look back now and think how funny it is that I spent so many months anticipating and worrying about the whole childbirth process, but when it actually happened, it felt so natural. I won't lie, some parts were painful, but it was all forgotten and all worth it in the end. As for any hesitations about being unprepared before the baby was born, it's amazing how your maternal instincts just kick in once you have your own. Everything just seems to come so naturally. I used to be scared just to hold a baby and now I can't stop holding my own. =)

My First Photo Shoot

* Note: This post is a little late since it took the photographer sooo long to send us the finished images.

At three weeks old I had my very first modeling gig! Mom hired a photographer to come to our house and take some pictures of me. Turns out I'm quite photogenic.

The session took about two hours. You can't tell from these photos but in between scenes I was crying and pooping everywhere. Since I had my diaper off for most of the photos you can imagine how messy it got. At least the photographer had done this hundreds of times before and didn't seem to mind at all that I had pooped all over her blankets and props.

Mom just regrets she didn't hire the photographer earlier, when I was at my tiniest. Newborn photos are supposed to be best when taken before 10 days of age, when they're more sleepy, more curly, and can easily be posed. At three weeks old I definitely still have the sleepy part down. Modeling is hard work!