The Mama to be Blogger

Fun in the sun

2012-02-02T19:57:00.003-05:00

We just returned from an amazing vacation in the sun where we had the opportunity to see great friends, play in the sand and swim every day, and get enough fresh air and sun shine to hold us over until the weather gets nice again here. The above pic is Baby #2 at 24.5 weeks, growing like a weed. Well, either that, or the increased belly size is due to all of the great food we ate last week. For one reason or another, my belly seems to have grown quite a bit in the past couple of weeks and I notice it getting in the way more and more. And yet I know, there is so much more "largeness" to come ...

The one thing that I hope doesn't come is preterm labor. I noticed some minor cramping and some contractions while we were on vacation and brought them up at my doctor's appointment on Monday. At 25 weeks, it's early to be having any of that, and after having preterm labor and bedrest with Piper, I definitely need to take it easy and be careful. I'm no longer allowed to exercise (even slow, long walks) and am taking Piper's nap time to put my feet up or take a nap myself. The thought of going on bedrest with a toddler running around absolutely terrifies me! But the one part that bums me out is explaining to Piper why I can't carry her down the stairs or pick her up and carry her around like I would like to. She's had a virus the last couple of days and just wants some extra cuddle time, so we get it on the couch together, but I do feel a bit badly. But then again, I guess there are worse things than her having to start adjusting to not being the only little one in the house starting now. She's not going to have all my time/attention/anything in a few short months and maybe this is a good time to start adjusting to her future reality!

22 weeks!

2012-01-11T20:09:00.003-05:00

It isn't getting any easier to take a self-portrait, but one thing is true, the little munchkin is growing like crazy and I'm starting to feel like a real pregnant lady. In the 18 week pic, I was wearing a normal shirt ... but those days are done. I finally put all of my regular shirts away and will see them again sometime this summer. Over the past four weeks, the little one is settling into a bit of a movement routine. If I sit still after eating, it moves around like crazy, but its favorite time to go wild is right as I lay down to go to sleep. The flips and wiggles are peak at about 10 pm, or whenever it is I get to bed, and since I never fall asleep right away anyway, I enjoy every minute of the acrobatics. I know that will change with time (when it's 3 am and I can't get back to sleep because of the crazy internal soccer moves), but for now, I'm just going to enjoy it.

So a very wise friend of mine passed on this link this week, http://momastery.com/blog/2012/01/04/2011-lesson-2-dont-carpe-diem, and I swear it changed my whole outlook on life as a stay at home mom. I think a lot of my growing frustration had to do with the 3 or so months of Piper not napping, being cranky, me being cranky and losing patience as a result, but quite honestly, I was feeling rather strained about motherhood. And I couldn't put my finger on why, but when I read this very well-written and honest blog, I knew what my problem was. I was too busy feeling annoyed/guilty that I wasn't happy all the time that I was missing the really incredible moments. Once I realized what I was doing, it's like a giant light bulb has gone off and I feel refreshed and rejuvenated about parenting. I'm finding it much easier to ignore most of the small stuff, and really cherish what matters. For example, the other day after a shower, Piper and I were in my room putting on lotion (one of her favorite activities). She was doing her thing, I was doing mine, and then she walked over, put a hand on my shoulder and said in an incredibly sincere and beautiful manner, "I love you, Mama." I can't tell you what else happened that day, but that's what I'm going to remember. It was awesome. And because parenthood is super hard, I'm going to choose to focus on those moments and not the ones that make me want to pull my hair out and scream, because there are enough of those too.

And maybe part of my rejuvenation comes from the fact that Piper IS napping again, and I think we've finally figured out a schedule that works well for her. Gone are the days of 1pm quiet time. If we wait until around 3, she almost always falls asleep and then will be a wonderfully behaved and pleasant 2 year old until she goes to bed at 8. This seems to be working well, and thank God, because the no naps and crankiness was a nightmare. And having her drop naps just when I became pregnant again was super crappy timing! Our house is now pleasant again in the afternoon/evening and everyone is so much better off for it. These kids aren't easy to figure out ... and I'm sure the next one will be completely different (and if that means a wonderful napper, then woo hoo!!!).

Here's a recent pic that's one of my favorites. While the smiles are pretty awesome on their own, it's made even more special by the fact that the jumper Piper is wearing was made by my Nana (my mom's mom) and I used to wear it 28 years ago. I'm sure my Nana was smiling down when she saw this too ...

18 weeks preggeroni!

2011-12-15T10:55:00.013-05:00

First of all, it's really hard to take a decent pic of yourself in a mirror! I was shocked, but with Reid out of town and Piper not the best photog yet, I was left with little choice but to grab the camera and document this peanut's journey on the start of week 18. Number 2 is well on his/her way!

And before we get back to being very happily and excitedly pregnant again, I need to back up and post Piper's 2 year stats. This poor kid (and the next one, let's be honest) are kind of screwed in that I'm just not a baby book type of person. I don't even own one for Piper, but I do want to keep track of these things, so very belatedly, here are her stats from July ...

Height: 34.5 inches - 75 percentile
Weight: 30 pounds, 8 ounces - 50 percentile
Head circumference: 19.5 inches - 90 percentile

Okay, back to the present and my poor attempt at documentation of our children's lives. I realized the other day that we started taking pictures of Piper (in my belly of course) when I was 16 weeks pregnant with her, and from there, they were almost weekly. I think the time period became a little spread out in the third trimester, but the fact is, she now has a nice little timeline of pictures where she gets to see my belly get bigger and bigger. When I was thinking about that, I felt guilty about this time around and not having taken any pictures OR documented any sort of commentary about this pregnancy yet. Maybe this kid won't care - and maybe Piper won't care about her well-documented, and at times embarrassing, journey - but we should at least give it another shot this time around. So although I will end with our Christmas card pic in typical 'Ode to Piper' fashion, the rest of this blog gets dedicated to her little sibling and its journey so far.

We first found out we were pregnant on labor day ... and from there, the real nerves set in. To be perfectly honest, the whole process, although short, was super nerve racking. Even before we started trying, I was terrified of it being a long, difficult process (actually getting pregnant, that is). Much to our surprise, that was not the case. We got pregnant the first time out (thank you, ovulation kit!) and therefore avoided all of the stress that getting pregnant can entail. But as soon as we found out we were pregnant, the stress of staying pregnant set in. I knew I had an increased risk of miscarriage due to some anatomical changes that have taken place (thanks ligaments, for failing to do your job years before that should have been the case) and we were also at an increased of another molar pregnancy. I considered both of these facts daily and the first trimester slugged slowly by.

Our 8 week ultrasound went well. No signs of any blood pockets and the heartbeat was nice and strong. Prognosis? Who knows. Sit tight until the 12 week ultrasound. So the next month SLOWLY dragged on and the next ultrasound finally arrived, where we were met with a beautiful wave of a hand - hooray!!

All of our fears and trepidations disappeared and joy and excitement were allowed to set in. I can't describe the feelings of relief I felt. We've had happy ultrasounds and we've had nightmare ultrasounds ... but the experiences you simply can't shake when going into the unknown are those negative ones. Well, that is, until you see the little miracle happily living inside of you. It's simply amazing.

And since then, the time has absolutely flown by. I have a hard time believing that this pregnancy is almost halfway over, and I'm sure the next 22 weeks (well, hopefully a BIT less than that, but who knows) will keep going by pretty quickly. I first felt the little peanut kicking me the night of Thanksgiving. I was shocked. I was barely 15 weeks, but there was no mistaking it, and since then, pretty much daily, I can feel him/her moving around in there. It's such a wonderful feeling, and I can't wait until Reid and Piper are able to feel this one too. I know this little guy/girl has a big sister who is very anxious to feel him/her!

And yes, the annoying "it", "him/her", etc will continue because we aren't going to find out the gender until the day this one enters the world. I don't love calling it an it, but that's ok. It's all well worth the wait.

And as promised, I'll end with the picture we used on our Christmas card ... the funny part is this is the only snow we've had all year and it was almost 60 degrees when we were making the snow man. Piper's wearing her winter coat only so that we don't look negligent. Happy holidays to all!

Happy 2nd birthday, Piper!!

2011-07-06T19:20:00.006-04:00

Today, Piper turns 2. Unbelievable. She's spent the last three days celebrating and can very clearly say "Happy Birthday me." She's awesome and we love her more than I can eloquently say - even after a very difficult day of terrible twos ... of which today was one of many!

I know when I wrote the last short blog, I said I would cover why I went through a very lengthy blog hiatus. To sum it up, we had an amazing vacation in Turks and Caicos, only to come back to more not-so-great news. I just felt like life was continuing to deal us a crappy hand and I needed to not write about it because then I thought about it more. I'm incredibly skilled at squashing bad emotions deep down, ignoring them and moving on - waiting until life is good on its own again. With some things, this strategy has worked, with others, it hasn't (particularly grieving), but life IS more positive now so I'm ready to be back, chronicling our lives for Piper to someday read later on in life.

The really good news is that the cancer scare is over! I have one more set of monthly labs to do and then my trips to the lab for HCG levels are DONE. Thank God, because I hated that the lab people knew me by name and were curious about what was going on in Piper's life. I wanted to be anonymous, but my frequent shopper status prevented that and it drove me nuts.

So back to fun stuff!

Reid and I are rarely spontaneous ... but we were this past weekend and it was an absolute blast. Friday afternoon, we booked a room for that night in Westport, NY. We stayed at a really unique inn with great views of the lake. We were all in the same room, but it was just fine. Here's Piper with her crazy hair before we actually got going on Saturday. That's her "smile" face ... go figure.

After a great breakfast, we launched the boat and drove it up to Essex, NY, which is so far, my favorite little town on Lake Champlain. As we docked the boat, their fourth of July parade was about to start so our timing couldn't have been better. After exploring Essex and a fun lunch on the water, we were back on the boat for what was easily one of the best boating days we've had. I'm smiling now just thinking about it!

And then Monday was Piper's 'family' party, followed by her 'friends' party yesterday and another great play date today. So much celebrating and so much fun, but it's definitely taken a toll on Piper, who as a toddler, tends to be emotionally fragile (or volatile, whatever) at times. She's had a blast, but was so tired today, I could tell we may have crammed a bit too much fun into a short amount of time. Good thing we have a low key day of the Great Escape tomorrow ... ooops ... I predict a major meltdown in public at some point tomorrow :-) But all in all, the memories from this weekend and Piper's official transition into a "preschooler" are ones that I'm so excited to remember. Including watching her explore her new ride while opening presents on Sunday ...

Big girl bed!

2011-05-18T19:47:00.003-04:00

It's Piper's first night in her crib converted into a toddler bed, and so far, it's not going well. She's in it out of our own desperation for a good night's sleep - she's been sleeping terribly and this was a suggested solution. Maybe she is sick of her crib and wants to be more independent. Or maybe she's just going through a phase. Or maybe it's her two year molars coming in. Or maybe she's just testing us to see how long we'll let her cry, and how many times she can keep us up at night, until one of us breaks out of sleep deprivation and lays down next to her crib until morning. Toddlers are complicated creatures!

And yes, I fully acknowledge that it has been FOREVER since I've blogged last. I'll address that in my next post ...

Great expectations

2011-02-25T18:25:00.002-05:00

The problem with great expectations, and I don't mean the book here, which I really liked, is that when life doesn't work out how you want it to, there are great disappointments.

Take today, for instance. We were so pumped to get to Turks and Caicos and start our vacation. Pumped enough where we didn't even mind getting up at 3:40 this morning to make our flight. Then the snow set in around 6 am ... and here we still sit in NY, with a flight tomorrow. Now, obviously way worse things happen in life than missing a day of vacation, but I would be lying to say that I'm not disappointed. Tomorrow, there will be sun, friends, and warmth!! Or there better be ... :-)

Peace out snow ... bring on the sun!

2011-02-24T20:10:00.003-05:00

The one bad thing about all of the traveling Piper and I have done together is that she's now a total and complete mama's girl. I call her my Velcro baby. She is literally stuck to me at almost all times ... and this is a problem. She'd gotten to be a great daycare kid. I could drop her off, she'd wave goodbye, and then have a happy, fun-filled day. The last few times she's gone now, though, she wavers back and forth between having fun (when she's focused on an activity, such as an art project) and crying for mama. Every time I've picked her up, I can here her crying when I walk into the building. Ugh. When we get back from vacation, we need to figure out how to fix this ... any suggestions? Maybe having her go more than once a week for a while?

And now, let vacation begin! We will be out of here super early tomorrow morning, on our way to see friends in Turks and Caicos. Erica, Pierre, and Sylvie - can't wait to see you :-)

Be prepared for super cute pics of Sylvie and Piper's all day play dates. Let's just hope Piper's not a huge bully ...

Happy 100th to me!

2011-02-23T20:28:00.009-05:00

100th post that is. It may have taken me a while to get here, but that nice round number makes me smile nonetheless.

So back to Florida.

We left for Florida on a freezing cold morning and were greeted by a smiling Charlotte and the warm sunshine. Ah ... heaven. During this trip, Piper experienced many firsts. Her first trip to the beach; her first time to a zoo; her first safari (mine too); her first time feeding a giraffe (mine too); and her first experience with flip flops. The last left her with a tiny blister between her toes, but she loved all the rest and the smiles on her face throughout the trip made it one of my favorites also.

One of our first stops on the trip with Aunt Char was to buy a much needed pair of sunglasses for the peanut, and if I had known how big a hit these sunglasses were going to be, I definitely would have bought more than one pair because they're bound to break at any moment. In general, Piper LOVES accessories: hats, anything for her hair, shoes, and now sunglasses. She sports them day or night, inside or out. Basically she's a movie star in the making. They're huge, pink, sparkly, and absolutely rock.

From CVS, we went to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center where Piper was introduced to turtles. Her reaction was actually less than I thought it would be, but I blame that on her exhaustion, which is very obvious in this pic with Char ...

We did so many fun things that it would take me all night to list them out, but by far the highlight for Piper was going to Lion Country Safari, and we 100 percent owe that excursion to a snow storm in the northeast. We were supposed to fly back on a Tuesday, and when Stanton dropped us off at the airport that morning, our flight was on time and everything looked good. Then, one by one, every flight into the northeast was canceled, and all of a sudden, we had two extra days to spend in Florida. Besides lugging all of our gear out to the rental car while sweating profusely and cursing under my breath so Piper couldn't hear me, and obviously us both missing Reid, I was psyched for the extra time. We drove ourselves back to Char's, did a load of laundry and hit the pool. The following day, we headed to Lion Country Safari, and I will fully admit that I was super excited about this trip. I know I can be pretty cheesy, but I've always wanted to do a drive through safari and was finally getting to do it, and in a rental car no less! Let the fun begin.

After a stern lecture from the attendant about keeping our windows closed and doors locked, we headed into the park. First stop, ostriches. The birds were huge, and literally right outside the window. Piper took one look and started signing and saying "more" over and over again.
By the time we hit the zebras and rhinos, she was trying to open the door ...

After the drive through tour, we had lunch, where I asked Piper if she wanted to go feed the giraffes, one of the activities at the little theme park they had. She started giggling like mad and signing for eating (tapping her finger to her mouth). So off we went to find the giraffe feeding station. We did it once, and then before we left, we had to do it again. And when we left the park, Piper cried her eyes out. She had the BEST time and still starts giggling and tapping her finger to her mouth every once in a while. When she does, I say "did you feed the giraffes?" and she dissolves into giggles. Freaking hilarious and adorable, rolled into one. We had the attendant take our pic with Manofwari, the giraffe we fed the most and Piper's eyes are closed, but we do have a decent one of her actually feeding him. This was the second time around and she had absolutely no fear, just pure delight!
Just like seeing Heidi, it was great to see Char and to be wrapped in friendship. It's not as if we don't have friends where we live now, but sometimes seeing someone you've known for more than a decade makes all the difference.

I feel like I have so many memories of this trip that I'll have forever, and for that reason, I so wish Reid had been there to share in them with us. The good news, though, is that in a very short amount of time, all three of us will be making new memories on vacation in Turks and Caicos!

One more blog and I'll have made my 10 in 14 goal. I've actually really enjoyed the exercise, and while I can't promise a ton of posts from vacation, I definitely want to keep up the pace when we return. No more months of one post. That's just crap! I'm here to say that the next 100 posts will come a lot more quickly than the first.

Good lab results!

2011-02-22T20:41:00.002-05:00

And I forgot to add this to the previous post, but lab results came back today from last Friday and we're still headed in the right direction. HCG levels are down. YAY!!!!

Oh the places we go ...

2011-02-22T19:41:00.004-05:00

Traveling with a toddler is an interesting experience due to their temperament. Toddlers are on emotional roller coasters all day long as they try to figure out how to feel in certain situations, and more importantly, what's an appropriate reaction to those situations. But the fact is, I love to travel. I love seeing people whom we don't get to see often enough. I love exploring new places, and now, showing Piper new places and having her go through new experiences. And this time of year, I will admit that I love having a little warm sunshine on my face when it is COLD up here. So when life went to crap in December, we booked three trips - two of which have already happened (Cincinnati and Jupiter, Florida), and one that's coming up in just a few short days (Turks and Caicos). I will admit that I wanted to escape a bit, and whether it's been the escaping, the fun times with Piper, or the reminder of how great it is to see great friends, our trips have been just what the doctor ordered.

First stop, Cincinnati.

We went to Cincinnati to visit one of my best friends from college, Heidi, her husband, Tommy, their daughter, Anna (3 months older than Piper), and baby Trimarco, who hasn't made her appearance yet, but should be doing so any day. The trip was GREAT. I think part of it was that I hadn't seen any of my good college friends since I had miscarried and I just needed that wrap of friendship that I could feel in a hug from Heidi. I needed an 8 School fix. But the other part was that Piper and Anna had an absolute blast. They played with their babies/dollies (same doll that they call different names) for hours - mostly taking them for "walks" in baby strollers and putting them to bed in a toy pack and play. They played and played and only had a few minor skirmishes, which I was honestly surprised about because they hadn't seen each other in well over a year so had no real history. But instead of acting like strangers, they acted like Heidi and I do and that thought honestly brings a tear of happiness to my eye. We went to the aquarium (above), the children's museum (below), went out to dinner at a great Mexican place, and had so much fun just hanging out at Heidi and Tommy's house. It was a trip that I will remember forever, and I left with the vow that we will never go nearly as long as we did this time before we get these girls together again. Ever.

And right before we left for a trip home, which took WAY longer than intended due to poor weather, we tried to get a picture of us four ladies. Tommy took a ton, but with two toddlers and two adults who hadn't showered yet, a good picture of all four of us was nearly impossible. This was the best we could do :-)

A week later, we were off to southern Florida to see another great college friend, Charlotte, and her boyfriend, Stanton. That post will have to wait until tomorrow, but it was another fantastic trip that I relive pretty much every day as Piper tells me she "fed the giraffes". More details to come ... :-)

So instead, I'm going to end this post with a couple more pics from Cinci and a sincere heartfelt thank you as I noticed that Jennie Sheridan's fundraising page is even closer to her goal. Thank you!!

Bronchialitis is back

2011-02-19T19:41:00.005-05:00

When I made Piper's list of maladies, I forgot her two most recent: over Christmas, she had a double ear infection and bronchialitis. I may have tried to block it out because it was a rough time filled with some pretty difficult behavior to deal with, but I blame that on the ear infections, and the fact that her first antibiotic didn't work so she was in pain for an extra 6 days. With a trip to the doctor's yesterday, we discovered that her bronchialitis is back. Luckily, she is great with the nebulizer. She sits for the 10 minutes while she inhales the albuterol, and then we wait for the albuterol to kick in! It makes her a crazed animal, bouncing around uncontrollably like a ball in a pinball machine. It is unreal the impact it has on her, but after 24 hours of being on meds, she is definitely acting more like herself. Too bad Reid and I both woke up sick this morning ... I blame it on one too many direct sneezes to the eye. Thinking back to Christmas and her behaving ridiculously, I love this picture of Piper right after she opened the toy chainsaw Daddy got her. If she hadn't looked so maniacal, I think Reid would have been proud instead of scared. Just that morning she'd been diagnosed as being super sick. Somehow, you'd never know ...

These past two months, I've spent a lot of time thinking about cancer, and if there's one thing I realize, it's that it is incredibly pervasive in all of our lives. All too much so. Just last weekend, we stayed with friends, and while we were out on a cross country ski, my friend told me about one of her good friends, Jennie, who had just lost her third sibling to cancer. Her siblings were 32, 35 and 36. One had three kids. Jennie is one of two remaining kids in her family and is running the Boston Marathon this year in honor of the three siblings she's lost, as well as all the other people fighting this terrible disease. Jennie's running on the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team and 100 percent of the money they raise goes to fund the Claudia Adams Barr Program for Innovative Basic Cancer Research program. Her personal goal is to rase $20K, and she's really close ($19,150).

I've never met Jennie, but I can't imagine the amount of loss she's experienced in her young life. I greatly admire her courage and strength and would love to see her reach her goal. If you want to help, here's her fundraising page: http://www.rundfmc.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=425293&supid=274266000. She also has a a blog, which is pretty amazing. And I promise to never make a habit of asking for money, but cancer sucks and Jennie's doing more than I am to fix the problem so I would love to help her help others. Thanks!

Colds and mud puddles

2011-02-17T19:09:00.004-05:00

I remember the first time Piper came down with her first real virus easily, as it was the day of her 1st birthday party. Since then, I feel like she's been sick a ton, especially throughout the fall and this winter. Over the past several months she's had strep, croup, coxsackie virus, scarletina, a stomach bug, and cold after cold after cold. To be honest, it was starting to freak me out. And when the same doctor walked into our room yesterday as we had seen just a short three weeks ago, I was actually relieved because I wanted to ask her how normal this was.

She answered my question for me when she walked in and said, "Well, it's been 3 weeks. You were due!" I asked her if she was kidding, and she explained that once kids start crawling and then until they are 3, it's completely normal to come down with a different illness once every three weeks. So, by the time they get over one thing, you have about a week and a half of good health, typically, and then onto the next. And as she's in the room, Piper is drooling like crazy and chewing on her finger so the doc added that it's usually worse during teething because they transfer all the nasty germs they touch into their mouths. Such a gross thought, but it made me feel so much better because I feel like I always have the sick kid out of my friends. Turns out, she's normal, and it's possible that she puts her hands in her mouth more than others. And I would guess that it takes her teeth way longer than normal to come in than the average kid, leading to longer periods of teething. I can't remember how long she's been working on her eye teeth, but I know it was well before Christmas and she still has the bottom two to go. And her molars took four months to come in. During that time, she had half of the identifiable illnesses listed above. This, to me, just doesn't seem fair. Teething sucks already, being sick on top of it can't help anything. If only I could keep her hands out of her mouth ... yeah, right.

Even though she was sick, Piper discovered how fun a mud puddle can be today. It was one of those glorious late winter days when the sun was out and it reached the mid-40s, which felt heavenly. We put our rain boots on and went out for a walk, which only lasted as far as the street corner because that's where all the puddles were. We played and stomped until Piper slipped and ended up on her butt, totally soaked from the waist down. It was fun while it lasted :-)

Valentine's Day's true target audience

2011-02-14T19:10:00.003-05:00

I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. To me, it's a contrived holiday where Hallmark and florists make out like bandits, and if someone really loved you, do they need a day to remind them of this? Over the years, Reid and I have made each other homemade cards for this special day, always out of construction paper. They've been super creative and usually say a lot about what's going on in our lives. There was one year when mine to him included an elaborate representation of his truck towing my car (ah the trip home from Texas), while his the year before was a longhorn with eyes that popped out when I opened it (since we had just moved to Austin). We didn't do dinners out or the over-priced flowers or jewelery (all of which I would gladly accept on any other day of the year!), but we each spent a ton of time cutting out little pieces of construction paper and ended up with way more than just glue stick all over our fingers.

Then we had Piper.

Last year's cards were talked about and never started. This year, no cards again.

The fact is they take a lot of time, and extra time isn't something either of us have a lot of and it all seems to be used up (while I type this, Reid is in the basement doing P90X). And thinking about this today, as I read through sappy update after sappy update on Facebook, made me realize who needs this grossly cheesy holiday the most: parents. There's no doubt that our free time has drastically diminished and changed since we had Piper. We now struggle to sneak in a workout, do the dishes, or just do nothing on the couch when that's all we have the energy for. Our house isn't as tidy as I would like it most of the time and Christmas thank yous take a month and a half to be delivered. Piper takes up all of the time that she's awake, which leaves very little time dedicated to romance and just to each other. I realized today that if anyone should be celebrating this holiday, it's us, even if it is contrived. Thinking more, we didn't even celebrate our last two anniversaries ... basically there are two days in the year when culture says to remember to just enjoy the two of you and they are your anniversary and Feb. 14. We totally need to make time and do this.

And just to clarify, I'm not a bitter Valentine's Day person. I never was dumped or had plans totally ruined or anything like that. I think my real issue with the holiday is that I'm a hopeless romantic, which to me means that I want to be told on any/every other day of the year how great I am and how much I mean to Reid. I just don't want him to tell me today because Hallmark says so.

So I'm not bitter, but I am thinking more rationally now and realizing how poor of a job we've done of keeping things romantic and special. Time to pencil it in, as romantic as that sounds!

Oh, and my labs came back today and my HCG dropped a good amount over the last week so my health continues to move in the right direction. If that's not a reason to celebrate, then I don't know what is.

Short and sweet

2011-02-13T20:36:00.003-05:00

More words that Piper can say: orange, onion and backpack. What she says clearly is such a random fun collection - I love it.

There are some days that the words just flow out of my fingers when I sit down to blog and others where each word feels forced. Tonight is a forced night, so while I'm going to count this as blog number 3 out of 10, I'm not going to torture anyone, including myself, with terrible writing and jumbled thoughts. I was hoping to sit down and feel motivated to write about all of the amazing travels we've had between our recent trips to Cincinnati and Florida, but those tales are simply going to have to wait for another night.

18 month stats

2011-02-11T19:29:00.005-05:00

While Piper may now be 19 months, she did have an 18 month well-baby visit last month so here are her latest stats:

Height: 34 inches - 95 percentile

Weight: 27 pounds, 14 ounces - 91 percentile

Head circumference: 19 inches - 82 percentile

Her percentiles were pretty much unchanged, except for her growing melon - she bumped up a good 7 percentage points, making herself a pretty well-proportioned, albeit huge, child.

I remember the doc at her 15 month well-baby visit telling us there would be a word explosion coming up. Well, he didn't lie. While much of what she still says is incoherent babble, she can now say a ton of words including: mama, dada, dog, big truck, duck, cheers, cheese, eye, vroom, moo, up, down, hot, hat, more, please, pee, poop, nana, papa, NO, uh huh, uh oh, gas (in reference to gas stations...), boat, and I'm sure there are a bunch of others that I'm blanking on right now. And if you think she's not listening, think again. She's proven time and time again that she's always listening and understands every word we say. She answers almost every question with "no" right now and she loves to listen to us count and sing along with the alphabet song, although she only says "i, i, i."

Her favorite show is Dinosaur Train on PBS, although she won't sit and watch it for more than a couple of minutes, and her favorite time to read books is right before bed. We read the same books almost every night - Olivia; Everywhere Babies; Goodnight Moon; The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear; Hand Hand Fingers Thumb; and I Love You Stinky Face.

She LOVES accessories - hats, sunglasses, purses. And big trucks. She's a ridiculously fun combination of girly girl and tom boy and we hope that continues. Basically, we're completely in love and she gets more and more fun every day - as long as it's not a 'terrible two' day ... she has those too.

And the picture at the top is from New Year's Eve. Piper was super sick - double ear infection, bronchialitis - so our plans to head to Boston to see friends were canceled. To make the best of it, I made a nice dinner, complete with chocolate cream pie. Piper discovered how much she loved homemade whip cream, particularly when she could eat it off the whisk. And notice the hat - again, always accessorizing. Love it.

Hello, 2011, 1.5 months late

2011-02-10T18:54:00.004-05:00

When I was working in PR and monitoring blogs, there were blogs that mattered and blogs that didn't. Based on the fact that I haven't blogged in more than 6 weeks, I would have put myself into the 'didn't matter' category. BUT, the simple fact is that we aren't doing a baby book and this is the only way (besides the thousands of pictures) we have of cementing our memories of Piper as she grows and changes so this blog does matter. To me, anyway. My excusefor not blogging is simple: life happened.

But now I'm making a mid-February resolution: I will blog 10 times in the next 2 weeks. And here's number 1.

There's no doubt in my mind that my blogging hiatus was due to the miscarriage. After I blogged last time, the outpouring of support and kind words was incredible, but it was also overwhelming, and I realized that I needed to spend some time processing what had happened instead of writing about it. Especially after the pathology of the fetus came back and we had a rare and annoying diagnosis to deal with. In short, I had a partial molar pregnancy, which means that the egg was fertilized by two sperm. Obviously, this is NOT supposed to happen so the fetus had way too many chromosomes and grew funky cells as a result. So two days before Christmas, I got a call from my doctor with this news, accompanied by the prognosis: if my body absorbed the funky cells from the baby, then it's possible they would be matasticized in my body into a quick spreading nasty cancer, albeit one that responds well to chemo. As a result, I went in for a chest x-ray and blood work on Christmas Eve (great day for hospital stuff as it turns out, totally empty and no lines) to get a base line and then would have to do weekly blood work until my pregnancy hormone (HCG) returned to normal and then for a while after that. Basically, they would watch me very closely to ensure I didn't get cancer, and we couldn't start trying for another 3-6 months (until I was in the clear).

Fast forward a couple of weeks and the plan then changed to 6 months of monthly labs after my labs returned to normal levels. So looking 7-8 months out probably. The planner in me was crushed by this, but obviously my health has to come first.

Fast forward another couple weeks to my post-op doctor's appointment where we discussed the fact that my HCG levels were dropping way more slowly than what was considered "normal", and they seemed to be stuck. My doctor, whom I trust completely, consulted additional specialists and explained that I'm now no longer in the normal category for this type of pregnancy (which is extremely abnormal, by the way), so we should now wait at least a year to start trying again. And, if my hormones didn't come down over the next few weeks, he recommended chemo.

The thought of chemo paralyzed me. I know there are various types of chemos, but I've seen the side effects in multiple people and going through them with a toddler sounded terrifying. So while the year of waiting bummed me out, my whole emotional state was overwhelmed by the possibility of going through multiple months of weekly chemo treatments. Luckily, Piper and I left for Florida the next day for some warm weather, great friendship and a break from reality. A dedicated Florida post will be coming over the next 2 weeks.

Luckily, my last two weeks of labs have showed a reducing HCG number so chemo is not looking so likely now. Of course, that could change again, but I'm choosing to stay positive and focus my energy on a number of goals for the next year:

Getting back into great shape - this may have to wait a bit until Cadbury Creme Egg season is over
Making a better effort at communicating with people, including this blog
Finally starting and finishing home improvement projects that I can take on by myself/with help, such as painting projects, a somewhat redo of our master bedroom suite, and massive gardening/landscaping in the spring

If we're not going to be pregnant for a while, we might as well make the most of it. And if I can get through the next year without chemo or any other terrible issues, then I certainly plan to take advantage of my time.

The weird/scary part for me is that I feel like I haven't grieved over this lost child at all. Part of it is that I feel like I don't have time for the grieving process, and it is so different already having Piper, but I do dread falling apart at some point, which I know is totally possible. Again, I might as well make the most of not falling apart. 2011 started off about as crappy as it could, but I plan to make the best of it moving forward. Here's to health and happiness!

Swallowed by a whale

2010-12-21T17:40:00.002-05:00

I've gone back and forth over whether or not to blog about this. I certainly don't want people's sympathy or pity (there's my cons list), but I also remember many people reaching out to me after I blogged about our first miscarriage and thanking me. Many people told me they learned a lot from our experiences, and honestly, if I can help someone else make it through a similar experience or help a friend/family member help their loved one cope through a terrible time, then that makes me putting our heartbreak out for all to read more than worthwhile. And so with that thought, I've decided to open up about our last 10 days ...

We'd been trying for about four months when we found out we were pregnant again. We were both super excited, but cautious. If we learned anything from our first pregnancy, it was that being blindsided with a loss is just about the worst feeling in the world. So I can say we went into this eyes wide open, but of course I was hopeful. You hear about first pregnancies failing way more than subsequent ones, but the fact remains (via my doctor and midwife) that 1 in 5 pregnancies fail. Being a typically optimistic person, I can see that 80 percent of pregnancies make it, but if you've been through the 1 in 5 before, you know that that 20 percent is a HUGE number.

We asked for, and were granted, an early ultrasound (we did the same thing with Piper) and both felt huge sighs of relief upon seeing the flicker of a heartbeat two Fridays ago. 164 beats per minute. Nice and strong. We had over an hour to wait until the appointment with the midwife so I came home and emailed some of my closest friends. Hooray! We were pregnant again.

I was stupidly confident.

At the appointment with the midwife, she told us that there was a pocket of blood visible on the ultrasound, which concerned her. She explained that sometimes this can be a normal occurrence with the development of the placenta (it was in between one end of the placenta and the uterine wall) that could be absorbed by the body. Or, it could be a sign that the pregnancy was eventually going to fail. Out the door flew our confidence; in flew fear. The good news was that I was really sick - throwing up some days, but generally nauseous and feeling awful from the moment I woke up until I went to bed. The midwife explained that those were hormones at work, which was good. The plan became to do another ultrasound in a week to make sure the baby was still growing. We both knew it would be an incredibly long week of waiting, but regardless of what the outcome would be, there was nothing we or any doctor could do.

Fast forward a few days to last Monday, when all of a sudden, I woke up and felt completely back to myself. No more nausea. No more tiredness. I had an internal freak out, thinking this was a sign that things had gone terribly wrong, but continued to try to be hopeful. After all, I had one friend whose sickness only lasted three weeks so the baby could be fine. Piper and I kept super busy while Reid was working to make the time fly, and Friday was once again upon us.

We returned to the practice and got set up in the ultrasound room. No heartbeat was seen in the first attempt, so we switched to an internal ultrasound for a better view. No heartbeat again - the baby had died. As much as I was somewhat expecting this, it still hurt more than one can imagine. I wanted to be hopeful, after all, we wanted this baby. We planned for this baby. I had an app on my phone to help with trying and peed on an ovulation kit stick every morning for crying out loud. We already loved this baby.

I wasn't able to have a d and c until yesterday morning, and spending the weekend knowing there was a dead baby inside of me was torturous. I wanted it out. I felt so gross. And it was messing with my subconscious and dreams, which made sleeping unrestful and aggravating. Friday night I dreamed that I could already feel the baby kick and woke up with my hand on my stomach and the awful realization that the opposite was true. The next night, Reid and I had an enormous fight in my dreams over a new car. In real life, we were planning on getting a different vehicle since I was pregnant, so the dream clearly had a root in our planning, but in the dream I had to keep yelling at Reid that "the baby was dead! We don't need a new car." Over and over again. I would wake up mad, and sad.

I've had brief moments of sadness, but I know the long road of grief is really yet to come. I am great at suppressing my feelings, but I don't want to do that this time. For Piper's sake, we need to deal with this and move on. I do find writing to be therapeutic so hopefully this will help me in addition to others, but I hate that we've lost another child and that we'll be planting another hydrangea in the spring to go with the one that represents our other lost baby. We threw out the first ultrasound picture we had with "BABY" written on it. I didn't want the reminder of what we had lost, not that I'll ever forget it.

I will say that being sad around Piper is pretty much impossible. She has no clue what has gone on in our lives (for which I'm thankful) and spent the weekend running around our house with a huge smile on her face. Hugging her fills me with warmth. We are so blessed and lucky to have her - and while she does serve as a distraction, she's way more than that. She is the best and I will never take her for granted.

How is it mid-November?!

2010-11-14T14:18:00.018-05:00

Is it possible that so much time has gone by that I didn't even post after Piper's 15 month checkup?! ARGH. Well, the good news is, my available free time is once again back to sparse instead of nonexistent so I'm putting blogging back onto my to-do list.

Looking back over a MONTH, Piper had her 15 month checkup. Her stats were as follows ...

Height: 32.5 inches - 95 percentile

Weight: 25 pounds - 90 percentile

Head circumference: 18.5 inches - 75 percentile

I can report that she's up to 26 pounds, 12 ounces from her appointment last week, when she went in with conjunctivitis in both eyes and a sinus infection that had come back after one round of antibiotics. Antibiotic eye drops (torture for everyone involved) and another heavier duty antibiotic later, she's doing much better!

At this point, the election was almost two weeks ago ... and while it didn't end favorably (the electorate in our district chose a soldier instead of a businessman to solve economic issues - go figure), it was a unique experience and I'm glad I gave it a shot. After four and a half weeks, Piper finally adjusted to daycare - in fact, she began to love it! She went back to being a solid sleeper and returned to her usual chipper self. It was amazing to have her back! And so much less of a burden on me - I had way less guilt once she began really enjoying herself. And now, even though work is done, she continues to go to "school" one day a week. Sometimes I feel guilty about this, but honestly, I think it's great for both of us. She loves it, gets a full day of socialization with her friends, and I have some time also. I've had two of her school days so far and both have been spent primarily cleaning, but I did spend a bit of time reading on Friday and it felt so nice. And I knew she was having a good time too so I didn't feel badly about it.

So how was working? Well ... I'm not rushing back into it. There were times when it was rewarding, times when it was frustrating, and times when I just couldn't figure out why the heck I was doing it other than I wanted to give it a try and I believed in the project. Overall, it just isn't worth it to me at this point. Even though I enjoyed the work, my life wasn't any more full, any more complete, with me going to work three days a week. It was cool to see Bill Clinton speak in Saratoga, and I felt privilidged to meet two Cabinet members (secretaries of agriculture and commerce), but I would rather be home with Piper most of the time. I'm not going to say that I won't go back to work - and if a unique project presents itself again, I will certainly take a good look at it before I decide how to proceed, but I'm not going to be sending out any resumes anytime soon.

Piper's just a blast. She toddles all over the place, and probably her favorite type of activity is an art project. She loves to color (especially with markers), finger paint even more, and sidewalk chalk on beautiful days is a must. She makes me laugh (like her daddy) so many times every day and I'm simply just crazy about her still. She's super vocal, although most of what she says is still incomprehensible, but every once in a while she totally surprises me and will come out with a complete sentence. The other day, she walked to the coat closet, stood in front of it, pointed at it and said: "This is a closet." Why yes it is, Piper! So cute.

Oh, and today, she peed on the potty. When I went to the bathroom this morning, she showed interest in getting on the toilet too, so I went and got out the frog potty we had from the basement. She sat on it, but nothing happened. Then after breakfast out at Papa's diner, and Church, we came back home and she again showed interest when Reid had to use the bathroom. So I put her back on the potty, and low and behold, she peed! And peed a ton. She was greatly rewarded with several chocolate chips, and has since sat on the potty multiple other times without any activity. I know she's too young to be potty trained, but hey, if she's into it, we'll give it a shot.

I'm sure I'm running out of time as Piper has been sleeping now for an hour, but one of my favorite things that we did this fall was to go to Ellms Family Farm in October. It was a bit chilly, but it was SO fun. I'll end this blog with some of my favorite pics from that day ...

She kept pointing at the cow's head and saying "mooo."

At the bottom of the 70' slide:

Giant bouncing pillow!

Riding bikes with Daddy...

Going down the 15' slide all by herself! Daddy watching over ...

As much as we tried to get her to stand still, this was the best we could do ...

It was so much fun and I can see it getting even better when she's bigger. We'll be returning next year!

3 weeks in and ...

2010-09-30T19:35:00.004-04:00

I remember going to Sky Acres Girl Scout camp for a week when I was 7 or 8, and on day 3, hating every minute. It was night time, I was supposed to be sleeping and couldn't, and found myself crying in the counselor's tent, begging them to let me call my parents. "They're night owls, I promise they're awake until 11." Needless to say, they didn't let me call, so I finally went back to my tent and cried myself to sleep.

I also remember getting home after having the BEST time ever. So day 3 sucked, but from then on it was all fun and games and was well worth the one night of being homesick.

Three weeks into this part-time job, I keep waiting for the day 3 feeling to end, and for Piper to move onto the next stage of transition - acceptance and happiness! Starting the first night of my job, and thus, day care, she stopped sleeping through the night. Every night since 20 nights ago, except for two days on a weekend (and one was at my parents' house when we weren't there), she has been up multiple times, screaming her head off, absolutely pissed off at the world. We're all exhausted and could use a good night's sleep. I had forgotten how debilitating sleep deprivation is ... there's a reason why this is used as torture because it makes everything else about the rest of the day more difficult. UGH.

My first day was a Friday, and that whole weekend she was so mad at us that she would crawl away from us and try to hide. That Sunday, I picked her up from a way to short nap and she tried to wiggle out of my arms, so I put her down and she crawled into her closet and started banging her head into the wall. All I wanted to do was cry. I couldn't soothe her, she was clearly emotionally distressed, and why was I doing this again? Luckily, she's stopped the head banging. She's still super clingy, which got worse with her being away from me three days a week, and now she cries at soon as we pull into the day care parking lot, but they tell me that she has a good day once I leave. Well, except yesterday, when her report said that she "Had a hard day and was mean to her friends." Specifically, she was hitting and pulling hair. I think it's because she had a 101.6 fever when I picked her up and was sick ... which brings me to my next subject.

As expected, Piper has been working on her immune system as a result of being in day care. I missed my third day of work because she had literally fountains of snot running down her face. And today we went to the doctor's where she was diagnosed with coxsackievirus.The poor little thing has sores on the inside of her mouth ... plus her molars are still wreaking havoc on our lives. Awesome.

So how's the job going? Fine, but like I said, I'm waiting for "day 3" to be over. And if it's not over by the end of this (November 2!), and we all aren't feeling well rested and happy again, then the odds of me going back to work again until Piper and her potential future sibling are in school are pretty much zero. It's simply not worth it!

One fun update is that Piper is walking all over the place. I'm trying to think of when this started ... I think it was a couple of weeks ago. That may be a positive development from day care - the peer pressure finally pushed her into the land of the walkers with crawling now a thing of the past!

And just so I always remember, the pic above is from the balloon festival last weekend and is one of my new favorites. I love how happy they both look :-) We had to be up at 4:50 to get there in time to see the 90+ balloons take off with the sun, but it was well worth it!

Working mama - day 1 update

2010-09-11T19:15:00.003-04:00

First, here's a super cute pic of Piper from the track when we were on vaca. That smile is at a horse, of course.

Moving on, I've been asked by numerous people how yesterday went so here's a quick update ...

Yesterday went well. Reid and I dropped off Piper at day care and she seemed totally at ease. She sat down with her new friends and had snack while we got her stuff taken care of and said goodbye. No drama, no tears, no problem. We walked out and of course I was an emotional mess, but managed to hold it together for the 10 minute drive downtown. Then I had a few minutes to kill so went to Reid's office and cried. But after that, it was off to work - be smart, learn quickly, and rock and roll.

The morning flew by, and then Reid came to ask me to lunch. So we went out, and while waiting for our food, called to check in on Piper. We heard from one of her teachers that she was doing super well, and had only cried when she had a poopie diaper change. Even more than that, she had buddied up with a boy named Finn (the two must have found their hippie names something to bond over) and they hadn't left each others' sides. So cute. We both felt better, of course, and after lunch, I went back to a crazy afternoon of feeling overwhelmed and exhilarated. Excellent.

Then I went to pick her up ... and this is where the guilt returns. Piper heard my voice before she saw me because the Director had engaged me in conversation when I walked in, so by the time I got to her room, she was sitting there, huge crocodile tears running down her face, sobbing her little heart out. The teachers said that she had a great day, but had been watching like a hawk as kids had started leaving over the past hour. With every parent that came and wasn't me, she was disappointed. Ugh ... so she was the second to last to leave (Finn was still there!), and clung to me like a stronger piece of velcro than we'd previously experienced. I knew she was tired, hadn't napped well, but she had produced a cute coloring project, a positive daily report, and was still in the same outfit. I think it probably was a good day for her, but I still felt guilty.

And then we come to today - a TERRIBLE day. Piper clung to me and cried nearly the entire day. She didn't really nap - maybe she was afraid she would miss something? - which didn't help matters either, but her mood was awful, and at so many moments of the day, she was completely inconsolable. ARGH .......... it made me feel terrible and question my decision to take this on. Was it fair to Piper? I thought working would make me feel good, but today it just made me feel like crap. I know there's an adjustment period, and I am hopeful all of this will get better, but I'm definitely dreading Monday's drop-off as much as Friday's, if not more, because I know Piper's going to realize what she's getting into as soon as we pull in the parking lot. Let's hope for a quick transition! Otherwise this guilt is going to eat me alive.

A new adventure

2010-09-08T18:59:00.006-04:00

I look back at the last 6 or so weeks and can say that it was filled to the brim with activities that are cherished during a northeast (read that as too short) summer: swimming, boating, playing outside, getting tan and lighter hair (Piper too!), and eating delicious summer food. We went to Burlington, I had a girls' weekend in the Hamptons. We took vacation and went to Essex, Lake Placid, Middlebury, and a Sugarland concert in NH. There are literally hundreds of pictures from the last part of this summer (one of my favorites being the one above) and we're going to love looking through them for years to come. Here are a few more ... (and if blogger wasn't such a pain to upload to, there would be WAY more, but I digress ...)

So now summer has pretty much come to an end ... what better time to start a new adventure? I wasn't looking for a job, but one was offered to me last week. At first, my reaction was no way. I love staying home with Piper - and what if I miss when she finally turns into a full time walker? That transition, by the way, has taken forever! She will walk for literally an hour (and did so at the Hyde Musuem last week) with one finger, but still maxes out on 10 or so steps on her own. Anyway, I also have learned in life that even if the initial reaction is no, you should always learn more. If we hadn't, we wouldn't have moved back to NY almost four years ago! So I learned more, and once I did, I got really excited about the position. And almost immediately after that, really guilty. I felt terrible for wanting to do something else other than care for Piper, which may seem rational or irrational, depending on the reader. That was almost a week ago, and today I accepted the position. It's great because it's three days a week and ends with the upcoming election so I can dip my toe into the water of being a working mom and see how it goes. It was a really hard decision to make because of the back and forth feelings, but in the end, I think it'll be fun for me to see if my brain still works and I do think day care will be a great experience for Piper. We checked out where she'll be going today and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. She cried when we left! To me, that cleared the guilt away. So starting Friday, I'll be the new communications director for our congressman, Scott Murphy. I'm really excited about the opportunity and curious about how the next eight or so weeks will go. So please wish me, and more importantly Piper, lots of luck!

First steps!

2010-07-21T21:48:00.001-04:00

I had a feeling it would be soon, but not only a couple of hours after I posted ... Piper took her first steps today! We were at a play date with our friends Scotty and Eliza, and Piper stood up, took three steps, and then plopped down. Then she took a couple more steps in our kitchen when I was making dinner. So exciting!!! Bring on the walking!

1-year visit stats!

2010-07-21T11:21:00.004-04:00

Yesterday Piper had her one year well visit so we have her latest stats! Yes, she has grown a ton ...

Height: 31 inches - 92 percentile
Weight: 24 pounds, 3.5 ounces - 90 percentile
Head circumference - 18 inches - 60 percentile

I thought she had actually slimmed down a bunch with all of the stretching out that she has done, but the numbers don't lie. She's still a very well-proportioned big lady :-)

She also has a new trick! I think she felt like she had to step it up a bit because her cousins came to visit last week, and Ravel took her first steps while she was here. Piper, feeling behind her younger cousin, decided that it was about time that she started standing up in the middle of the room (without pulling up on anything). I wish I could put into words the pride that's in the smile on her face when she stands up like a big girl, but I don't think I can. It is hilarious and makes me proud all at once! Next step will likely be steps, and likely soon. Yesterday, she shifted her weight to one foot and picked up the other, but then promptly sat down hard on her fanny. I think we're about the enter the stage when she's covered with bruises all the time from her learning bumps, so if you see us and are concerned, I swear we don't beat our child.

Back to the cousins visit! It was great, and so much fun to see how they've all grown. Like the last visit, we were reminded that it's nearly impossible to get a picture of the three of them smiling. In fact, we were completely unsuccessful, but they are all sitting on the same step and you can see their faces so that's as good as we're going to get this trip. Maybe next time!

Even cuter though was Piper showing Ravel love before our photo shoot, with a big kiss and a hug for her cousin ...

We swam in the pool a bunch, went boating and worked around three different nap schedules. Here are a couple more pics of the kids on the boat.

I swear there were smiles, although I seem to have missed all of them!

Last quick update for this post ... Piper seems to have become a napper! She still takes her one snooze a day, but it has begun to stretch out to where it's consistently more than an hour. It's amazing what I can get done in that time, and also amazing how much better her afternoon is after a good snooze. I LOVE it.

Okay one more update, which Reid reminded me of after my last post. One of the cutest things she does right now is play the "Hello" game with Reid. She says, "Hi Dad" or "Hi Daddy"; he answers, "Hi Piper". And it goes back and forth many many many times. I know it's a highlight of his day - and seeing the smiles on both of their faces is certainly a highlight of mine.

Piper turns ONE!!

2010-07-07T19:02:00.007-04:00

Technically Piper turned one yesterday, but it was such a terrible day that I simply couldn't post. Luckily, her birthday party on Sunday was a lot of fun :-) Although that didn't start off very well either ...

Rewind to Sunday, 4th of July, and the day of Piper's big party. Piper awoke at 5:45 with a fever of 102.1. Her first real fever and quite a time for it! After a dose of ibuprofen, I called the pediatrician's emergency line and was relieved to find out that the doc on call was Piper's regular pediatrician. I spoke with her, and she said that as long as Piper's fever came down, we could party on. Luckily, the fever came down and the show went on. Here she is at about 7:30 ... getting amped up for the afternoon with her Elvis face.
I will say that Piper wasn't in a great mood all day, but she put her best foot forward for coming down with a nasty virus. There were few smiles, and she didn't do nearly as much damage to the cake as I thought she was going to, but there were also no tears so no complaints from this end. Overall, it was great to see family and friends and celebrate such a huge milestone in Piper's life! Here are some cake pics ...

Actually Piper's favorite part of the day (I think it's her favorite part of every day), preceded cake - pool time! Here she is with her cousin Ellen, stealing Ellen's beer. We had to remind her that she was ONE, not 21 ... and then she also loved being a big girl on her own float. So cute!

And let me tell you, I am so thankful for our pool! It has been hotter then hot and disgustingly humid all week and our pool time is the highlight of both our days. Especially yesterday when Piper was totally out of sorts. She started off yesterday at 3:30 am coughing and crying. The only place she would sleep was on me, so from then until almost 7, she would sleep for a bit at a time, in between coughs, while I lay in our guest bed with her, trying to will myself to sleep. I wasn't super successful, which made the rest of the day for both of us a challenge! We went to the doctor's first thing in the morning and she was diagnosed with croup, which is apparently going around right now. The rest of the day she was in a terrible mood (as was I) and had her worst day of behavior ever. She bit me many many many times throughout the day ... basically threw tantrums all day since she only wanted things that she couldn't play with (my sunglasses, etc). Man it was a tough day and I was so depressed at the end as I felt like I spent her entire first birthday either trying to soothe her (unsuccessfully) or disciplining her. Not what I had envisioned, but another time when I am reminded that you just have to be flexible in life, especially with kids! She was exhausted and went to bed at 6. Reid and I went to bed at 7:30, both with sore throats and feeling terrible. Quite a day indeed, but today was better (for Piper and I, not for Reid though - boo) and hopefully tomorrow will be even better! I'm excited for her to kick this virus so we can see our friends again and have some fun.

Looking back over the year, so much has changed, in such crazy ways. And even though yesterday was tough, she is incredible. There have been many challenges, especially the sleepless nights for the first few months, but I would do them all over again many times over to have the amazing and simply FUN daughter that we have. Every day she cracks me up. Either with a giggle, a mischievous smile, diving into the pool, or any of her other little quarks. I'm proud to have her as our daughter and am excited to see what this year brings. Happy birthday, Piper!! We love you :-)

Big muscles

2010-06-30T19:34:00.005-04:00

My friend Rhonda always rewards the kiddos trying to walk by saying "look at your big muscles ____!" and I love it. I now say it ALL the time, as Piper is getting closer and closer to taking her first big steps. Today we were at the library and she was a champ, standing up on her own and listening to the stories. Beyond that, nada yet, but she pushes her lion around everywhere (porch, driveway, lawn) with what I would describe as gusto. Maybe her birthday present to herself will be using her big muscles!!

I can't believe she's going to be ONE in six days. The fact that this huge milestone will soon be upon us leaves me both excited and flabbergasted. A year! 365 days! Insane, but I'm so happy to celebrate with her too :-)

It's been a month since I've posted and Piper has just been growing and learning like crazy. She said "snack" today when I gave her a snack cup this morning and I think she has a molar coming in on the top left. She crosses her feet almost all the time (whether she's sitting in her highchair, laying down drinking her bottle, in her stroller, sitting Indian style on the floor, etc) and her legs have stretched out like crazy. We are loving our play dates and the babies are almost playing with each other - which sometimes means pushing each other over or pulling hair, but they're all definitely way more aware of each other. All in all, we are having SO much fun, and I can't believe I'm even going to write this, but Piper is almost making parenting seem easy because we are having so much fun. We're swimming almost every day, she's playing her sandbox and going down her slide. She goes and goes all day, but you can just tell that she's loving every minute of it - and if she is, then how can I not? I thought I would miss work more than I do ... there are days when I miss the rush of a deadline, or the thrill of landing a story in a big pub, but I can't imagine doing anything else other than what I'm doing right now. I've had to readjust my ideas of what's rewarding and what an accomplishment is, but almost a year in, I think I'm getting it and I love it.

And now that I've said that, Piper will go through some huge changes and throw everything for a loop. We shall see!!

Shy pie

2010-05-31T20:26:00.006-04:00

I was in the car yesterday with my dad and Reid and my dad says, "I wonder if the little girl used her swing today." Reid said, "You know, Bert, you're right. She's a little girl, not a baby anymore."

Insert sad face here.
Well, kind of. I mean, look at that face! At almost 11 months, she is definitely way more of a little kid than a baby, but at the same time, she's so much fun now and seems to be enjoying life so much that I'm more excited than sad to see her grow and learn. Bye bye baby!

We spent this memorial day weekend in Middlebury (that's Lake Dunmore in the background - pic from this morning) and Piper was nothing but charming. Her latest is that she acts shy (or is it coy?) when she sees and interacts with people. She smiles, then puts her head down very quickly as if to hide. It may get old at some point, but it's absolutely adorable for now. And she spent the weekend trying to say "dog", which will be her first word outside of Dada, Mama and Nana. She got close, but the cutest part was that every time she tried, it was in a very excited tone. And she is dying to walk! This weekend she was "crawling" on her hands and feet (kind of like a monkey), looking awkward and taking a few tumbles. She cruises on everything, loves to walk with us, and I don't think it's going to be too much longer before we have a biped on our hands. Some people have warned me that I'll wish I could shove her back in (I was literally told this by a neighbor) once she starts to really go, but I'm pumped for it! I can't wait to see the pride on her face and I think it'll make playing with her even more fun. Maybe I'll eat my words, but for now, I can't wait.

One last note, Piper loves blackberries ...

Independent woman

2010-04-28T19:46:00.004-04:00

I just put Piper down, after lowering her crib to the lowest setting because Little Miss is trying to pull herself up on everything now. In the bathtub, in her pack and play, in her crib, on the furniture, me, everything. Probably the best part about the pulling up is the look of pride on her face when she's successful. Priceless. Probably the worst part is her not feeling comfortable getting herself back down, which is why we found her screaming her head off at 3 am last night standing up in her crib. Hope she figures that part out soon!

Pulling herself up is cool and all, but my favorite new skill is hugging. She gives the BEST hugs - she squeezes super hard with the biggest smile on her face! And today there were lots of hugs and kisses combos. The weather may have sucked today - cold and rainy - and Piper may have been fussy for most of it due to the middle of the night play session she had, but honestly big squeezes and super sloppy kisses made up for all of that :-)

And while you can't see them in the picture above, Piper went from two to seven teeth during the week after I blogged last. Needless to say, it wasn't my favorite week of all of time, but I guess better to just bang them all out at once! She now has all four top front teeth and her left lateral incisor, which means she's able to take serious bites out of both food and non-food items. I found this out the hard way when I gave her my apple core last Friday to chew on when we were at a play date (which I've done a ton of times before with no issue ...). She bit the whole top of the core off. Luckily Reid was watching her more closely than I and we fished it out right away, but no more cores for Piper! Instead, it'll be bring on the bbq. Mmmmm ... ribs ...

She's also way into the water now - both in the pool and in the bath tub. She absolutely loves it! And while this definitely gets me psyched up for summer - we will definitely be swimming together every day that it's nice - it also freaks me out with the pool in the backyard. We're going to have to be SO careful ... and she's going to have to learn that she only goes in with us. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the huge smiles on her face as she dives into the pool at me or Reid and kicks and splashes all over the place. She doesn't usually rock the bikini, but her friend (and supposed future boyfriend according to his parents) Thomas was visiting so she decided to work it a bit. Check out that belly. Freaking awesome.
You can probably tell by the look on her face that she has quite the personality. She's already a bit of a drama queen and I predict will throw some huge tantrums in her day, but what's coming out the most right now is her independence. Standing up is part of that, but the other big deal is what she's eating. It is such a bear to feed her baby food now. She just wants to feed herself. Some days I worry that this means she's not getting everything she should be eating, but the fact is she's still growing so I can't worry too much about it. And this means some days she eats a lot (like last night's pasta with pesto, grilled chicken, roasted tomatoes with peas dinner), and other days, she barely eats (like today's lunch out at Rock Hill with Scotty and Eliza). It used to stress me out, but now I just go with it. If she's hungry, she'll eat, and I better just have lots of finger foods ready for her!

9 months!

2010-04-15T22:29:00.003-04:00

While Piper turned 9 months last Tuesday, she didn't have her checkup until today ... so here are the latest stats!

Height: 28.5 inches - 85 percentile
Weight: 21 pounds, 12.5 ounces - 90 percentile
Head circumference - 17.5 inches - 50 percentile

I did have a friend ask today if they measured her thighs to see where those stood - I'm pretty sure those would be off the charts.

And honestly I can't believe how much she's changed since my last post. She's sitting up from laying down on her own (she actually did this for the first time the day of my last post and I just spaced it), and now she's doing it very gracefully and super often. It's very cute :-) She's also progressed from army crawling to real crawling, as of yesterday in fact! She still relies mostly on the army crawl/rolling combo for most of her mobility, but the fact that she's doing more than rocking now is pretty huge. And she waves and claps (I guess she was doing both of these before last time - sorry, Piper, I'm not doing a great job of chronicling everything!). She also says Nana and Mama (Nana before Mama ... grr), and Hi sometimes when she waves. She's a finger food pro at this point, with any kind of pasta being her favorite. Today, for example, she ate a huge portion of spinach and cheese ravioli at lunch. She LOVES to eat - a girl after my own heart.

And speaking of eating, there's also been a big change in terms of nursing - Piper weaned herself! A couple of days ago, she started biting when she was nursing (OUCH - yes, it was painful and crappy for me), and when I scolded her for it, she would dissolve into tears, but then do it again. So we've moved onto all bottles and she's super happy about it. I think a lot of it is that it's WAY faster, so she can get back to being busy sooner, and it's immediate gratification for her effort. As our pediatrician explained today, she now lacks the patience to nurse, which is totally normal (she said most kids will self-wean between 9 and 12 months), and would rather be onto bigger and better things. Even though we had our challenges with nursing,I was bummed about her weaning at first. I'd set a goal for myself of a year of breast milk, and with her onto just bottles now, I don't think we'll make it. I can't pump the amount of milk she drinks each day and this bummed me out a bit - after all, I am super goal oriented. But now I've come around and I feel good about it. After all, Piper is happy! We don't have to go through any sort of weaning drama and she's happy and healthy. Perfect. I bought my first can of formula today and we're going to try a bottle of that tomorrow. I'm going to keep pumping twice a day for now, but at some point, she's going to be on all formula before 12 months comes and that's A-okay.

So anyway, LOTS of changes are happening around here. I guess that's par for the course with an infant this age, but going through it all for the first time is unbelievable. It really is incredible!

Oh, and according to our pediatrician, she's cutting an entire mouthful of teeth right now. She's had two pop through in the last five days (upper right front and upper left lateral incisor) and has a LOT more in the works. Luckily, these teeth (knock on wood) have been way easier than the bottom two. She had one fussy day, but has continued to sleep through the night, and for the most part, be happy. She just rocks. I honestly can't get over it, or get enough of her :-)

Boston or BUST

2010-04-04T20:11:00.009-04:00

Since it is Easter, and Piper's first Easter at that, I feel like I should post a couple of pictures of her with her Easter basket before we back up to last weekend's Boston trip. Between you and me, she's actually been enjoying playing with the eggs in the basket all week, but it was like she had just discovered them for the first time again this morning so I don't think she really minded. And this was the first time she got to play with the grass, which was probably her favorite part anyway!

And of course she had a cute dress for the day - the sweater was dumped due to the simply gorgeous weather! And who doesn't love playing with a diaper? Honestly sometimes I don't know why we ever buy her toes ...

Ok, so back to Boston.

I will say the trip was book ended with some less than ideal traveling behavior by the peanut. Gone are the days when Piper gets in the car, immediately falls asleep, and wakes up when we get somewhere. Now the lull of the engine only serves as background noise to either playing, screaming, and very occasionally, snoring. We had plenty of screaming both ways, but luckily the actual time spent in Boston rocked.

We arrived Thursday evening, giving Piper and I all day to have fun on Friday while Reid had meetings. First we visited Waggener Edstrom, where I worked pre-Piper, and it was so much fun because the last time these ladies say Piper was when she was just over two months old. This time, her personality was bursting at the seams! Next we headed to the Children's Museum for lunch and then two and a half hours of playing. Two and a half hours! Piper was in absolute heaven. We literally spent 99 percent of our time in the "crawler" section of the 0-3 room, where they had a wall of mirrors, a fish tank, a circular water bed hang out place, toys and other babies. Piper played and played until we had to leave before a meltdown happened from exhaustion. It was great to see her having so much fun!

And then Friday night was a little piece of heaven: Reid took care of Piper while I went out to dinner with two of my best girl friends. It was the first night I've gone out solo since Piper was born, and while I love her like crazy, it was so nice to get a little break and hang out with my friends. Thank you, honey!!

Saturday included a lot more activity. First brunch with our friends Julie and Rob, whom we stayed with for they weekend - exposing them to parenthood. They were definitely troopers, not batting an eye as baby crap exploded all over their apartment, and luckily Piper was super well behaved the whole time! Then it was off to Somerville to visit our friends Jay and Julie and their new (seven days!) arrival Lucy. She was teeny tiny and super sweet. Piper looked like a massive child comparatively, but I think we all enjoyed it because Reid and I got an infant fix and Jay and Julie got a glimpse into life becoming more normal than just sleepless nights with a very needy lump who you give and give and give to and don't get anything in return. I mean newborns are great, but it's a good thing they get bigger and turn into little people!

And from there we headed up to Malden where we had a play date with our friends Mary and Tim (and Stella) and Jasmine (and Mariko). At that point Piper was pretty exhausted, but with a little bit of food in her, she perked up and had a great time rocking out with her friends. Keep in mind she'd slept about 20 minutes all day at that point ... her stamina is unprecedented. Stimulate her and she will NOT give in to exhaustion.

And this picture sums up why Stella and Piper were the chunks at the play date. Stella stole the bag of puffs out of Piper's diaper bag - she knew what those little pieces of heaven were. In the picture, I'm pretty sure Piper just noticed what Stella had. Mine!

That night, Julie and Rob hosted an amazing dinner party and Piper charmed the pants off of people, clearly. Man, I'm getting tired just recounting our weekend! But the dinner party rocked - and it rocked that Piper went down at 8 and gave us the rest of the night to just hang out with friends and have fun. The next morning was brunch and then we were off. Exhausted but exceptionally happy after spending a bunch of quality time with friends we love!

A BIG day!

2010-03-30T20:05:00.004-04:00

Wow. At this age, people say that babies learn something new every day. Well today must have been an extra special day because Piper was on fire!

We had swimming lessons today, and while she's loved it before, she just totally blossomed. She was holding her breath and putting her face in the water, kicking like crazy, splashing when told to, and spitting out water instead of drinking it. She rocked it out in swimming lessons.

Then Reid came home for lunch, and when he stepped onto our screened in porch with a load of wood (SO gross and rainy today), Piper saw him, smiled, and said Da-da. She's babbled da-da a thousand times before, but this was the first time she's put the word with the actual person before. Adorable.

Then we're playing this afternoon and she army crawls! Her motivation was the fake plastic eggs that I took out of her Easter basket. She saw those little plastic pieces of heaven in front of her and pulled her way forward. Again, adorable.

And then when we were having dinner tonight, she was a sign language maven. Signing for "more". Signing for "all done." Letting us know when she wanted a "drink." And clearly very happy with her ability to communicate! She also told me when she wanted to eat this afternoon by signing for "more" while whining and then "hungry."

Seriously? She did about a week's worth of learning today. Maybe she was making up for other days, but each individual thing was amazing! Can't wait to see what she does tomorrow :-)

And I definitely need to blog about this past weekend's trip to Boston because it ROCKED. And I have so many pics that I want to post! In the meantime, the one at the beginning of the blog is from tonight, before she got in the tub (after peeing on the counter top). Check out those thighs - they are pretty incredible. And here's one of my favorite pics from Boston - of Piper admiring her balloon that Reid just had to buy her at CVS. Seriously, it may be the best $4 he ever spent ...

My little reader

2010-03-19T20:04:00.003-04:00

This is how cute Piper is: we're driving back from Saratoga today, and when we're stopped at a stop sign, I happen to look back to see what she's doing in her car seat that's keeping her happy. Well, she has her Water Water Everywhere book (great for the car because she can eat it all she wants and she can't hurt it) and she is babbling and flipping the pages of the book as if she was reading it. And you could see the pride on her face (in the mirror since she's still rear facing). I wish I could have captured the moment with video, but instead I'm going to have to burn it into my brain forever because it was absolutely priceless.

In more disturbing reading news, look at the book Piper pulled off the shelf at my parents' house last week. Seriously, out of all the books on there (99% children's books), that's what she pulls? Yikes.

Mom brain

2010-03-16T11:56:00.003-04:00

When I was pregnant, I read a study that showed that expecting moms' brains can shrink up to 7 percent, so yes, you are in fact less intelligent while pregnant. Now what it didn't cover was what happens after pregnancy ... I will admit that I'm pretty sure I lost all 7 percent - at least! - and it has yet to come back.

I've locked Piper and I out of the house. Not once, but twice.

I've lost the keys to our truck. Not once, but twice.

And that's really just the beginning of a long list of stupid actions. At first, I blamed my lack of cognition on sleep deprivation, which seemed completely reasonable. Well, since Piper sleeps about 12 hours a night and has for a long time, that excuse not longer works. I guess I'm left with the reality of being a mom, which I guess means that Piper now takes up almost all of my free gray matter! And looking at her, all naked and happy with her Daddy, how can she not?

Four weeks later ...

2010-02-23T10:31:00.011-05:00

In the words of our nephew, holy moly! In the last four weeks, Piper's cut two teeth, been on her first plane ride, met her cousin Ravel, started going to story time at Crandall Library, has had baby play dates, and loves to be propped up standing on anything and everything. She's been busy! Let's back up to the teeth ...

Her first tooth (bottom left front), popped through the surface the day before we left for Colorado. Perfect timing, since I really didn't want her to be fussy the entire plane ride. And said plane ride was intimidating ... I was so nervous about how she was going to be, but she was absolutely wonderful. The baby that hasn't taken a pacifier in months sucked it on both flights out, and in general, traveled like a dream. She did have one meltdown, on the second flight out, but I couldn't blame her. We boarded the plane and it was SO hot. They had the heat cranked to full blast and I was sweating. It was so hot that I literally stripped her down to her diaper and she still got a heat rash. So the poor little thing wailed for a few minutes, probably scaring all the passengers around us, but once we were up and the plane got cooled down, she was just fine. So after a super early morning wake up and lots of hours of traveling, we arrived in Colorado, where Piper got to meet Ravel for the first time and play with someone her own size.

So the travel day was great - and then the next day, tooth number two began to rear its ugly head. Basically she teethed the entire trip and then the second tooth popped out the day before we left (thankfully!) so we had another smooth trip back. And now the two teeth are super cute, about a third of the way in. I love how she sticks her tongue out all the time and moves it around, trying to feel the two new objects in front. It's absolutely adorable :-)

Colorado was a busy and fun trip! Piper made her first visit to an aquarium, went to a pretty spectacular aquatics center where the pools were warm and there was a family hot tub with lots of fun bubbles to watch. Let's see ... she also participated in Copland's musical lesson birthday party (well, she slept through most of that), played with lots of new and different toys, went for numerous walks in the sunshine, and sat through many a photo session. And as for taking pics, we discovered how difficult it was to take a perfect picture of two infants and a toddler. If only they would all smile together!

And now we've been back for almost three weeks and I'm still trying to figure out how I haven't been able to sit down and blog for all this time. In some ways, I feel lazy once I realize how much time has passed, but then again, I think I'm just plain tired. Piper is still taking her 30 minute morning nap, and then maybe a 20 minute midday and/or 20 minute afternoon nap, but those are typically when we're out and about, waking up as soon as we hit the driveway. So we play and play and play while we're home, which is a lot of fun, but when she goes to bed between 7:30 and 8, I am wiped. And still struggling with staying on top of our house and keeping it neat (which it never is ...). And then there's the fact that it's been nice to sit on the couch and hang out with Reid in front of the winter Olympics. If someone had told me how behind I would be in terms of communication, even at this point (7.5 months later), I wouldn't have believed them! But looking back through my pics, I do realize just how much fun we've had and it definitely makes me smile. And Piper totally poses for pictures now, which I find hilarious. Here are a couple of good examples ...

I also realized that I never blogged about deciding to be a stay at home mom and not return to the crazy world of PR, which I've been meaning to do since the fall. Needless to say, I look at those previous two pics and feel like Piper's smile explains it all. Maybe I'll pontificate a bit more about that another time, but for now I'm signing off and turning on the Olympics. Peace out.

Let the teething begin! (and please let it end very quickly)

2010-01-28T15:08:00.004-05:00

So our big news is Piper's cutting her first tooth! If you can't tell by the verb used to describe the process, it sucks. I didn't get the significance of "cutting" before we had Piper, but just thinking about the little sharp tooth literally cutting its way through her gum to the surface definitely gives me the shivers ... the poor thing must hurt! Which explains her recent fussiness. And the fact that she hasn't slept through the last three nights. Ugh. Teething = a tired, fussy baby and a tired, trying-not-to-be-fussy mama.

I will say though, her teething on my wooden spoons is pretty freaking adorable :-)
(And I know you're not supposed to put Bumbos on the counter, but come on. I'm right there and she's happy as a clam to be up in the action when I'm working on dinner.)

And once that pearly white does pop all the way through, there will definitely be lots of pictures taken. Don't even worry about that ...

The other big accomplishment that we're pretty proud of is that she's mastered the sippy cup! She's definitely proud too. She went through a phase of being super frustrated, trying to figure out how the silly thing worked, but now she loves it. And I love that we can now have the valve in the top so that we don't have a swimming pool all around her high chair after lunch or dinner!

She's currently bouncing in her Graco door jumper. She still LOVES that thing. And I love the exercise it gives her. You'd think with all the jumping her thighs and cankles wouldn't be the same size, but that's ok. As I look outside at a blustery snowy day, I'm glad that she's got some fat on her to keep her nice and cozy.

6 month stats!

2010-01-14T18:03:00.002-05:00

While Piper's bouncing in her jumper, I wanted to quickly make note of her latest stats from today's 6 month dr's appointment. So here we go ...

Height: 27 inches - 89 percentile
Weight: 19 pounds - 95 percentile
Head circumference - 17 inches - 75 percentile

So she's tall, chunky, with a bit of a petite head. Don't worry, that thing is chock full of brains.

Oh, and apparently she has stranger anxiety. Or that's how our super nice, baby-loving doctor explained it when Piper went from a smiling baby to SCREAMING and CRYING at the top of her lungs when the pediatrician took her from Reid. Yikes. Should make for an interesting babysitting session tomorrow so that I can interview a Dartmouth candidate ... hope she's good for Kelci!

No longer a little peanut

2010-01-10T20:25:00.004-05:00

Just in case there's any question about how much Piper has changed over the last six months, here's the shocking proof ...

3 weeks old:
And now six months old:
Same monkey, same baby, but SOOO many changes!!

Since one of Piper's favorite activities seems to be the bath, we decided to go to the Y today for open swim and introduce her to the huge tub, with lots of screaming children and a lot cooler water. I don't think she really knew what to think at first. She looked very unsure of the situation and chewed on her bottom lip for the first five minutes or so - the lower lip chewing is new by the way. It started a few days ago and used to be just when she was eating, but now it happens at random times. The whole bottom lip disappears and she sucks sucks sucks. It's hilarious, but anyway, back to the pool, after she got used to the new surroundings and volume level, she really seemed to enjoy herself. She splashed and kicked and liked "swimming" with her daddy and me. She definitely got a lot more comfortable and even put her head back when she was swimming on her back with me. Reid's still thinking her sport is going to be tennis, but based on what I saw today, I'm thinking we should have named her Micheala Phelps Hutchins. Those frog legs were insane!

Publish Post

Many more firsts ...

2010-01-05T19:49:00.008-05:00

We need to catch up a bit here since somehow, three weeks have once again passed since I've been on here. Simply put, I blame the holidays. Between Piper's baptism (December 20) and Christmas, we hosted 33 people for dinner, and then there was everything else that went with the holidays. The candy making (so worth it), traveling to Middlebury, spending time with friends and family. It was all great, but definitely left me exhausted.

Backing up to the baptism ... Piper was baptized at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Queensbury, and clearly she found the entire process to be quite exhausting. She wore the same gown as my sister and I, which was very special. I was worried that it wouldn't fit her, but as long as we didn't button the top button, she was good to go.

And then Piper's first Christmas!! She was a rock star. We hosted the Hutchins' family Christmas dinner and she was passed around all day and loved by all. With a few intermittent naps, including in her cousin Ellen's arms, she made it through the day with mostly smiles. She did start to melt down late afternoon, but I don't blame her for that ... and then she slept for 13 hours straight that night to recuperate. So adorable. And even though this picture is blurry, I love it because you can see how happy she is that Santa came :-)

And here she is at Nana and Papa's house in her new chair with the stocking Santa brought her there. She's spoiled, for sure.

Also around Christmas, she started being less verbal. Before, she used to "talk" up a storm, but she's definitely chilled out on that and is working on physical stuff - mainly sitting up. It's crazy because she went from needing to be propped up by one of us or pillows, to all of a sudden she's her own little person, sitting up and playing with toys. Um, seriously?! It kind of freaks me out because she looks like a little kid when she does that. She does still topple over every once in a while, but she must have some core muscles under her Buddha belly because for the most part, she can hold her own. This was yesterday up in her room (and she's playing with the pants that had just come off instead of her toys, but close enough) ...

And I almost forgot! She also went for her first cross-country ski on New Year's Eve with Reid and I, Aunt Kendra and Aunt Sara. She rocked her backpack for the first time and appeared to enjoy every minute - that is, until she fell asleep, but that took a while.

So what's Piper up to these days when she's not sitting up or skiing? Well, she's still loving food (if you can't tell by her cheeks). She's added lots of additional fruits and a few veggies to her repertoire and has even tried to feed herself (huge mess). She's still sleeping like a champ, packing it in for about 12 straight hours a night, and then not doing much napping during the day. I can usually count on a 30-45 minute nap about two hours after she wakes up in the morning. Then after that, there isn't usually much ... maybe a 15 or 20 minute cat nap or two. So we play a bunch! She LOVES her bouncer and bounces for 30 minutes at a time. She's still into her exersaucer and has figured out how to turn around in it. And then of course there's sitting up and playing. Probably her favorite toy right now is the Baby See and Say that my parents got her for Christmas, but she has fun playing with just about anything - including the Wall Street Journal or an empty card board box. She's SIX MONTHS tomorrow. Insane. In some ways, I can't believe so much time has passed since she's joined our family, and then in others, I can't believe it's only been that short of a time because it feels like we've been loving her forever. She's our little peanut butter and we love her like crazy.

Kissy face

2009-12-18T16:39:00.004-05:00

And since this is her baby book, I'm a bad mom for forgetting to post that Piper gives kisses now! The first one was last Thursday (December 10). I was sitting on the couch burping her and she leans into my face with an open mouth, smashes her lips on me for a second and makes a little "mmmm" sound. Absolutely adorable. Of course I melted into a puddle on the floor. When Reid got home, I told him about it and I don't think he believed me until she did it to him the next night. It's super cute too because she gives a kiss and then leans back with a gigantic smile on her face. She is simply the best!

And her first experience with snow was on December 5. I'm not sure she really enjoyed it all that much since she slept through most of the walk, but here we are when we got back from her walk through our winter wonderland ...

I'm also going to try to do more of these mini posts versus waiting to have a good chunk of time to actually write. Especially with the holidays, those are hard to come by, but I'm definitely going to miss lots of fun things if I only post every 18 days ... she's changing so quickly now, it's unbelievable.

Since she is still taking a little snooze, there's one other super cute thing I wanted to note. She curls her toes over all the time. I'm not sure if she's trying to keep her giant feet from looking big or what, but whether in socks or in bare feet, those little toes are crammed right over. And maybe it's because I'm her mom, but I think it's the cutest thing in the whole world.

Tummy to back roll complete, finally!

2009-12-18T16:24:00.003-05:00

Most babies roll over from their tummy to their back first ... but not Piper. She's been rolling over from her back to her front for a long time now, but until this afternoon, seemed to be completely opposed to rolling over the "easy" way. In fact, she would put her arms out straight to her side if you tried to help her to prevent the roll. Reid has said many times this will help her if she wants to be a wrestler later ... great. Well this afternoon she finally rolled over on her own to complete the back to front to back roll series. Great job, Piper!

And here she is with her favorite pooch, Zoe. I think Zoe's her favorite because she has all of this fantastic fur to grab onto and yank. Luckily, Zoe doesn't seem to mind :-)

Adventures in eating

2009-12-01T14:06:00.011-05:00

Picture this:

Piper's sitting face forward on my lap. Just in front of her is a bowl of Chocolate Trifecta ice cream with rainbow sprinkles that I am stirring around and around (I prefer soft serve, so I make it myself with some elbow grease). Piper is staring at the bowl. She's talking ... mmm's, and ga's. Even an ah-goo here and there. I take the spoon and put some ice cream on it and bring it up to my mouth. As I lift the spoon from the bowl, Piper opens her mouth in anticipation and talks even louder. She does this with every bite I take.

Oh yes, our little one is all of a sudden VERY into food. Everything we put into our mouths is interesting - and she wants some.

As far as what Piper puts into her mouth, I decided about a month ago that I wanted to make her baby food and ordered a Beaba Babycook. It arrived last week, and with last Thursday also being the king of all food holidays, we decided that the grownups shouldn't be the only people living out gastronomic fantasies and broke out the mini appliance to make Piper applesauce to mix in with her cereal. In short, she loved it. It's hilarious because when she's into what she's eating, she makes lots of noise. That's how I could tell that she liked the oatmeal and multi grain cereals way more than the rice cereal ... she tells us all about it. With the apple added to the cereal, her noises grew louder! Yesterday we added pureed pears for the first time, and so far, I can't tell which she likes better, but she definitely likes them both. And even though it may not look it from this picture, she's getting a lot better at eating. She knows to open her mouth when the spoon is coming in and way less is coming back out. She's an eating machine.

And with all that eating, she's doing a great job of maintaining the back fat rolls and butt cheek cellulite. Bananas are next and then we'll be onto veggies! Honestly I enjoy every minute of feeding her since it's so blatantly obvious how much fun she's having throughout the process :-) I'm also almost done a great book on raising an adventurous eater - Hungry Monkey - and am really looking forward to when she can eat what we eat, just mashed up. For those with little ones, and little ones on the way, I highly recommend it. Not only is it a quick/easy read (perfect while pumping!), but he ends each chapter with recipes. I've yet to try them, but am looking forward to it!

Breastfeeding part two

2009-11-23T09:19:00.005-05:00

Last week, I paid a visit to my friend Erica, who was my first best friend and someone that I am lucky enough to be reconnecting with. Erica is due next month with a little girl so obviously we talked about babies, babies, babies. Oh, and baby gear. We also talked about breastfeeding and she suggested I do another blog entry about it because the whole situation has changed since I blogged about it in August ...

At four and a half months, breastfeeding is WAY easier than it used to be. I don't remember when the change actually occurred, but at some point, we both got better at it, which makes it a lot more enjoyable. For a long time now, Piper hasn't had any latching issues, and she's finally getting to be more efficient (it's usually about a half hour process now). It's also hilarious because she'll come off the breast sometimes, look up at me and give me a huge smile, and then dive back on. For so many reasons (the first being the fact that she couldn't smile), this couldn't have happened for a while, but with her personality coming out more and more, she's way more interactive and fun - including when she's eating! I think I've also become more used to the whole process, and a lot more comfortable with just feeding her wherever and whenever she needs to be fed. I will admit that we still time trips out around when she needs to eat, but I have no problem feeding her at play dates or when we go visit people. Depending on who we're around, sometimes I'll use the cover, sometimes we'll go in another room, or sometimes we just run with it. The last is usually when we're just around a bunch of ladies, but for those that are at the six week (guessing that's about how old Piper was when I wrote my last blog) mark and frustrated beyond belief, know that it got better for us, and hopefully it will for you too! We also love the mother's room at Babies R Us in Latham and have gone there just to feed Piper before. With a love seat, glider rocker and two changing tables, it's nice to have a private place to feed her when we're out and about.

I will say that our personal experiences are just that, personal. And breastfeeding is different for everybody - everyone I've talked that's had a baby has had different experiences and stories to share. It doesn't work for everybody and that should be fine with all of those women out there that judge whether or not someone nurses their baby or uses formula. Two of my friends that have had babies since we had Piper have had milk supply issues and either supplemented with or switched to formula. They did this to ensure that their baby was healthy and thriving - so for those mean women out there that have judged them for not nursing, shut up and mind your own business. It's shocking how a baby can open you up for public criticism from complete strangers, but somehow it does. But that's another post for another time ... right now I need to take advantage of this morning nap and fold the laundry!

Four month stats!

2009-11-11T14:43:00.010-05:00

Well we now have a four month old, and as our pediatrician told us at Piper's checkup yesterday, Piper has finally "hatched" into her own little person! She's so smiley, moves her arms and legs like crazy when she sees us (or other people for that matter), reaches for everything, and in general, is our super happy baby. She is GREAT. We also got her latest stats yesterday:

Length: 25.5 inches (88th percentile)
Weight: 15 pounds, 8 ounces (80th percentile)
Head circumference: 16.5 inches (85th percentile)

Basically, she's a very well-proportioned little lady :-) The pediatrician also told us how they're diagnosing double digits of swine flu patients every day so the most important thing we can do for Piper right now is to keep the germs away. So scary ... luckily Reid and I both got the H1N1 vaccine on Monday, but by no means does that mean she can't get sick. Hopefully the germs will stay far far away!!

Piper also got to meet her Uncle Travis and cousin Copland this past weekend when they flew in from Colorado to visit. Nana and Papa were here too and she loved soaking up the extra attention everyone gave her. I will say it's still hard to catch the smiles on camera. I think she gets confused when the silver thing comes out and flashes lights at her ... We're also back on the cereal kick. We had tried it during her recent growth spurt and it just didn't go well. I think her tongue thrust reflex was still too much in play and the poor little thing seemed to get super frustrated when she wasn't getting food in fast enough to her liking. Now she's a champ! We tried again on Sunday and the tongue thrust is gone and she seems to really like this new development in her diet. We did rice cereal Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and then oatmeal today ... and either she was a hungry lady or she really liked the flavor because she was all smiles and talked throughout her meal today. It was absolutely adorable. I'm hoping that these extra calories will help too with the sleeping because the days of her sleeping through the night have definitely been few and far between since her last growth spurt. I, admittedly, got a bit spoiled by a good night's sleep and I'm ready to have it back again!

Here are a few more pics from our big family weekend ...

Rolling rolling rolling ...

2009-11-02T20:29:00.003-05:00

On Saturday, I went into Piper's nursery when she had woken up for the day and found her laying on her side ... this was certainly new for her, and let us know that maybe she was thinking about rolling over at some point. Well, that some point was today! She rolled over from her back to her front, and actually seemed happy that she'd done so. She even enjoyed tummy time for almost a full minute :-)

Saturday was also Halloween - and here's a picture of our little lion! We paraded her around to the neighbors and she tolerated the headdress for way longer than we thought she would. Such a cutie!

More firsts!

2009-10-27T09:27:00.007-04:00

Piper is growing and changing so quickly that I need to be sure to be documenting her firsts! She's had three more (at least) in the last week and a half that I wanted to be sure to note. Last Sunday (October 18), she went on her first hike - Prospect Mountain in Lake George. The last time we did that hike was last November with Katie and Sara and I guess you could say Piper was there too (I was pregnant), but this time she was a lot more alert. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. When we walk around the neighborhood, she stays awake in the Baby Bjorn for a max of 10 minutes, but when we were hiking, she stayed awake pretty much the entire time (almost two hours!). Reid carried her, which was great because my balance seems to still be a bit questionable at times, and she seemed to love it. Here are a couple of pics from the hike ...

Then fast forward to Friday (October 23) ... Piper and I took a field trip to Toys R Us and bought her an exersaucer. She has great head control and is definitely into exploring everything so we thought an exersaucer would be a fun toy for her to learn and grow on. I will say that this thing is enormous and we've lost more of our living room to baby gear now, but she loves it! There's really only one area that she seems to be really into now - it's a globe that makes music and then a crocodile that says words too - and just like with other things that she's into, the drool starts FLOWING when she gets into her exersaucer. It's so fun to watch her learn ... really this is one of the best parts of being a parent. It's just amazing!

So then last night, we broke out the rice cereal for the first time ... she's not quite four months, which is what the official recommendations are, but again, she's rock solid with her head and lately, she's seemed extra hungry. She was sleeping through the night, for about a week and a half, and then last Friday night, she started waking up in the middle of the night again. And it wasn't just that, she was also chowing like an animal in the late afternoon/evening in addition to that extra night feeding. Never going two hours in between feedings ... she just seemed hungry, like she wasn't getting enough milk. So after three nights of her waking up earlier and earlier after her bottle feeding (Sunday was 1:15am - she hasn't done that in weeks), we decided to break out the rice cereal to try to get a few more calories in her. My mom had warned me that it was going to be a messy process, and it definitely was, but she loves baths anyway and it was bath night so we just threw her in the tub afterwards.

So after we fed Piper the cereal and gave her a bath, she had her nightly bottle. Now I don't know if it was the fuller tummy to start with, the nice warm bath water, or what, but she passed out part way through the bottle. And by pass out, I mean rock solid sleeping. So we picked her up, put her down in her crib and said goodnight. Well that was great for a half hour, and then she woke up and was CRANKY. So cranky and fussy that Reid and I were actually worried that she maybe had a stomachache or something. After 20 minutes or so of screaming, I noticed something interesting, though. The screaming only happened in her nursery ... hmmm ... was it possible that she was playing us and didn't want to go to bed? Our conclusion was absolutely because she was perfectly content anywhere else in the house. Nice try little peanut! So we put her back down and let her fuss for a bit and she passed out again. This time until 3:20. Now 3:20 is definitely not through the night, but it's better than the night before and we'll see what happens tonight :-)

And I don't know if the pictures are doing her justice, but she is huge! So long. She's growing out of her 6 month clothes that snap because they're getting to be too short. Such a big girl now! And also an awake girl. I hear her up from a short nap so I'm out ...

Unintentional spying

2009-10-15T20:40:00.003-04:00

Reid was reading Where the Wild Things Are to Piper upstairs in the nursery and I could hear them through the monitor that was left on downstairs. It was absolutely adorable to hear him add commentary and different voices to the story. I don't think I tell him enough - as I'm usually handing her off to make dinner/fold laundry/take a little breather and not saying what I should be saying - but he is a great dad and I'm excited to see their relationship grow over the many years to come. I think sometimes we get so focused on Piper and making sure that she's happy/dry/fed that we forget to focus on each other enough too. Or I know I'm guilty of that at least, and I'm clearly feeling guilty about it, which is why I'm blogging!

Piper slept through the night again last night and this time we actually enjoyed it. I hope this is a new trend that's here to stay! As far as the napping goes, I've also given in a bit and just let her nap in her swing. I've stopped pushing the crib during the day. It works for now and we'll try the crib again in a little while :-)

I didn't get a chance to upload pics today. I made phone calls that needed to be made, ordered some music CDs for Piper and took a short nap while Piper slept. I ran out of time, but hopefully tomorrow!

A BIG milestone!

2009-10-14T11:59:00.003-04:00

PIPER SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT.

It happened on Sunday night and it consisted of 9.5 hours of solid sleep - for her mind you.

Maybe she knew somehow that Sunday night was going to be a rough night for her parents. And by rough night, I mean the most sick I have ever been in my entire life. I was up for most of the night with what I thought was food poisoning, but what a trip to the doctor's in the morning confirmed was a stomach virus. THANK GOD she hasn't gotten it, and knock on wood we've cleared the danger zone at this point, but it was the worst night I've ever had. And Reid was up for a lot of that time taking care of me so the little peanut was an absolute angel sleeping through the night and giving us a night to deal with ourselves. I'm not going to lie, I would have loved to savor a full night's sleep as it has been over 3 months without one, but if she had to choose the night to sleep through the night, that was definitely the most helpful one to do it! She hasn't done it again yet, but she is still sleeping well, and I'm just happy she hasn't gotten sick.

I need to upload more photos so the next post will be more colorful to look at, but in honor of this being her digital baby book, I wanted to be sure to make some other quick notes. One, she laughed out loud! I think it was Friday (October 9), and it was when Reid was changing her. I was sitting on the couch, finishing up a hat for the next day's baby shower we were going to, and all of a sudden she let out a LOUD laugh. It was adorable! And then yesterday she definitely giggled loudly at her Nana, who was over helping to take care of her while I was trying to recoup (and Mimi was over the day before, thank God!). At the end of last week, she also put her pacifier in her mouth when Reid gave it to her. Now, it took several tries and a lot of patience on both of their parts, but she did it eventually and it was very cool to see. She's getting so big so fast! But this age is super fun. I feel like we see a little more of her personality come out every day and it simply is incredible. She's so alert, getting to be very interactive, and is just our sweet little peanut :-) She's also getting into her books a lot more and loves to just look around and take everything in. She was an angel at the baby shower on Saturday because when she was awake, she just wanted to look around at everyone and everything. You can almost see the wheels a turning up in her head ... she's going to be a sponge for years to come, and I can't get over how cool it is to watch her learn.

While she's still sleeping, I'm going to be a lump on the couch for a bit longer as I'm still not 100 percent. But getting there. And again, THANK YOU Piper for being so good to your parents just when they needed it!

Last day as a newborn

2009-10-05T13:36:00.007-04:00

Tomorrow Piper turns 3 months, which means that she officially transitions from a newborn to an infant. In some ways, I feel like she made this transition a while ago ... she doesn't look or sound like a newborn anymore and it feels like she's been in our lives for a long time. In other ways, she's still so new and this transition makes me realize how quickly time is going by!

Whenever we meet someone new, there are a few standard questions we get asked: 1. how old? 2. name? 3. and my least favorite - is she sleeping through the night yet? The answer to that one is N-O. I wish, but no. She's been consistently going 5 or so hours in between her bottle at night and the middle of the night feeding, but that's not even close to sleeping through the night. Every night, I go to bed and wish and hope and pray that tonight will be the night ... hopefully soon! I don't want to jinx it, but I think we may be headed in the right direction. For the last two nights, she's gone 8 hours from that last feeding of the day. Two nights ago, it was uninterrupted and felt heavenly. Last night, she woke up at 1 am (it had been just over 4 hours) and wanted some attention. Reid changed her because she was soaking wet, and burped her, and put her back down. He's a lifesaver for doing this because if I go in during the middle of the night, even if she's not hungry, she smells me and is suddenly starving. Yeah, no thanks. So after he put her back down, she started crying. As much as it sucks to listen to her unhappy, we let her cry, and after 10-15 minutes, she sounded like she was getting sleepy. Reid went in, plugged in the pacifier, and she slept until 4:45. Woo hoo! Hopefully she'll start learning that it's not that fun to wake up in the middle of the night if she's not starving and we'll have a baby that sleeps through the night soon. I'll go to bed tonight and hope tonight will be the night!

The napping during the day is another sleep issue, and is why it's so hard to blog (among other activities). Unless we run errands or go somewhere in the car, she won't take a nap longer than 30 minutes or so during the day at home. She'll take a bunch of these cat naps, but the long nap is a beautiful thing, and something that I do believe babies are supposed to do :-) I've even heard they're supposed to take two naps! One in the morning and one in the afternoon, but I'm not greedy - I'll take one. I'm not sure if it's the lack of movement in her crib or pack and play or what, but napping at home could definitely be improved upon. Every once in a while, we'll get a 2-3 hour nap in the swing (again, it's moving), but that's rare too. Maybe it's her lack of routine ... sometimes we go for walks in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. Sometimes we run errands, sometimes we'll go to play dates and sometimes we'll go visit people. I definitely want a flexible baby, and one that can travel and not be on a strict schedule and be good to go with whatever, but maybe that's biting us in the butt a bit too. This week, we had today at home, with errands this afternoon. Tomorrow and Wednesday we're going to Middlebury to see her Nana and Papa since Reid's traveling. Thursday we want to go to her cousin Sarah's soccer game in the afternoon. Friday and Saturday we have play dates - at different times. Hmmm ... I really like getting out and being social, but maybe we do a little too much? I'm going to keep it up for a bit and see what happens. I definitely don't want to be a hermit! I'm open to suggestions too ... anyone else have this 'no naps of any real length at home' issue?

We think she's advanced

2009-09-23T18:12:00.006-04:00

At first, the bouncy seat was a piece of baby gear that Piper didn't seem to like very much, but I still loved it because it was a safe place to put her while I was in the shower, brushing my teeth, etc. But over the last couple of weeks, she's really started to enjoy hanging out in the seat and has been moving around and bouncing more and more. And then yesterday afternoon I put her in the seat so that I could put laundry away, and low and behold, she discovered that she could kick the things hanging down with her feet and make them move. So she kicked and kicked for about ten minutes, clearly enjoying every minute. She did the same thing this morning as I got ready this morning. I know I just said this recently, but it is absolutely amazing to see her learn right before our eyes! And while kicking the hanging fish might not seem like a big deal, it definitely is because she spent the first 11 weeks of her life ignoring them. And the picture doesn't do it justice, but when she kicks, she blows spit bubbles out of her mouth so she ends up covered in her own slobber. Super cute, though.

The other big change I've noticed, literally over the last few days, is that Piper is just starting to enjoy her stuffed animals. Today we played with her pig and one of her monkeys and she was smiling and trying to get the animals into her mouth, bit by bit. She also seemed to be hugging them - I don't think this was really intentional, but it was definitely cute :-)

As for growing, I think she might be headed into another spurt. Yesterday, all she seemed to do was eat. She ate SO often that by the time bedtime rolled around, I felt like a walking zombie. Outside of a couple of walks that we took, I spent the entire day feeding her, and then me so that I could feed her some more. And then today she's been a tired, sleepy baby. Maybe she's just making up for the lack of long nap yesterday, but I swear her legs somehow looked longer today. She used to be all torso with short little legs, but now her legs look like they've stretched out. So many changes in such a short amount of time!

Here's my little lady in her baby bjorn. She smiles so much more often than she used to, but I never seem to catch them on camera.

Latest stats

2009-09-18T13:42:00.005-04:00

I know what I meant to include in the last post and forgot - Piper's latest stats! She had her two month check up last Thursday (Sept 10), where she weighed in at 11 pounds 8 ounces and measured 24 inches long. She's probably bigger now (her thighs look bigger to me today), and as for how she compares to other little ones, our little peanut is 93 percentile for height and 70 percentile for weight. While she's chunking up nicely, her length is quickly putting her into 6 month clothes (the ones with feet anyway), unless we want to do some Chinese torture on her and curl up her feet. She started wearing the 6 month sleepers yesterday, and while the sleeves are a little long, the legs and feet are just right. She's growing too quickly!

Also at her 2 month check up, she had her first round of vaccines. In full disclosure, I used to do PR for one of the world's largest vaccine manufacturers, so the thought of vaccinating Piper didn't freak me out at all. I felt like a well-informed consumer and honestly was happy to know that she was on her way to being immune to some pretty nasty viruses, but what I wasn't prepared for was the mother response to watching your little one get vaccinated. The crying definitely tore at my heart strings, as it did to her dad too who wouldn't put her in the car seat afterwards to go home until she was fully content (AKA sleeping soundly). I brought home the snuggliest little baby ... all she wanted to do was be up on my shoulder, nuzzling into my neck, but then the pain must have set in because she became super fussy about 45 minutes after we got home. A little Tylenol, a 30 minute nap, and we had our happy baby back. She did have two green bowel movements later that day - and when I say green, I mean the color you would find a lawn in Seattle to be in March. Pretty as grass, but concerning when it's poop. A quick call to the nurse on call that night put our mind at ease ... it was just the rotavirus (a nasty GI issue) vaccine and she would be fine soon. Sure enough, the next poop was back to normal.

Enough about poop - it's Friday! That means we have Reid home with us all weekend starting in not too long :-) Love it!!

Digital baby book

2009-09-15T16:23:00.005-04:00

This past weekend, Piper and I went to Boston to visit some of her many amazing aunts while Reid was at a bachelor party and it was a great trip for so many reasons. While this might seem silly, I was a nervous wreck before we left for Boston. I was worried about traveling alone with her for the whole weekend to a place that was a pretty significant drive away. I was worried about how she would travel - whether she would start screaming on the highway, whether she would sleep at Heidi's house, whether she would eat enough since I was planning on just breastfeeding and not doing any bottles of pumped milk, whether I would be able to sleep at all ... and the list goes on and on. You name it, I was worried about it, but the fact is, the weekend was GREAT and all of my worries were unfounded. Phew! Because of this, it was a pretty awesome confidence builder. If Piper and I can travel all the way to Boston and back, then a day trip here and there is easy. And just heading to Saratoga for errands and to see a friend? Piece of cake. I'm finally feeling comfortable going places with her and it feels great! The fact that this has taken over two months has been a little bit frustrating - I'm not usually a wimp.

And of course it was amazing to see some of my friends and introduce them to Piper. Over the trip, Piper also met two of her future friends - Anna (5 months old) ...

And Mariko (6 months old) ...

It was amazing to see how different Anna and Mariko were compared to Piper. I felt like I had a glimpse into her future, both from a developmental perspective, as well as a growth perspective. Both Anna and Mariko were so expressive, and BIG. I don't want Piper to grow too quickly, but it was exciting to see the types of changes that she's going to go through throughout the fall. More fun is definitely on the way!

We stayed at Heidi's parents' house, and while we were there, Heidi broke out her and her sister's baby books. It was so interesting to hear what their parents wrote way back when ... and it got me thinking - we have a keepsake box and are storing lots of fun things to go through in the future, and we are taking lots of pictures, but we don't have an official baby book where we're keeping track of her progress. But, can this count? The thought of making time to write the blog and write a baby book seems a bit overwhelming. I already have a hard time keeping up with this, but going through the baby books made me realize how important it is to keep documenting. So a priority this blog will be! Not that it wasn't one already, obviously ...

On that note, Piper has been changing like crazy. Learning and growing and becoming more of a little person. A couple of weeks ago (this pic was taken one day shy of her two month bday), she was really into sucking her hand, and every once in a while, her thumb would find its way in.

I have to admit that Reid and I weren't that excited about this. You can take a pacifier away, but you can't take a thumb away. And while I had buckteeth without sucking my thumb, why encourage the dental destruction? But at the same time, if she can soothe herself, then that is HUGE. Regardless of what we thought, she's kind of cooled down on the hand/thumb sucking anyway. Not sure what changed for her, but she appears to have lost interest.

And then, over this past weekend, Piper discovered her reflection in the mirror of her gym and was absolutely mesmerized by it.

That was probably one of my favorite changes so far because I felt like I could see her learning and changing before my eyes. The mirror has been there all along, and I've tried to show it to her before, but she never looked at it with any interest. Then all of a sudden, while I was eating a bowl of cereal, she couldn't get enough of checking herself out. She smiled and cooed at herself and was captivated for a good ten minutes. Since then, she's done that at least once a day. It's absolutely adorable! Anna has the same gym at her house and Heidi was telling me how fun it's been to see Anna's interests change over time. The hanging parrot is now her favorite and she likes to roll onto her belly and play with the elephant's crinkly ear. For those expecting little ones, I highly recommend this! http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2266983

Piper is just so cute and we are so in love. I don't really know how to put it all into words, but I love our family more than I thought was possible and am so excited for all that is to come, which will be documented here :-)

Snarfing breastmilk and monster hands

2009-09-03T16:23:00.005-04:00

Poor Piper! She was hammering a bottle of pumped milk earlier this afternoon, very enthusiastically after sleeping for two hours, coughed and snarfed breastmilk out her nose. I felt a little bit badly because I did laugh out loud when I realized she was fine and just being a little piggy.

Earlier this week, Piper and I went to our first play date through the Meetup group, Kid's Incorporated. Obviously she's too little to appreciate a play date at this point so the play date was really for me. I've been really excited to meet other moms and their kids in the area. Having worked from home for the past almost three years, it hasn't been easy finding friends in the greater Glens Falls area, and obviously we didn't have Piper to make friends, but I think the expanded social circle is a nice side benefit of having a child. There are so many young families in the area, and even after one play date, I felt a huge since of relief. It was so nice to just hang out with a few other ladies and chat - not to mention it was nice to get out of the house and not be running an errand. Social time is a must!

She continues to grow at break neck speed, but there's one part of her in particular that may be growing faster than the rest. HER HANDS. Check out the paws ...

Reid has been scheming about which professional sport she can pursue so that we can retire and live off of her winnings. Tennis and golf have been the leading contenders - and not just because that means we'll have to have a second home somewhere where it's warm all winter long (which I think sounds great). But after seeing her hands expand over the last several weeks, I'm starting to think she's either going to be a basketball player (since she'll be able to palm a ball a age 5), or a swimmer. Hopefully she'll just grow into her mitts so we can be back to tennis or golf and not be heading to the pool at 4 am on a cold winter morning ... plus, can you imagine how much she'll get made fun of if she doesn't grow into those things? YIKES. I hope she doesn't find this blog later and hate me for it!

8 weeks and baby gear

2009-08-31T16:05:00.006-04:00

Happy birthday to Piper! She's 8 weeks old today, and as I told my husband last night, I feel like I have loved her forever. She is such a joy and we are beyond lucky. This is an old pic, but it's still one of my favorites. I love it when she makes this face - of course it's usually right after she just went to the bathroom, but whatever, it's still cute :-)

I wanted to do a post about my favorite baby gear, but I think I'm going to limit it to my two favorites for now because there are two that jump WAY out to the front of my favorites line. I will say, there is SO much baby gear out there that for first time moms it can be pretty overwhelming. I remember the first time I went into Babies R Us, I thought I was going to have a panic attack. Baby stuff EVERYWHERE and I didn't know what half of it did. Reid and I were both on the same page and wanted to be pretty streamlined in terms of the gear that we had. I'm still surprised by how much stuff is now in our house, but we have what are the necessities for us. Obviously every family is different, but what we have works for us. And I'll give huge props to Baby Bargains - a must have book if you're feeling overwhelmed and don't want to go overboard.

Probably my two favorite items are the Boppy Pillow for nursing and then the Baby Bjorn (the Active style). With how much time I spend nursing, I can't imagine trying to hold Piper up to my chest the entire time. I have a hard enough time getting comfortable while nursing - my back and I have definitely had to learn how to nurse so that I don't end up in pain! And then the Baby Bjorn is a life saver. Piper loves to be in it and it's extraordinarily comfortable. I wear it while she's gassy (it helps for her to be vertical), while I'm doing housework, on walks around the neighborhood, shopping ... the list goes on and on. And it's so easy to adjust so it can go between Reid and I with no issue. I've heard that the regular one can be a bit tough on the back after a while, but the active is fantastic. I recommend it to everyone!

Following up on my Fat Post, the sports bras that a friend recommended to me arrived today from Title Nine . Apparently they really prevent bouncing in big breasted women ... I hope so! I ordered the Frog Bra and the Last Resort bra. The Last Resort was definitely pricey ($60), while the Frog Bra was pretty reasonable ($33). I'm hoping the Frog Bra is great and that I don't need the Last Resort, but either way, I'm hoping that heavy duty sports bras will soon be on my list of favorite gear as well. I will say that I wore pre-pregnancy jeans this weekend and it was nice to get them on. The footnote here is that they were tight and I had to wear my Bella Band so that I didn't have to button them, but with fall on the way, I'm happy to not have to buy new jeans!

Smile!

2009-08-28T17:28:00.002-04:00

Now isn't this just the cutest thing you've ever seen?!?! I love how the smile goes right up to her eyes :-) She's smiling at her daddy, who was talking to her and playing with her nose. So adorable!

Piper didn't sleep very well last night - she was up from 1-4, so I was too - so this is all I'm doing for a post today (I've been dragging all day today), but I just had to share this little piece of heaven!

Now where did that come from ...

2009-08-27T12:41:00.005-04:00

Body image isn't something I've typically struggled with, probably because I've always been pretty skinny. Even in my "fat" days, I never broke 145. Well, now here I am fatter than ever and without the pregnancy excuse. It's not to say that I hate my body - I think hate is too strong of a word - but I do think it's accurate to say that I certainly am not in love with it right now.

Problem area #1: BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS. Ginormous, gargantuan boobs. Now obviously I do have a good excuse for the mams since I'm a nursing mom, but that doesn't mean I have to like them. They definitely make me look larger than I am, and they make the thought of running a very scary proposition. I don't know if they make a sports bra that could keep them where they'd need to be for me to be comfortable. And even though I don't know when I would run if I did own the world's most supportive bra for enormous boobs, I would still like to have the option :-) For me, running is one of the easiest ways to get back into shape and slim down. The weight drops off quickly and easily when I run, but I'll stop this pipe dream because it's not a reality currently ...

Problem area #2: Stomach. Yuck, it's fatty. Not sure what else I need to say here other than my abs are still stretched out. Gross.

Problem area #3: My thighs. Also fatter than usual. Thank God I bought two pairs of shorts on clearance at the Gap when I was pregnant last summer and they're one to two sizes bigger than I usually wear. I've been wearing them, alternating every other day basically, for the past few weeks. They're not maternity so I'm excited to say that (and my maternity shorts are all too big now so they look like crap anyway), but they are a size that I don't wish to be in for much longer!

One area I am loving: It's important to end on a high note! I love my arms and shoulders. This is one area that I didn't really gain any weight in during pregnancy and hefting around Piper and her multiple chins has helped to regain some tone. And thankfully I show more arm than thigh and stomach on a daily basis!

If we still lived in Austin, I'd definitely want to get in on the OutOfControlFatRoll fun. These ladies (three of them are my coworkers, past and present) rock!

And now, a cute pic of Piper, whose hair gets curly as soon as its wet ...

Smiles and breastfeeding

2009-08-26T14:05:00.006-04:00

In the last 2.5 hours, I've done two loads of laundry, loaded and run the dishwasher, ordered diapers and bottles from www.diapers.com, finished vacuuming the pool, caught up with my friend Heidi AND written this blog. This is Piper's first long nap during the day that hasn't been in the car since she's been sleeping well at night and I'm taking advantage of it!

The most exciting update at this point is that Piper has started smiling! Now the little grin in the picture above isn't her big toothless grin that absolutely melts our hearts, but it is close and it's the closest we have to anything resembling a smile on camera so far. When she first smiled, my heart just about burst. And my emotional reaction hasn't changed since I've seen her smile since then. It's what I imagine heaven to be like. Pure joy.

Before Piper was born, I hoped that I was one of those people that would just love to breastfeed - and in fact, I was pretty sure I would be that way. Unfortunately, that just hasn't been the case. I'm still breastfeeding her and my goal is to do it for the first six months, but I definitely wish that I felt the ooey gooey sense of bonding and joy that many people speak of while nursing their baby. Instead, it was super frustrating at first because it took both of us a while to learn how to nurse well. In particular, she did not latch well for a while ... and the jaundice didn't get us off on the right foot, but the challenges did continue from there for I would guess a couple of weeks. So nursing took FOREVER. Now we're down to about 45 minutes for each nursing session, but without the ooey gooey feelings, it can still feel very time consuming. During the day, she nurses pretty much every two hours, so once I've fed her, we have 1.25 hours until she eats again. That combined with my apparent phobia of nursing in public makes it pretty hard to get out and about, which is SO important in my opinion. So I do try and get out, at least four or five times a week. We just make the trips quick. Thank God we don't live far from the grocery store or Target! I'm hoping that since she's getting older and better at nursing that I'll enjoy it more.

Oh, and there's a cry so I'm logging off - to go nurse!

Happy anniversary to us!

2009-08-12T13:23:00.007-04:00

Three years ago today, my husband and I boarded the Northern Lights in Burlington, VT as singletons and disembarked later that night as husband and wife. It was an unbelievable day ... the weather was gorgeous. Even though it was August, it wasn't hot or humid. We were surrounded by our friends and family, and looking back, it was pretty much perfect. Now three years later, life is fantastic. I couldn't be more head over heels in love with Reid and Piper has only added to our joy. Happy anniversary, honey!

And now a quick update on the little one. She is doing GREAT. She seems to have finally figured out the difference between night and day and has been sleeping like a rock star for several days now. She wakes up once in the night to eat, and then typically goes down again for the remainder of the night, which has us recovering and feeling like humans again. I'm not going to lie, when she wasn't sleeping, it was really hard. There were three days and nights in a row that she hardly slept and I was a walking zombie. It's so difficult to be rational when you reach extreme exhaustion, and a good cry never seemed that far under the surface. It was very overwhelming to have this little human whom we couldn't seem to make happy for an extended period of time ... but now she, and we, seem to be figuring this out and life is much improved again. My mom told me that this (motherhood) will be the hardest job I'll ever have, and so far I agree. But at the same time, it is an unbelievably awesome job and I'm so happy to be doing it :-)

Piper is chunking up nicely and she seems huge now compared to when she first arrived. I love her chunky cheeks, multiple chins and fat thighs. It's almost time to put her newborn clothes away, which in a way makes me sad because she barely had time to wear many of them! The 3 month clothes are just as cute, don't get me wrong, but I can't believe I'm already putting stuff away in the basement, either for another little girl or for Piper's dolls if we have a boy next time. It's insane how quickly this is all passing. Everyone tells you that - and to enjoy every minute because time does pass so quickly - but the first month was such a blur between adjusting, sleepless nights, exhaustion, overwhelming happiness, etc, that there really isn't enough time to just sit and take it all in and enjoy it. It kind of reminds me of our wedding day in that respect, and is a good reminder of how important it is to just chill and put these things to memory while we can.

She's not just getting bigger either - there are so many other changes. Her eyesight has definitely improved and she now stares at us and objects intently. She also likes to track people and toys as they move around. It seems like she's starting to enjoy the animals hanging down from her gym and now we're just waiting for her to smile. She smiles every once in a while in her sleep, but I can't wait to see her light up in response to us, and not what I'm guessing is just gas.

I still owe many people phone calls and I definitely need to upload more photos and order birth announcements and all that jazz. Our house is still a mess and the nursery still doesn't have pictures on the walls. It's hard fitting it all in and it feels like there are always a million items on the to-do list, but I feel like we're getting a bit closer to a balancing act. Sleep definitely helps with that!

Piper just woke up! Time for her to eat. More to come, hopefully soon ...

Adjusting to reprioritization

2009-08-01T20:13:00.003-04:00

As is evidenced by the time lag in between blog posts, I've had my hands full. For all of the parents that are reading this, the response will probably be "duh," but one of the lessons I've learned over the last almost four weeks is just how much life gets reprioritized with an infant at home - especially one that is still learning the difference between night and day (and therefore preventing sleep!). I feel like I've been totally out of touch with everyone, and it's not by choice - trust me, I would like to call you back - but by necessity. It's just that when I do have my hands free, I have to choose between 1. sleeping, 2. catching up on laundry, 3. making dinner, 4. putting said laundry away, 5. taking a shower, 6. making those phone calls, 7. blogging and keeping up on my digital life. And not that they always fall in that particular order, but the first five have been taking precedence over the final two and likely will until Piper is sleeping better and I'm not feeling like a walking zombie.

We do have LOTS of adorable pictures of Piper, but uploading those to my laptop would fall under the seventh category on my to-do list so this blog post is going to have to survive picture free. Sorry!

Piper is doing great though! She's fattening up and her chunky cheeks are super cute. She has a double chin and her newborn sized footed PJs are starting to get a little short (when she stretches out, she definitely reaches the limits of the onesie). We've seen a few almost smiles, but have yet to catch one on camera. She loves her gym and is starting to show interest in the toys that hang down at her. It's amazing how much she's changed in almost four weeks and her baby coos make my heart melt ... I just heard one of those coos so I'm going to sign off and hopefully get her nice and awake for the next hour or two so that she will (HOPEFULLY) have a better night's sleep tonight than last night!

Two+ weeks

2009-07-21T10:11:00.005-04:00

Piper turned two weeks old yesterday! We celebrated the day feeling exhausted and out of it, after a night that passed by in its entirety without any sleep for the three of us. I think she had gas, as she seemed to just not be able to get comfortable and we could hear the bubbles gurgling inside of her, but burping her wasn't productive. Luckily, she (and therefore we) slept pretty well last night so Reid and I were able to recuperate a bit. It's a good thing they make babies so cute and lovable because it definitely makes this process tolerable, and somehow, even enjoyable. Here's a picture of the little cutie from last week ...

Piper also had her two week doctor's appointment yesterday and she impressed the pediatrician by rolling back and forth on the examination table. He should have seen her climb over her tummy time play mat at 6 days old, but I digress ... anyway, she's up to 7 pounds 7 ounces, which is great because apparently babies are supposed to be at or above their birth weight by two weeks. Her jaundice is gone and everything looks good! As usual, we had lots of questions for the pediatrician ... is the fact that she sneezes a lot normal? Yes, she's still getting rid of amniotic fluid from her nostrils. Since her cord fell off of her belly button last week, when can we give her a real bath? Last night was his answer, but since Reid and I were tired, we opted to just do a sponge bath. That has become familiar and we're pretty quick at it, but tomorrow we'll break out her new tub. Is the rash on her left hand normal? Actually, it looks like it's a birth mark, but one that will likely fade by 5 years of age. Since Reid is gluten intolerant, when do we test her? Not until she's eating wheat, or probably at about 12 months. And should I avoid peanuts while I'm breast feeding? The answer to this made me happy - since we don't have a family history, I shouldn't be too worried about having to avoid peanuts. I forget what else we asked, but it's amazing to feel so clueless about someone so tiny. Two weeks in, I feel totally confident that we can handle this whole process, but I feel like we have SO much to learn all the time.

Last week another important milestone passed for us - the anniversary of last summer's miscarriage came and went at the end of last week. I thought about it and remembered what it felt like last summer, but I didn't get overwhelmed with sadness and I finally felt completely healed. I'm sure I'll never forget, but it's a huge relief to feel like that chapter in our lives is closed, and more importantly, that I finally feel at peace with everything. When we did miscarry, a few of my friends got us a beautiful hydrangea bush. All of the flowers bloomed on it last week and it's gorgeous.

Since Piper is sleeping, I'm going to try to get a quick cat nap in as well. Everyone says sleep when the baby sleeps, but I do think that's easier said than done. If you do that, when do you shower? Unload the dishwasher? Check email? Blog? Hmm ... I'm clearly still figuring this whole balancing act out, and once I do, I hope to have the posts become a bit more energetic and frequent again!

Way overdo post ...

2009-07-13T12:07:00.024-04:00

It's amazing how the time has flown over the past ten days and how my desire to communicate went on a hiatus. I have spent so little time on the phone or online since Piper was born ... I just haven't been able to take my eyes off of our new little angel and have been enjoying every minute with her. Plus we had a 48 hour speed bump with jaundice and had to go back to the hospital so Piper could get some photo therapy to lower her bilirubin levels so that was a stressful experience and I feel like we needed to adjust to being back home with her again. But now all is well with her and with us and I'm ready to share what was an unbelievable experience 10 days ago today. Here's the play by play ...

July 6, 2009

6:00 am - The alarm goes off and I hop in the shower before heading in for our scheduled induction. I was excited, nervous, happy, scared - so many emotions at once and needing to get last minute things together. Reid slept until I was out of the shower and then he got going as well.

7:15 - When we should have left for the hospital to be on time. I'm getting antsy.

7:20 - When we actually left. I hate being late, but we did the best we could. At least my angst of being late served as a good distraction for all of the other emotions we were feeling!

7:35 - Reid drops me off at the hospital entrance and I go upstairs to check in. They're immediately ready for me and I meet the two nurses (one finishing up her training and then her teacher - both are super chipper and nice and I feel immediately comfortable) that will help us through the labor and delivery process. They lead me down to our room and I get changed into a gown and Reid comes upstairs with our first load of stuff. Yes our hospital packing list was long and we packed more than we needed, but I wouldn't change that. It was nice to not have to wish that we'd brought something. My mom arrived too and I was super happy to have her and Reid there for the whole process.

8:30 - The midwife comes in and checks me. Still 4 cm dilated and 80 percent effaced. We decide that she'll break my water and see if that will get things going. Next thing I now, the water is broken. Wow, no going back now! After that, I get out of bed and start doing laps in the hospital wing. Contractions started and they were no big deal at all. I was all smiles and thinking that this whole deal wasn't that bad. I mean, the first 4 cm happened without me really ever being very uncomfortable. How bad can this be? I was worried it was going to get tough, but on and on we walked.

9:15 - The baby looked like she (ok, so we didn't know sex then, but now that Piper is Piper, there's no way I can call her an it!) was hanging out on the right side of my uterus so they decided to try to get her to spin around by having me kneel with my stomach on ice and a warm pack on my back. The theory here is that the baby heads away from the ice and toward the heat to get into a better position to come out. It's an interesting theory and spinningbabies.com covers it well. After 30 minutes of this, I got back up and started walking and the contractions really set in. From here, they got stronger and I was no longer smiling the whole time during my walks around the wing. When each one came, I would stand against the wall and take deep breaths with my eyes closed. I could tell Reid felt helpless, but I really needed to just deal with each contraction in my own way, which was independently and internally - typical of how I deal with all pain (emotional and physical)!

12:30ish pm - I'm guessing on time now since I pretty much stopped looking at the clock, but at some point, I had a cherry popsicle since that was all I was allowed to eat besides ice chips and I was starving. By this point, the contractions were getting really tough and we asked when it was too late to get an epidural because I didn't want to miss that window. I forget the answer ... at some point, my OB came in to check on us and he advised that we just order it. Things were clearly only getting worse so why not get a bit more comfortable.

Soon thereafter, the back labor set in and holy hell it was the worst pain I have ever experienced or could have imagined. When the contractions were in the front, they were tolerable. I mean, they sucked by that point, but they didn't make me feel like I was dying. The ones that were in my back though were unreal. They were HORRENDOUS and made me sick to my stomach. The anesthesiologist was called and it would be about a half hour before he could come up. I thought I knew who it was going to be - a Dartmouth alum whom I had met originally when I had the D&C for the miscarriage. I was hoping he would be the one to do the epidural since it would be comforting to see a friendly face. Alas, the good doctor arrives (and yes it's the one we were hoping for!), we discuss the procedure (in between contractions, which are so terrible I can't really concentrate) and then he gets to work. Now, it was well worth it, but to get the epidural, I had to lay on my left side, which caused tonic contractions. It was 4-5 minutes of constant back labor contractions and the pain was so terrible that I threw up my red popsicle and everything else in my stomach. Finally, the worst was over. The epidural started working almost immediately and I entered a state of painfree euphoria. The change was unbelievable, and since I was able to chat and mak jokes again, Reid started taking pictures. You can tell the pain is GONE because I was able to ham it up for the camera around while eating my ice chips :-)

1:45 pm - The midwife comes back in to check to see how dilated I am - 10 cm. Fully dilated. Time to push and become parents. I was a bit shocked to be honest. I'd only had the epidural for 20 or 30 minutes at that point and all of a sudden, the time was here!

From 2 - 3:20 pm - Pushing. Pushing. Pushing. Each push gave me terrible heartburn and I threw up again, but after I threw up, they had me reach down and I felt her head. At that point, I just wanted her to come out so that we could meet her! The epidural was perfect too. I could tell when a contraction was happening, but there was no associated pain, which enabled me to really push productively. Everyone was getting really excited in the room because we knew she would be out soon so back to work I went!

3:25 pm - One final push and Piper Elizabeth arrived!

I will admit that I had come to the conclusion that she was a boy so I was shocked to see a little girl. Shocked and immediately and completely in love. It sounds cheesy, but my heart was bursting with love and I could tell the same was true for my husband. I'm so glad we waited to be surprised by her and she was definitely worth the wait. I counted her fingers, five on each hand, but couldn't yet see her toes. Then Reid cut the cord and they whisked her off to the warmer to clean her off and weigh her. At 21 inches, 7 pounds and 4.5 ounces, she's a lanky little girl, but she's our little girl and she's perfect. And yes, she has all ten toes too.

So that's how little Piper came into this world. From start to finish, the whole process took about 7 hours - MUCH shorter than some horror stories I have heard so I certainly have no complaints. If I had it to do all over again, the one thing I would change would be that I would get the epidural a half hour earlier. It really made such a huge difference, and it likely sped up the dilatation process.

And ten days later, I'm pretty tired, but we're settling in nicely. Piper doesn't look so hot in her daddy's glasses, but she does look great in pink, which is a good thing because she now has a ton of it!

And now that we're feeling more settled, I'm looking forward to posting more and chronicling our journey as parents. It's sure to be a wild ride ...

We're home!

2009-07-08T12:46:00.002-04:00

We got home a little bit ago with our new daughter, Piper Elizabeth Hutchins, born July 6 at 3:25 pm, weighing 7 pounds, 4.5 ounces and 21" long. Pictures and more details to come soon ... right now, we're enjoying our expanded family and are tired from lack of sleep, but also the overwhelming love and joy that we feel. She's amazing!

Expect the unexpected

2009-07-05T17:03:00.003-04:00

If there's anything I've learned throughout the pregnancy process(es), it's that you have to expect the unexpected. And if you don't have lots of unexpected moments, then I think you are extremely fortunate! We had another one of those moments, and now a change of plans, today.

When I was driving home from the grocery store, I noticed that my vision was funky. It was as if my eyes were working independently and it definitely freaked me out. When I got home, I put some of the groceries away and immediately started chugging water. I hadn't had quite as much water as I usually do by that point in the day so I figured it couldn't hurt. I also threw an English muffin in the toaster since I hadn't eaten in a few hours. By the time I did these two things though, my vision was looking worse. I picked up a piece of paper and had a difficult time reading the words on it. I was also starting to feel just "off", so I called the doctor's office and waited for the midwife on duty to return my call.

Luckily for us, Julia called us back right away. I told her about my vision and she said I needed to come in (no surprise there!). On the drive in, my nausea set in. Maybe it was due to the vision issues, but all of a sudden, I was feeling terrible!

When we got to the hospital, they took my blood pressure and it was high (130/84), so that, combined with my symptoms, resulted in an interesting comment from the midwife ("Oh I bet I know what the doctor's going to say ..."). I didn't ask her to elaborate then, but I had a good idea she was referencing getting induced. My husband had the same thought.

Onto the monitors, blood drawn for labs, pee in a cup. The standard protocol really at this point. The midwife also said she wanted to check me again (to see if I was any more dilated/effaced) and would do that in a bit.

My husband took this picture - I look much happier in it than I was feeling! Sorry for the blurriness. As I've mentioned in my blog before, Palm Treo phones SUCK.

Anyway, back to the gory details. Julia checked me and I was still 4 cm dilated and 80 percent effaced - so no change from Thursday. At that point, I asked her what she was thinking would happen and her response was that she thought the doc would want to induce me, the question was whether that would happen today or tomorrow (lab results dependent). She said even if my labs were fine, the real question was, why would they want me to stay pregnant at this point? The baby is full term (and looking great on the monitor) so he or she is good to come out, and my blood pressure has been spiking a bit and now I have other symptoms. This is what we anticipated, but it was still weird to hear it.

My labs came back and they looked fine. My nausea by that point had subsided and my vision had cleared up, but I still had a headache. After talking with the doc on call, Julia returned and gave us the option of either spending the night in the hospital and being induced tomorrow morning, or coming home and returning to the hospital in the morning to be induced. For comfort reasons, we chose to come home, but we'll be back at the Snuggery tomorrow morning at 7:30 am to start the induction process. CRAZY.

We don't really know how the induction process is going to go. I know there are a couple of medication options, and Julia also said that the midwife on duty may just start by breaking my water and seeing what happens. It's absolutely bizarre to think that we're going to go in to be induced in the morning ... it's not how I thought this would all go down, but as long as the baby is healthy and I end up okay too, then I'm fine with it.

I'm conflicted right now as far as emotions. Part of me is excited to me this little one, part of me is nervous for the actual labor and delivery process, and part of me is just really calm. I'm hoping the third one will win out tonight when we go to bed so that we can actually get some sleep. The nurse that discharged us warned us that people that get induced don't always give birth on the first day. I'm hoping that's not the case with us!

I don't know when the next blog post will come, but I will try to keep my twitter feed (www.twitter.com/jenhutchins) updated, at least every once in a while. Wish us luck!!

Sleepy on the Fourth of July

2009-07-04T15:05:00.003-04:00

Happy Fourth of July! While not officially on my to-do list, I have used some of my down time to knit a few baby hats. The strawberry is my go-to gift when the parents don't know what they're having - so one of these is for us, and then the other is for our little niece or nephew who is expected to arrive not too long after our little one. If you're reading this Trav, sorry to ruin the surprise! The sunflower hat is for a little girl (TBD who yet) and then I'm also working on a watermelon (my personal favorite), and finally will whip out a blueberry just in case a little boy arrives :-) This is all assuming our little one gives me the time to get the hats done!

Yesterday I had quite a bit of energy and Reid and I had a GREAT day. After hanging out at our house for a while, we went to the outlets to do a little shopping, went aimlessly driving around the east side of Lake George and then had a nice dinner on Glen Lake at the Docksider (food's not fantastic, but the setting is gorgeous). But today I am exhausted ... we hit the Glens Falls farmer's market this morning and then Lowe's for some random stuff and those two errands somehow took all of my energy. I tried to nap, pretty unsuccessfully, and am hopeful that some energy returns before we go to see the Pops concert at Crandall Park (by the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra).

All has been quiet on the labor front. I had a painful contraction in the middle of the night last night - the most painful one I've had yet - but it was only one and then done. That's not going to get anything done unfortunately ... maybe my exhaustion is just my body telling me to chill before the big event. The calm before the storm ... we shall see!

Clearly a false alarm

2009-07-03T10:40:00.003-04:00

Seeing as I'm sitting on our screened in porch, having slept in until 9:30 and just cooked a big breakfast with my husband, we were clearly just teased yesterday afternoon/evening by the little bugger.

By the time we went to bed last night, the contractions were gone, and while I've had a couple since I've woken up, they haven't been very painful and certainly haven't been consistent. So when will this little one arrive? Who knows! But seeing as my cervix is very "ripe" (technical medical term apparently - I couldn't have made that up if I tried), there should only be so many of these dry runs until the little one actually makes its grand entrance into the world.

In the meantime, the sun is actually shining so Reid and I have a date by the pool :-)

And then not so exciting ...

2009-07-02T20:22:00.001-04:00

Hmmm ... think I may have spoken too soon, or jinxed myself, or something. The contractions, while still coming pretty regularly, don't hurt nearly as much as they did before. I'm no longer thinking this baby may come tonight. Damn!

This is getting exciting!

2009-07-02T17:30:00.002-04:00

I'll start this post by saying, I may have a baby in not too long :-)

We had our weekly doctor's appointment today so we went in and my blood pressure was a bit high again. At this point in the pregnancy, this means an automatic trip to the hospital for a non stress test (getting hooked up to contraction and fetal heartbeat monitors), so my husband and I drove over to the hospital and got settled in. This time, the midwife also ordered an ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid levels - this actually excited me because we hadn't seen the baby in what feels like forever.

Oh, I should also add that at my appointment the midwife checked me and I'm 4cm dilated with 80 percent effacement (a measure of how thinned out my cervix is). WARNING: Straight pregnancy talk, such as dilatation and effacement will continue moving forward. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything.

Anyway, so while on the monitors at the hospital, we see that the baby looks great and that I was having contractions every two minutes. They were just little contractions, and honestly I couldn't feel them when they were happening. I guess this can happen after an internal exam - and in the words of our midwife, "labor is progressive," and not to worry, I'll feel the real labor contractions when they really get heated up.

My ultrasound was fine - the baby was moving around and my fluid levels were within the normal range. Then I had to wait to get some labs back to make sure there wasn't a chance of preeclampsia (just like last week). While we're waiting, my cramping began ... so apparently those little contractions are heating up at least a little bit. Labs came back fine so we were discharged, but before we left, I asked the midwife what the odds are of me being pregnant in a week. She gave me 50 percent odds - a coin flip. Well, a couple hours and consistently annoying (I say annoying because I'm crampy, but the pain is no big deal right now) contractions later, I'm starting to think we're getting VERY close to D-Day. Or it may be more appropriate to call it B-day for the little one! Our instructions are to not worry about calling in until I'm having contractions that I can't breath through. Basically, they want me to be very angry and uncomfortable when we go in for the real deal. We'll see what happens tonight ...

More to come, but right now, we're going to go finish packing the hospital bag.

Living in limbo

2009-07-01T15:16:00.002-04:00

I feel like I'm in a weird spot in life right now ... I'm on maternity leave, but I don't have a baby to take care of. Technically, I guess you could call me a housewife, but the to-do list around the house is pretty much complete and I'm not supposed to be spending all day on my feet anyway. In truth, I feel LAZY, not to mention a little bit guilty. My husband gets up and leaves for work everyday and I get all set for my day of ... well, not a lot. I know I should be enjoying this time and feel lucky that I have the chance to rest and nap at will since I won't be able to do that again for who knows how long, but it's definitely something I'm struggling with.

I will say that it's nice to have time to cook dinner each night and it makes me feel good to send my husband off to work with leftovers for lunch. Having the time to read again also makes me wish I had renewed my Martha Stewart Living subscription, because now that I have time to be domestic (which I LOVE), it would be fun to have some new ideas to run with. I did subscribe to Cookie today so that will be a fun addition to my reading mix!

The baby seems very content to be hanging out in utero for the time being. I continue to have warm up contractions, but certainly nothing serious or consistent. One of my friends today asked me when I would want the baby to arrive if I had control and I honestly don't know ... we're of course excited to meet the baby, but I also know I'm not due for just over two weeks. I also like the idea of holding (although not delivering!) a bigger baby versus a tiny peanut so that's an argument for wanting it to hang out inside a while longer. And does it matter what I think? I know I've learned that it absolutely doesn't, so wishful thinking or not, this one is going to arrive when he or she decides its the right time :-)

Getting bigger by the day

2009-06-30T08:41:00.007-04:00

At 37 weeks and 4 days, this baby is getting bigger and bigger! Here are today's photo shoot results ...

Standard profile shot:

Craddling the little one :-)

I think the belly looks a little more impressve without the tanktop ...

One more craddling shot:

Last one - frontal belly shot! You can tell from the shine that the poor thing is STRETCHED.

All's quiet in Queensbury

2009-06-29T13:31:00.002-04:00

We had our third trip to the Snuggery at Glens Falls Hospital on Friday, but left still pregnant just a short couple of hours later. Let me back up to Friday's doctor's appointment ...

We went in for our 4pm appointment and I felt fine, but I did notice that maybe I was a bit dehydrated - it had been HOT and when I'm busy, I have the bad habit of not drinking quite as much water as I should. Anyway, they weighed me and I had put on 3 pounds in a week. This I just couldn't understand because I haven't been eating anything crazy (or in large quantities). Then my blood pressure was a bit higher than usual. This, combined with the fact that the midwife could leave dents in my legs when pushing on my shins was not adding up to a super positive conclusion.

It seems that the weight gain and dents could be explained by the fact that my legs and feet were a bit swollen (technically called edema). To make sure that I wasn't experiencing preeclampsia, the midwife asked us to go over to the hospital to run some additional tests. All of my odd symptoms, including the higher than usual blood pressure, could be explained by dehydration, but better safe than sorry. The midwife I saw threatened that depending on the results of the tests, I may be put back on bed rest. Not to be dramatic or anything, but this sent a chill down my spine. Bed rest, again? ARGH ...

So we went to the hospital, where I hydrated, peed in a cup, had blood taken, and was strapped to a fetal heart monitor and contractions monitor for a couple of hours. Luckily, at the end of the non-stress tests, the conclusion was that I must have just been a bit dehydrated and that I needed to be taking it easier and resting more with my feet up. NO BED REST :-) But my lesson has been learned: I may not be on bed rest, but I'm also nine months pregnant and my body is not up for going and going and going for all of my waking hours. So rest more I am!

In fact, starting last night, I have been feeling the same lethargic and exhausted feeling that I felt during my first trimester. Even well hydrated with my feet up, I'm pooped. I've taken one nap today while trying to read a book, and I have a feeling that it won't be my last! Since I've heard this can happen near the end, I'm going to take several peoples' advice and take advantage of my downtime and ability to sleep uninterrupted whenever I feel like it. The house is clean, the to-do list is pretty much done, and I don't want my ankles to turn to cankles!

Already Thursday?!

2009-06-25T14:58:00.002-04:00

Now that I'm back on my feet again and filling my days with things that I have been putting off for a while (or at least the 3.5 weeks I was off my feet and was forced to put them off), time is flying! I thought being a housewife and professional nester until the baby comes would mean that time would continue to crawl along at a snail's pace, but the opposite has been true. Somehow, I'm 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow, and while I've made good progress on my list, there's definitely still work to be done!

At 4am, there were 15 minutes when I thought I was going into labor, and instead of feeling nervous, I became super excited. I woke up with some pretty intense cramps and my stomach hard as a rock. Now, I did have to pee (surprise, surprise) and I know a full bladder can cause a contraction, but after using the bathroom, my cramps stayed. They went away, and came back again, 5 minutes after I had woken up; went away again, and back in another 5. Holy crap. Contractions five minutes apart? Now this must mean something serious.

Or so I thought. After the third one, they went away and didn't return again so I went back to sleep and slept in until almost 8. Damn.

Tonight we have our Tot Savers class so hopefully we'll be a little more knowledgable and ready for the little one, and those inevitable injuries, to come.

And since it's 86 degrees and humid, I do want to note several things that I am thankful for today:

Central Air
Real fruit popsicles - YUM
Having a pool, even though I've yet to get in it this year. I'm going to go check the chemicals now and see where we're at. The water temp was 80 when I looked this morning and I'm sure it's warmer than that now so it's time to take the cover off and enjoy it!

Working on my to-do list

2009-06-22T15:34:00.003-04:00

By the lack of posts over the past several days, it may be obvious that I have been back on my feet again, and therefore, not on my computer!

I learned very quickly on my first day off bed rest that I am now very much out of shape, resulting in a seriously sore back at night. Without a doubt, my belly has grown over the last (at this point) almost four weeks and my back muscles are no longer used to lugging the baby around! So my back isn't that happy with me, but the rest of me is super excited to have my freedom again and to have some time to get the house back in order. Well, hopefully we don't end up having too much time ...

Friday was a great day. My mom came over and we hit Target and TJ Maxx to buy some odds and ends, both for the baby's room and around the house. The rain held off long enough for us to enjoy a relaxing lunch outside in downtown Glens Falls, NY (Gourmet Cafe), and then we came back to the house where my mom helped us catch up on laundry and I surrendered to the couch for a bit because my 3.5 weeks of nothing were catching up with me. I ended the day with a great pedicure and then my husband and I cooked an easy dinner - me with heavy eyelids and an aching back. I think I was in bed by 9 ... I clearly overdid it, but it felt great nonetheless.

Saturday we had our birthing class, taught by a 33 year veteran labor and delivery nurse who may have been a bit older, but man was she feisty! She wasted no time beating around the bush (no pun intended) when it came to getting into the nitty gritty details of labor and delivery. My husband and I both learned a lot and the class was a LOT less scary than I thought it was going to be. I mean, there are definitely some not very pleasant activities in our near future, but I just keep thinking of the little one and I get so excited for the big day to come!

We celebrated Father's day by going out to one of our favorite breakfast places - Papa's Diner in Queensbury (I wish there was a link available for this little gem!) - followed by working on the nursery. It's getting close ... it really just needs some wall decorations and the rocking chair. And in our bedroom, the cradle is made, the mobile is attached, and the baby monitor is charged. Today I packed the hospital bag and continued to pick up around here a bit to get the house back in order, but I wish we could pull out a crystal ball and know when this little one was going to come ... obviously not possible, but oh it would be nice! I'm so anal that sometimes it drives me nuts, but I think this is more about being excited than trying to be super organized. When you're little and waiting for Christmas to come, at least you know the day and can count down the days leading up to the 25th. Now we wake up each day and today could be the day or ... maybe not. Or each night I go to bed wondering whether tonight will be the night the contractions wake me up. I don't like to admit to being impatient ... I think it's more a matter of I can't control any of this. Patience!!

Itchy mama

2009-06-17T11:35:00.003-04:00

I swear this little one likes to keep things interesting! This morning I woke up with an incredibly itchy abdomen, and after a shower, I could see that my stomach had little red bumps all over it. A rash for no reason ... great. So I called the doctor's office, again - they really should be on speed dial at this point - and I learned that random belly rashes can happen during pregnancy. Good to know. Luckily, the itchiness has subsided, but if it returns, I now know that I can take over the counter benedryl and can apply a prescription cream that I need to go pick up from CVS. I also now have another doctor's appointment on Friday to make sure that it's going away/gone, and if it's not, then they want to see it. Good grief!

The great news is that tomorrow is my last day of bed rest - HOORAY!!!

The little one is jumping on my bladder as I type so I'm taking that as my hint to wrap up this short post ... itchy mama out.

Thoughts on pregnancy

2009-06-16T14:33:00.004-04:00

When my friend Katie was up visiting last week, she asked me how I felt about being pregnant. I found it to be such an interesting question because to me, the answer is obvious: I absolutely love being pregnant. Even with the ups and downs, of which we've had our share, it's such a unique, incredible experience. One that doesn't compare to anything else and that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Of course, last summer's miscarriage totally changed pregnancy for me. It took away the innocent/ignorant bliss of the first trimester and replaced it with a scared tension. Every day I would wake up and wonder if we'd be pregnant when I went to bed. I worried constantly, and the changes my body went through didn't make me feel much better because those had all happened the time before and obviously that hadn't ended well. My husband and I would talk about our nerves, and each trip to the doctor would have me in the waiting room with sweaty palms and higher blood pressure than usual. Even into the second and third trimester, basically whenever we had a milestone that could show that something was gravely wrong (for example, ultrasounds), I was a nervous mess. Even yesterday when we went in, the baby was super active and moving all over the womb when the midwife was checking the heartbeat, so the heartbeat was high and I could tell it was higher than she liked. It settled down when the acrobatics settled down, but for 30 LONG seconds, we held our breath and I imagined the worst. And then there's bed rest, combined with the stress of preterm labor ...

Yeah, we've had our challenges for sure, but none of that changes how I feel about this little one or how I get a rush every time he or she gets the hiccups. Or what it feels like to be able to see, touch, and experience the baby karate chopping my insides, or jump roping on my bladder. It's unbelievable ... and I think all of the stress and all of the nerves actually make the positives that much sweeter and this overall experience that much more incredible. I love resting my arms across the top of my belly and having the baby push back on them, presumably for being even more squished in there than it needs to be. And I love looking at my belly in the mirror and seeing all of the vasculature that has come up to the surface of my skin. No, I don't feel sexy and I never did throughout the pregnancy, but that doesn't bother me one bit. I love being pregnant because I love our baby and every experience, both positive and negative, is a blessing as long as this one comes out healthy. And assuming labor and delivery doesn't scar me for life, yes, I'm looking forward to doing it all over again.

Two more full days of bed rest and then the restrictions are lifted! I've started to make my to-do list, but I also feel a lot less stressed about getting it done than 3 weeks ago. The past 20 days have left me with a weird sense of calm, and I say weird because I typically love to-do lists and being as organized as I can be. And maybe part of it is that bed rest hasn't left me having a ton of energy, but I don't feel stressed about getting things done before the baby gets here anymore. I'm just excited for my husband and I to become parents and bring this little one home. We'll figure the rest out as it happens ...

Checkbook has been found!

2009-06-13T15:02:00.002-04:00

My husband just walked in with the HSA checkbook - it was also in his truck.

I'm nearly 100 percent positive that the expense check is not in the truck.

I do feel a little better though :-)

An unsatisfied control freak

2009-06-13T14:27:00.004-04:00

Two and a half weeks into bed rest and I'm frustrated. I feel like I have lost control of my house, which pushes my sanity right to the limits. We've had lots of wonderful help in and out of the house, which has been great and we appreciate every single person that has cooked a meal, done a load of laundry, watered my flowers, etc, but admittedly I'm a bit of a control freak - I've blogged about this before - and the fact that I haven't been able to take care of our house myself has resulted in key items being misplaced. My husband asked me this morning where my car keys were - they aren't in my purse and therefore I have no idea. The HSA checkbook? Also MIA. The expense check from Make a Wish from the last wish I worked on that needs to be deposited? No idea.

I realize that may sound like a short list of things to not have a clue as to where they are, but to me the combination of the three, most likely combined with pregnancy hormones, has me feeling like I have no control of my house/life right now. I know my most important job at the moment is to keep this little one cooking, and thankfully it's stayed put so far, but I am definitely feeling the stress and anxiety that disorganization gives me. YUCK.

My husband just walked in with my car keys. He found them in his truck ...

Ignorance is bliss

2009-06-12T10:18:00.002-04:00

As of today, I'm 35 weeks pregnant so only a week more of bed rest to go! I've been a bit crampy this morning, but nothing too consistent so I'm hopeful that a hospital visit is not in our future for today. So far, so good!

I've been wanting to cover the topic of cord blood banking and newborn screening for a while, but it's a pretty hefty topic to tackle (in my opinion), which has left the task daunting. I think what makes it so hefty is that we now have these expanded options (at a cost, and some of the costs are quite significant), so if you knowingly have the option and opt out of this extra security or knowledge, what does that say about you? This is the battle that I have personally struggled with. For example, you can bank your baby's cord blood and keep it just in case a genetic condition is diagnosed. Now, my understanding is that most cord blood isn't even beneficial for the actual child, but potentially siblings or other family members ... so do you take out this extra insurance policy, for thousands of dollars, just in case?

And then there's newborn screening. We live in New York, a state that tests for quite a few rare diseases (I believe 50 in total), but there are four that are not screened for. So do we pay the extra $250 for those four diseases, that are SUPER rare and without treatment options? They aren't even recommended by the March of Dimes (NY does test for all of those, and some extras), so who is the organization that is saying they should be screened for? I honestly don't know. It was something the cord blood banking company threw at me when I told them we weren't going to bank our baby's cord blood. And why didn't they bring up this option before we had made that decision? Then it seemed like they were just trying to sell me something, anything, and it felt like going to Babies R Us and being told I needed a diaper wipe warmer (by the way, I don't think we need one and don't have one, nor want one) and if you don't get one, you're a bad mom. Sales people are sales people.

Ugh.

Our decision has been no to both, in part because it was honestly too much to think about! Now this may sound lazy, but there are so many other things that need to be researched and learned during this 9 month period and I honestly found it overwhelming to add one more thing. And due to the multiple thousands of dollars of costs associated with cord blood banking and storage, I didn't think it was a decision that we should make without doing our homework. And certainly, not everyone can afford to do this, so what does that say about our healthcare system and our society, if it is so important?

And what if something happens to our child or maybe the next kid and we could have made a difference by taking out, what is essentially, this extra insurance policy? Then I will feel incredibly guilty, but from what I've heard, guilt and parenthood are two words that go together often.

Pictures - finally!!

2009-06-10T08:21:00.008-04:00

I spent an extra 30 seconds on my feet this morning, added a swipe of mascara, and did a quick photo shoot with my husband. After nearly 5 weeks of no pics, here's documentation of 34 weeks and 5 days!

Straight up profile shot of the little one in there ...

Cradling to try to give size a little more perspective (because I think it still looks smaller in pics) ...

View from the front...

The closest I'm getting to naked on the Internet while 8.5 months pregnant...

As you can see, I had my hair chopped right before bed rest started. When I actually spend some time with it and blow dry, it doesn't look like a "mom" haircut, but I didn't even shower this morning so it is what it is for now!

Based on these pics, boy or girl?

Junk food = health food?

2009-06-09T13:59:00.006-04:00

I'm going to define health food as food that makes me feel better ... today, for me it's been mac and cheese (homemade at least - thank you honey!), pudding, and Cape Cod reduced fat potato chips. Now I do realize that this was not the best lunch, but I am feeling MUCH better so I'm not going to worry about it. I promise to eat veggies before the day is done.

In other news, I'm starting to feel a lot more ready for the baby to come! I don't know if having the time to watch NUMEROUS episodes of TLC's A Baby Story has had any impact, but whatever the change, I'll take it.

The healthcare factory

2009-06-09T08:45:00.003-04:00

Due to the preterm labor, I now go to my OBGYN practice every week and yesterday was that day. I always see a nurse first, who checks my urine for protein and sugar, weighs me (I lost two pounds - but probably really only a pound because it was the first appointment to which I've worn shorts and a tanktop), checks blood pressure and the fetal heartbeat (160 yesterday - the highest it's been). It's a quick interaction and then we see whoever is scheduled to check me - either a doctor (not very often) or a midwife.

Yesterday I saw a doctor, whom I saw two weeks prior, pre any preterm labor symptoms. Now, I realize that I haven't seen her since I've been to the hospital twice, but all of this information is in my chart. After she asked me how I was feeling, she asked me if I was familiar with the signs of preterm labor ... um, do you think you could at least look at the chart before walking into the room? I think it shows just how you have to be your own advocate when it comes to the healthcare system, because many practices are run like poorly run businesses - no one really has any responsibility or accountability for me. This frustrates my husband to no end, and while I certainly do not find it comforting or reassuring, I've accepted it. They see too many people every single day to remember me or care. It's such a bummer that many practices have turned into this, but I guess healthcare would be even more expensive if that wasn't the case. How do you fix it? I wish I had the answer to that question ...

I did confirm with the doctor that as soon as I hit 36 weeks, the bed rest restrictions are lifted. Her answer, absolutely. As soon as we get to 36 weeks, all bets are off. To prep for that, I'm going to make a brow wax appointment and pedicure appointment for next Friday - now fingers crossed that we make it that long! I've felt "off" since I woke up this morning so I'm hoping that doesn't mean we end up in the hospital again later. Hopefully it's just the change in weather that's contributing to that feeling - instead of bright and sunny, it is dark and rainy. The little one is moving around as I type so that's a good thing, and I'm pounding my water and not breaking any of the bed rest rules. I'm doing what I can, now I just hope this little one does what it needs to do and just stays cooking!

Hospital visit #2

2009-06-05T09:12:00.004-04:00

Today I'm 34 weeks, which is a big milestone as far as preterm deliveries go in our area. From here on out, we should be good to go to deliver at our local hospital instead of Albany as the baby should be big and mature enough to be dealt with in Glens Falls. Phew! Now ideally we will make it another couple of weeks, at least, but not having to head to Albany (an hour away) is certainly progress.

Back to the reason for the title of this post ... Wednesday evening, all was fine and normal until about 9:45 when I started to feel crampy again and something just wasn't right. The cramps were different than last week, they weren't as well defined I guess I would say and I thought that I might have just been having some GI issues. Our instructions are to wait an hour if I have cramping before calling the doctor's office so I told my husband I wasn't feeling great and we started the clock. After an hour, I didn't feel much better, so I spoke with a nurse and she recommended that we wait another hour, just in case it was GI after all. In the next hour, I noticed another change - my stomach was getting hard as a rock every once in a while. We were guessing that these were contractions and I was feeling my uterus (which takes up my entire mid-section at this point) contract. Boo. So just before midnight, we headed into the hospital to get checked, again, for preterm labor and see what next steps were.

On the way to the hospital, I was so nervous my arms and legs were both shaking like crazy. There were a few reasons for my nerves ... the first being that we both knew this baby was not ready to come out and breath on its own yet. The second was I honestly thought that as long as I did nothing for three weeks, that we would breeze through bed rest so this was a curve ball. And I think the final reason for being nervous is I still don't feel like I've properly nested and part of me just doesn't feel ready to bring a baby home yet (we didn't even have mattress pads for the cradle on Wednesday! They came yesterday ...). So here I was shaking like a leaf as my husband drove the ~4 miles into the hospital. Luckily it's a short drive.

We arrived and they hooked me up to the fetal heart and contraction monitors. The heart beat sounded great (yay!) so baby was fine, and they weren't seeing my contractions on the monitor, but they could feel them with their hands (when my stomach would get hard) so I was repositioned and monitored for a while longer. The midwife also checked to see how dilated I was. Luckily, only 2cm again, so that hadn't progressed. With my legs out straight and laying on my back, the contractions became much more obvious on the machine, and at about 2 in the morning, they decided to give me a shot of terbutaline to stop the contractions because they were not chilling out on their own. I felt the effects of the shot almost immediately - my stomach relaxed, but in addition, I felt extremely jittery and my heart rate increased by a ton and I could feel it beating in my ears. I was warned this could happen, so it didn't freak me out, but it certainly wasn't super comfy either. Oh well, as long as the little one was okay.

While I was uncomfortable in the hospital bed (they are terrible, you would think they could be a bit more comfortable!), my husband became familiar with the pull out bed from the chair in the room. Luckily he had thought to pack a bag while I was on the phone with the nurse before we came into the hospital so he had comfy clothes to sleep in and we both were able to take out our contacts. We forgot the toothbrush - next time! Speaking of which, we should probably get a bag packed since we don't know when this is actually going to happen ...

After a fitful night of not much sleep, but thankfully no more contractions, a shift change occurred and I think we may have been forgotten for a while. I got up to use the bathroom at some point and felt my stomach get rock hard again. Damn. I was worried they would make us stay forever since that happened, but since it wasn't accompanied by any sort of cramping, they finally let us go just before 11. I couldn't wait to come home, crawl into bed, and catch up on some sleep!

We learned a valuable lesson though - the hospital has wireless.

So now I'm back on the couch, with a somewhat revised bed rest attitude. I'm now open to the possibility that we may need to head back to the hospital many more times before 36 weeks to shut down the process, and that this is okay. Hopefully it doesn't happen, but it's totally possible. And I also need to get more comfortable with the fact that I may not get to nest anymore before this baby comes, and that has to be okay. Yesterday morning when we were in the hospital, we heard a newborn baby cry and my husband and I both looked at each other and said, "awww ..." That baby sounded so new, small and absolutely precious. Having nested or not, I hope we are great parents.

Day 7 - Time is flying!

2009-06-03T09:08:00.002-04:00

Well we tried to take a new profile picture this morning, but I quickly learned it's hard to look cute while on bed rest. My hair was still wet from the shower (no blow drying these days), I didn't have any makeup on (that's hard to justify right now) and in general, the cuteness factor was just really low. So, since basically no one is seeing me these days, here's what you need to know: the baby is growing so my belly is bigger! We're going to try and take another picture tonight when my hair is dry as we do want to document all of this for the little one to see someday!

We're seven days into bed rest, and to be honest, it hasn't been that bad. Of course it's not thrilling by any means, but I was shocked to realize this morning that this was day 7. One week is almost done!

So how am I spending my days? I'm a huge fan of to-do lists - I like the organization that it imparts on my life and I love to be able to check off tasks I've accomplished. In fact, I enjoy the crossing off so much that sometimes I'll add items to the list after I've done them just so that I can cross them off. I'm super anal and I know it. So I've made a list and I do a few things everyday. Of course I could probably accomplish everything in an hour if I just ran down the list, but I like dragging it out as I know I have plenty of time on my hands and it's nice to feel like I've accomplished a little something each day. Today it's renegotiating our home owner's insurance and calling to remove the business features from our phone. Holy moly Wednesday's a big day!

Probably the biggest change that I'm still getting used to is having maternity leave start very abruptly. We went into the doctor's office on Monday for a check up, where we were told that I really shouldn't be doing any work at this point. I hadn't been doing a ton since I went on bed rest anyway because it is hard to type while laying down (I'm propped up on the couch to blog - shhh), but it's also weird to just stop working and transition everything immediately. Work is typically such a big part of daily life (lots of to-do lists there!) and it's done for now ... in a way, I'm thankful for the abrupt transition as I think it actually makes it easier from a number of perspectives, but it's still an adjustment. I'd like to say I'm excited about daytime TV, but in truth, I find it to be pretty terrible. I don't like Oprah (sorry, but I find her annoying, although I do respect her influence) and the Today Show absolutely goes to hell as soon as Kathy Lee and Hoda come on. Thank God for DVR, Netflix, a laptop, and lots of good books!

I did get sucked into A Baby Story on TLC yesterday and I discovered that I might be a bit more hormonal than I used to be. Well first, the delivery process freaked me out more than it ever has in the past. That's for obvious reasons ... that could be us in a little over two weeks and the lady looked absolutely MISERABLE ... but the other part that threw me off was that I got completely choked up when the baby came out and they put it on the mom's chest and the parents started to get emotional. I have NO background on this family (I turned the show on after they did that part) nor a connection to their little one, but my eyes were filled with tears and I had to take a deep breath for sure. I'm not usually a very emotional person, but for the first time, I started thinking about how emotional of a process this may be. I'm so excited and nervous at the same time and he or she is going to be here before we know it! It's going to be great.

Bed rest - day 1

2009-05-28T17:27:00.003-04:00

If you had told me yesterday morning that today I would be limited to just getting up to use the bathroom, I wouldn't have believed you. But 24 hours ago, my next three weeks took an abrupt change.

Yesterday began like any other day. I woke up and went for a swim at the YMCA and then began my work day. My back was sore, but I had gone for a long walk on Tuesday and my desk chair has not been feeling super comfy so that was easily explained. What I couldn't explain was the cramping that I started to feel around 3:30 in the afternoon, which wasn't seeming to go away, so I called my doctor's office and they recommended I go in and get checked to make sure I wasn't experiencing preterm labor. This scared me, but I really just assumed we were being over cautious, and hey, better safe than sorry!

So I called my husband who was on the road for work, but en route home at least, and left him a voicemail that I was going into the hospital to get checked out. I was annoyed that his phone had gone straight to voicemail and planned to have a talk with him about how he couldn't let his battery die anymore since we were getting kind of close to being parents ... but then he called me back when I was in the waiting room at the Glens Falls Snuggery and let me know it was just a fluke and his phone never rang. Another reason to get rid of the Palm Treo. It doesn't always ring, freezes, it doesn't always sync, in general, it sucks. But I digress ...

The nurse came and got me from the waiting room and brought me to a room where I had to change into a gurney (so stylish) and pee in a cup. I did as I was told and then waited to be examined by the midwife on duty. When she came in, I immediately felt relieved because it was my favorite midwife from the practice. She's kind, but not too bubbly; honest and to the point, but with a great bedside manner. During her exam, she looked at me and said, "well, I'm very glad you came in to get checked out because you're 2 cm dilated." Ok, not so relieved anymore.

At less than 36 weeks (I'll be 33 weeks tomorrow), I should definitely not be dilated because that baby shouldn't be anywhere close to thinking about making its entry into the world. She explained that our number one priority now is for me to stay pregnant for at least another three weeks, so I would likely have to be on bedrest. How restrictive that would be would depend on the doctor's ruling and that we needed to wait for. So while we waited, they monitored me for contractions, which I was having (hence the cramping), and I was told to drink a ton of water and chill with terrible television. In the meantime, my husband arrived - thank God! - and we watched the news and waited to see how bad my jail sentence would be. I was still pretty freaked out at this point because our 7 weekends left was likely going to be less, and that to-do list I wanted to accomplish? Well, I was probably not going to be allowed to touch it. So not only will we be parents sooner than expected most likely, but I wouldn't be allowed to nest to help prepare for that ... to me, that felt like a HUGE yikes.

After chilling at the hospital for almost 2 hours, my contractions pretty much went away and I received my sentence. Level 3 bedrest (Level 4 is staying in the hospital) so no driving, no cooking, no cleaning, no shopping, no more than doing one level of stairs per day (one up and one down), and basically don't get up unless I have to use the bathroom. Rationally, I'm fine with all of this because all I want is a healthy baby. And it's only three weeks because that's how long we have until I'm 36 weeks. Irrationally, being told I can't nest definitely freaks me out, and in general, I'm just really terrible at relying on others to take care of me or my to-do list. It bugs me and I'm bad at doing nothing. But, obviously I will.

So why did this happen? Who knows. Sometimes it just does, and in my case, they have no idea why. Maybe having a super active weekend contributed to it? Maybe taking a long walk on Tuesday did? But who knows ... the fact is, it did happen and now we have a new plan to ensure that the little one comes out when it's ready to live in this world. And it's totally possible, although I don't believe probable, that I go full term too, or maybe even late! So I could be 41 weeks pregnant and cursing the heat and humidity on July 24 that I'm still pregnant. Or we could have a baby in just over 3 weeks ... only time will tell!

In the meantime, I am constantly reminded of how awesome my husband is. After the hospital last night, he went to the grocery store with a list and came home with all of those things and a huge bouquet of flowers :-) And then today he's been an absolute gem. Getting me breakfast in bed, setting me up on the couch with lots of snacks, drinks, etc all within arms reach, coming home to get me lunch ... and I know the list will just get longer and longer. He is a rockstar and will be a GREAT dad.

32.5 week update - um, the baby's coming soon

2009-05-26T20:06:00.006-04:00

You may have to squint a bit, but if you do, you'll see the profile of our little one's face. He/she was feeling a bit dramatic when its picture was taken because the blob on the forehead is one of his/her hands. The baby was not being very cooperative last Monday when we went in for our ultrasound so the pics aren't nearly as good as last time (so I'm only posting one), but the important thing is that everything looked great!

The point of the ultrasound was to determine why I was measuring big. It turns out that I was back to measuring on track when I went in last Monday so it was a bit for not, but it was great (and comforting) to see the baby again since everything was looking great! The little one was head's down, and will likely stay that way until the big day. It weighed about 4 pounds, 3 ounces, and if it stays on the same growth path and arrives on time (both HUGE variables), then we're looking at a baby between 8 and 8.5 pounds upon arrival. We shall see what actually ends up happening!

7.5 weeks out and all of a sudden, it feels as if the baby is going to be here before we know it. So what does that mean? Holy crap do we have a lot to do ... And how do we get our to-do list done while also making sure that we're making the most of our time as dual income no kids doing random things and having fun? This past weekend, for example, was super productive. My husband had a bachelor party in Boston on Saturday night so Saturday and Sunday morning I worked on the nursery. All the baby laundry is done and we can now see the floor of the nursery again, with everything as organized and set up as it could be at this point. We have a dresser and rocker coming so once those arrive, we'll be able to figure out how we want the room exactly set up and can finish decorating from there. Anyway, that was big progress. Then I worked on my husband's MESS of an office. It's never been organized and doesn't have the right furniture to even get that way, but we ordered bookshelves yesterday and hopefully will make headway on that at the end of this week. Then yesterday was yard work and catching up around here. We also had our life insurance physical in the morning - so yeah, it was a jam-packed productive weekend, but part of me also felt like we totally missed an opportunity yesterday to just say f-it and make the most of a day of fantastic weather and just enjoy each other's company because we don't have many of those opportunities left when we're not worrying about someone else too. We did go out to breakfast at Papa's, which was definitely fun, but I worry about striking the right balance. I guess I always have to worry about something.

Random note: The baby is totally chilling on the right side of my abdomen right now - what a cutie - except for the fact that this is its favorite place to hang out, and as a result, has opened up a joint in my sacrum so I have ridiculous shooting pains every once in a while. Good thing I'm totally in love with the little monkey so the pain somehow seems like a friendly reminder that the little one is getting bigger and bigger and is getting ready to meet us. The kicks - not painful luckily - are also getting ridiculous! I can see my entire stomach move when it goes crazy in there and the limbs are very prominent at times, as hard spots lying just below the skin.

This post is a bit all over the place, which I think is indicative of my current mental state. Depending on the moment, I'm super excited, scared, full of energy, or tired. Wanting to do nothing or wanting to do everything at the same time. Maybe I'm a mess, or maybe I'm just 32.5 weeks pregnant.

The home stretch

2009-05-14T07:34:00.006-04:00

I'm not sure if there's a definition for the home stretch in pregnancy, but if there is, I think I'm in it. Tomorrow makes 31 weeks down (I'm 30 in the pic below) -- nine to go! A big difference between now and when I last posted is what I can feel when the baby is moving around now. Before, I could just feel general movements of a "blob" inside of me (said with much love of course), but that has progressed to being able to feel discrete "hard" parts. I can't tell what they are, but I make fun guesses. A smaller hard part sticking out of my stomach may be a heel, or maybe an elbow. A larger hard part could be the back, butt, or maybe even the head. I know my guesses could be completely off, but this progression makes the baby feel even more real and its arrival that much more imminent. There's a real human in there! We can't wait to meet him or her :-)

Two weeks ago, we were in Florida ... sigh. In fact, two weeks ago from today we were headed out to a snorkeling trip at Captain Slate's in Key Largo, which was probably the highlight of our trip! Our babymoon was just what we needed. The first word that comes to mind is relaxing. It was lowkey, filled with lots of sleep, good food, and quality time with each other (something we had been low on due to ridiculous work schedules!).

Our first stop was Singer Island, where we spent three nights. The temperature was pretty much perfect while we were there, but the wind made it tough to really enjoy the beach. Of course that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves, and it was great to see our friend Charlotte while we were there too! Another highlight was a visit to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno, where we got to hang out with several recovering sea turtles -- I think this guy was namesd Carlisle.

From Singer Island, it was off to the Keys, where we fell in love with the pace, the scenery and snorkeling! Probably the one downside was how much good food we did eat, which had repercussions ... I had a doctor's appointment the Monday after our return where I found out I had gained 4 pounds over the previous two weeks. FOUR POUNDS. Gross. That is so many calories, and I'm the first to admit that the baby didn't grow that much. So it was a bit of a yikes, but I'm trying to remember it was well worth it. I may have another pound or two to work off after the baby comes, but I enjoyed every bite and the key lime pie at the Key Largo Conch House was fantastic!

For a final baby update, my shower is this weekend and I'm SO excited. It'll be great to see my family and friends and celebrate the arrival of our little one! And then on Monday, it's back to the doctor's office for our check up (every two weeks at this point) with an ultrasound to check out the little guy or girl. At my last two checkups, I've measured just a little bit big for how far along I've been so they're going to check out the baby and make sure that all is well and normal. I'm excited to see the baby, and I know my husband is too - after all, it's been 11 weeks since we've seen the little one - but I'm also trying not to be nervous. More than likely, all is fine and this is just normal me, the baby or a combo of the two, but we want more than anything for this baby to be healthy and the thought that something could be wrong does freak me out a bit. I'm trying to focus on the positive. More to come, including new baby pics, on Monday!

27 weeks!

2009-04-21T08:53:00.005-04:00

As promised, here's an updated profile pic (27 weeks and 2 days). 13 more to go!

My husband insists that it looks much bigger in person. I think I agree. And this may have to be one of the last pics where I wear one of these tank tops. They're getting a bit short in the front!

Sugar Mama

2009-04-20T19:03:00.003-04:00

At 27 weeks, now was the time to get the famously awful glucose test - for which now I know why it's famously awful. For those that don't know what this is, it's a test for gestational diabetes, which I've read between 2 and 5 percent of pregnant women get.

I went in for my test at 8am this morning, after eating a slice of whole wheat toast and scrambled eggs, per the midwife's orders. I didn't know what to expect, as at that point in time, I hadn't heard much about the test and hadn't done any research. I went in, drank a highly concentrated sugar solution (basically tasted liked concentrated Kool-Aid, so not ideal, but palatable), read a book for an hour and then took blood samples and I was free to go home.

During the hour of reading, I felt like I was on a bit of a sugar high, but nothing crazy. And when I got home, I thought everything was fine. I even tweeted that that was the case. Until then, the weirdest thing that had happened was that the baby was going CRAZY. It was moving around, punching/kicking, having what I think might have been hiccups, and moved for about 4 hours straight. The poor thing was probably on a major sugar high, but I always like to feel the baby move so I didn't stop to think about it much.

Then the crash happened. And oh my, did I crash. I went from feeling fine to super nauseous and tired with a terrible headache. I tried to work for a while, but my computer screen was making me want to puke. I kept drinking lots of water, had a couple slices of pizza (it's what I wanted - go figure!) and then took a nap on the couch. When I woke up this afternoon, I could get back to work, but even now I still feel off. Which makes me wonder ... what the hell is in that drink? With my sweet tooth, I'm not afraid of some sugar. On multiple occasions I have eaten a four pack of Cadbury Eggs and not felt anything close to this. And when you think of that ooey-gooey deliciousness and the amount of sugar that must be in four eggs ... if I hadn't had a sugar overload today I would be salivating now as those eggs are my absolute favorite candy ... but either that glucose drink is an absolute sugar bomb, or maybe it's laced with a tiny bit of crack.

Update profile pic to come! Time seems to be flying ... and the belly has certainly grown. The baby should be ~15" long now and about 2 pounds.

Oh, and the babymoon begins on SATURDAY. That's four days away. First stop will be Singer Island, FL, where we're staying at the Hilton Singer Island Oceanfront Resort and then off to the Hilton Key Largo Resort. Reviews of the hotels to come next week, along with pictures and stories of what I hope will be our fabulous trip of rest and relaxation in heavenly weather ...

Names - yikes

2009-04-05T18:52:00.002-04:00

I've come to the conclusion that naming your unborn child is about as big a decision as you can make. It's nearly as big as deciding to have a child to begin with, as both decisions have lifelong, lasting repercussions. How many funny nick names can you think of? What does it rhyme with? Think Seinfeld and body parts ... yeah, it's complicated. Dolores is out, don't worry.

We've had a boy name that we've really liked for about a month - and please don't bother to ask what it is because we're not telling. As part of this tough decision, we quickly learned that everyone has an opinion about just about every name. For that very reason, talking about names with anyone before the baby is born is out. We're going to pick what we like and not hear any stories about how so-and-so knew a so-and-so and that person ended up in jail at the age of 12. No thank you.

So anyway, we've had a boy's first name that we've really liked in our pocket for a while, and then today, we found a girl's first name that we've pretty much fallen in love with. Middle names are TBD still, but at least we're making progress - and who really cares about a middle name anyway? The only purpose that needs to accomplish is that it needs to sound sufficiently important when yelling both first and middle names when the future child is behaving exceptionally badly.

Today was Palm Sunday and my husband and I made the trek to church. Upon walking in, we ran into a friend that I met going through the miscarriage grieving process. At some point following the loss, I realized that I really needed to meet someone else who had been through the same experience and I decided to go to a miscarriage support group at our local hospital. The night I went, there was only one other woman in addition to the nurse. She had just experienced her second miscarriage in four months, and to make life even more complicated, she had a daughter at home whom she couldn't fall apart in front of. We connected at the meeting and have had many coffee dates over the last several months as we've grieved, healed, and grown. She was a lifesaver to me - understanding the dark times and offering just the right words.

I hadn't seen her in a while and it was great to reconnect, if only briefly. The most ironic part was the fact that the priest's sermon today was about suffering, and how when we're going through tough times, we need to surround ourselves with people going through similar experiences to get the support we need. All of this was being said as I sat next to my friend, both of us in much healthier mental states than we were nine months ago when we first met. The other point he made was that without suffering in life, we wouldn't be as compassionate as we are or love as deeply - and we would probably be all too selfish when it came to living life. I agree. I honestly think my husband and I are both better people after last summer, and I'm convinced that last summer's experience will make us better parents this summer. Everything happens for a reason - and speaking of irony, the day I'm due this summer is the same date as the day we found out we miscarried last summer. Hopefully this July 17 ends on a much happier note :-)

Old wives tales about a baby's sex

2009-03-30T12:34:00.002-04:00

Since the fact that we're pregnant has been publicly known, I've heard many rumors and speculation about how to tell the sex of an unborn baby. My rational gut reaction to all of these seemingly silly stories is that everyone has a 50/50 chance of guessing what's growing in my stomach right now. As far as probability goes, 50/50 isn't too shabby. Does that make your story true? Unlikely ... but based on the stories that are out there, it appears I'm more likely to be carrying a girl than a boy.

Fetal heartbeat: Fast heartbeat = girl; slower heartbeat = boy. Now, when I've asked people to define "fast" and "slow", I haven't received concrete numbers, but the fact that our last appointment showed a heartbeat of 155 somehow meant fast and therefore girl. We'll see what Wednesdays numbers end up being.
Linea negra - theory #1: Line on your belly? High estrogen, which means a girl. No line, better paint the nursery blue. I've got a line - guess I'm having a girl.
Linea negra - theory #2: If the line only goes from your pubic bone to your belly button, then it's a girl; if it goes up past your belly button up to your sternum, then it's a boy. My line only goes up to my belly button - girl again!
How you're carrying the baby: This is kind of like the heartbeat and what's denotes "fast", but apparently if you're carrying evenly across your front, onto your sides, it's a girl. Carrying what looks like a basketball on your front, with it ALL out front, it's a boy. The other amazing thing is that experienced mothers are apparently able to tell how you're carrying from a profile pic. Profile = from the side. I personally think I'm carrying all out front (boy), but others have said it's more dispersed than that. Again, according to others, I'm having a girl.
Baby's level of activity: Got a quiet baby in there? Girl. Growing a kick boxer? Boy. Again, so subjective ... maybe it comes with experience, although I can think of plenty of people from both sexes that I could bet on being either active or quiet babies. Looking at the genetic pool we're dealing with (I'm thinking of you honey), I would be SHOCKED if I didn't have an active person growing in there, boy or girl! So yes, I would say we have an active baby - boy? I'm not convinced ...
Penny and the wall: There's something about a penny and the wall and whether it sticks. My pregnant brain is not letting me remember the rest, but we haven't tried to put a penny on the wall anyway so jury's still out.
You just are ...: And then there's my final favorite - "I can just tell." So my mom thinks it's a girl and has since we first said we were pregnant; my mother in law says boy; a friend's mom said girl. And why? Well they can just tell.

I'm sure I'll hear many more theories before July 17 - keep them coming because I find them amusing! If you had asked me several months ago, I would have said definitely a boy (with roots from when we conceived during my cycle), but now I honestly am lacking a gut feeling, probably in part because so many people have told me I'm wrong - you've made me doubt myself! Back to being indecisive.

24 weeks!

2009-03-29T20:46:00.003-04:00

Another weekend, another photo shoot. This one with a picture I'm not embarrassed to post. My husband says my belly looks much smaller in the picture than it does in person. If I wasn't pregnant, I may have taken offense to the comment, but since I am thoroughly in love with my belly and what's inside of it (and so is he!), currently wiggling around and kicking as I type, I'll take it :-)

We're many steps closer to taking a baby moon! After several weeks of both of us working like crazy and feeling like we're involved in a rat race to nowhere, we're both looking forward to seven days of nothing and finally booked our flights. Long walks on the beach, fantastic dinners, and sleeping in. Florida here we come! It's not for another 27 days - yes I'm counting - but I'm sure it'll be here soon and I can't wait. Now we just need hotels and to decide whether we're going to spend the whole time in the Palm Beach area (can't wait to see you Char!) or whether we're going to split our vaca between there and somewhere in the Keys. I go back and forth as to which is the better option, with my pregnancy-induced indecisiveness winning out every time. Whence, no hotel reservations yet, but soon enough.

Time for a mug of tea and then early to bed for me. I've been sick with a cold for almost a week and have yet to have a good night's sleep. It's very necessary at this point! Last night I thought I was good to go until I woke up at 5 starving. And I thought I could ignore the hunger and just fall back asleep, that was until the little one started kicking me. I took its activity as a hint to get up and eat some leftover Annie's mac and cheese. The guilt free eating is a plus ... I'd be lying if I said it wasn't.

More to come later this week! We have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday, but I think it should be fairly uneventful. Even though I just said guilt free eating was fun, I do dread the weigh-in. It's always shocking to see a new heaviest-ever weight!

Easing my way back into blogging

2009-03-23T20:39:00.005-04:00

So I was planning on attaching a picture of me at 23 weeks (taken last night) to this post, but then I saw how bad the pictures look and quickly changed my mind. My husband and I haven't been great about taking weekly pictures of my growing belly, but we attempted to catch up a bit last night and I should have done a better inspection of the results before saying we could end the photo shoot. The result: three pictures in which i look absolutely exhausted, bordering upon haggard. For some reason, I think being tired while pregnant goes straight to my eyes.

Enough complaining though - I said I wouldn't complain this time around about being pregnant, and truth be told, there really hasn't been much to complain about. But if I'm going to be honest with myself, I'm just a bit too vain to post or send out pictures that don't look at least decent!

In the past week, the little one has really started to kick with a vengeance ... it feels amazing. And after many attempts of me calling my husband over to feel a kick - the first 10 or so resulting in an absolutely silent baby as soon as he put his hand on my stomach - he was finally able to feel a solid attack to my mid-section last Friday afternoon. It was such a cool moment to share with him and I would like to think I'll remember his reaction forever. He basically jumped away from me as if he'd experienced an electric shock - but a shock that clearly sent shivers of happiness and awe down his spine. His smile was ear to ear and he bounced around a bit on his feet. It was super cute to say the least.

We're really starting to get excited, and part of me wishes it was July now. On the other hand, like when I realize that we are completely unprepared and don't have a single item in our house that relates to a baby, I'm thankful to have nearly four more months. Now if I can just get over the fact that registering for baby gear sends shivers of fear and angst down my spine, we'll be in a lot better shape. I thought I would love registering, but I have found the process to be completely overwhelming. Since becoming pregnant, my indecisive nature has reached a peak, and with at least 30 options for every single piece of equipment, my poor pregnant brain pretty much shuts down. I also think that having to do so much research to register makes me realize how little I actually know about babies, which is also an overwhelming feeling. Luckily, I have a very rational husband who doesn't seem to be phased in the least and is convinced we'll have no trouble figuring things out as we go. I guess people have been having babies for, well, ever. How hard can it be?

I think I'm going to succumb to tonight's exhaustion. Work is still a frenzied craze of stress and ridiculousness and I'm pooped. Time to catch up on DVR'd television and finish knitting a baby hat for a friend that had an absolutely adorable little girl a couple of weeks ago. Little Stella needs a watermelon hat!

A lot to catch up on ...

2009-03-09T19:05:00.010-04:00

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is an ultrasound image of a little baby at 20 weeks - and she/he is ours! Clearly, we have a lot to catch up on.

After I posted my last post, I decided that I couldn't blog anymore for a while. I needed to let trying take its course, and try not to obsess. This second part was a near impossibility, and blogging about trying certainly wasn't the distraction I was looking for. So I decided to lay low and use a written journal while I continued to grieve for the little one we lost.

Fast forward several weeks later to a Sunday morning in November when we found out we were pregnant again. While we were excited, we knew our attitude about this pregnancy was going to be different than the last time. Gone were the insanely happy moments - I was filled with trepidation and fear. I wanted more than anything to wish away the first trimester and move on to greener (safer) astures. And the blog was no longer anonymous, while anonymous was what we wanted to be ...

Fast forward to the end of the first trimester - YAY - work took a turn toward craziness. So while I was ready to make the news public and blog again, I found myself at a loss for time, and on manydays, energy. And then where to begin again? How retrospective do I want to be?

Well with this post I begin blogging again. As for the second question - I haven't decided, but we'll figure it out together as I go.

The spine was one of my favorite shots from last week's ultrasound. All lit up and looking great!

I'm now 21 weeks - more than halfway done. More to come. I'm back, baby.

Control freak

2008-09-30T09:13:00.003-04:00

While I've known this for a while, probably years, my current situation is highlighting just how much I enjoy trying to control my life. I'm well aware that there is so much in life you can't control, and while I can accept that, it doesn't mean I enjoy it. Having a baby is certainly one of those things you can't control (to a great extent), but I've come to the realization that I compensate for that by trying to control other things in life.

When you're trying to get pregnant, there's a lot of mandatory patience and waiting. There are only two or three days when your body will get pregnant, so in a 28 day cycle, that means there are 25-26 days of waiting. It's during these waiting periods that I try to control everything else. Over the past 24 hours, I have become reobsessed with finishing our house and getting it just right. There's a room on the first floor that needs to be painted, our bedroom needs to be painted, man-land (the basement) needs to be worked on ... and I enjoy diving into all of these projects because I feel happy when I get to control the progress that is involved with completing them. Plus they serve as a much welcome distraction, and I get to feel productive, which I love.

I have wished on numerous occasions that I could feel as happy and content when I'm relaxing as when I'm productive, but honestly that is just not the case. Well that's not exactly true. When we're on vacation, I let myself completely relax and unwind. I LOVE doing nothing on vacation. But typically we're not on vacation so I knit during football games and putter around the house all weekend if we don't have plans. I love the satisfaction of completing a project - and that's why I'm going to take a long lunch break today, head to ACE and get paint chips.

Healing takes time

2008-09-11T17:18:00.003-04:00

I've learned a lot of lessons over the past (almost) two months, one of which is the title of this post. Healing takes time, and for me, it's taken almost a full two months to feel mentally healthy and happy again. It feels so good to wake up in the morning feeling like "me" again, I can't even put that into words! I'm sure there will be times when the sadness creeps up again, and I'll never forget, but I do finally feel at peace. I'm still amazed and astonished how attached you can be to something that you only knew for 12 weeks ... but to say that I wasn't attached, would be a blatant lie.

Another lesson I've learned, or was reminded of I probably should say, is how lucky I am to have amazing family and friends in my life. There were plenty of times when they didn't know what to say, and if I'm honest, there were also times when my loved ones said the wrong things, but they were instrumental in getting me back to my healthy self. My husband is amazing ... in so many ways. He is my best friend and my rock. I love that he can make me laugh, even when all I want to do is cry.

Other lessons I've learned:

I will never ask anyone about their plans for children, not even a best friend. It's all so personal and they will offer the information they feel comfortable offering.
I will be more sensitive when it comes to all things pregnant, for everybody.
I will never again wait 12 weeks to have a first ultrasound.
No matter how wonderful family and friends are, you have to talk to someone who has been through the same experience as you because only they can truly understand what you're going through.
The next time I get pregnant, I have a 1/5 chance of miscarrying, which I like to think of as an 80 percent chance of everything being just fine.
I'm a terrible griever! I love to repress, repress, and then repress some more. BUT, that's pretty much the most unhelpful thing you can do to yourself.

So what's next? Hopefully some good luck and a lot of fun :-) I'm looking forward to not being able to have a glass of wine with dinner, to feeling tired all day long, to having to pee often, and to having a super human sense of smell. I may complain about future pregnancy symptoms every once in a while, but I will feel like the luckiest woman in the world every moment of every day starting the moment I pee on another stick and see two pink lines.

The dark side of pregnancy

2008-07-21T17:30:00.002-04:00

Several days after our 12 week appointment, my heart still hurts a bit, but I feel like my head is pretty much on straight again. Looking back, we hadn't prepped ourselves for the possibility of what the day could bring. We'd envisioned our first baby pictures and hearing the quick heartbeat, but we hadn't considered the possibility of hearing the words: "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't have good news."

About a minute into the ultrasound, we knew that there was trouble. The technician asked two leading questions - had I had any bleeding/spotting? and was I sure about the date of my last period? The answers were no and yes, respectively, but that didn't make things any better. She explained that she needed to get one of the doctors because the baby was only measuring 8 weeks and she couldn't find the heartbeat. It was at that moment that our hearts began to break. I asked her how worried we should be and she rubbed my leg and said that she would return as soon as she could find a doctor. To me, that answered my question as "very much so."

While we waited for her to return, we tried not to freak out, pretty unsuccessfully. The few minutes that passed lasted forever ... finally, the tech returned with an OB/GYN I hadn't met before, who after looking at the ultrasound, confirmed our fears and said those life-changing terrible words. We'd lost the baby.

The next half hour was miserable. We went to the doctor's office, where we discussed the next steps while we tried to hold ourselves together. I would go to the hospital the next day for a d and c procedure, which is basically a cleaning out the uterus. We went through the motions of scheduling the next day's appointment and answering pre-op questions with a nurse. To me, the doctor seemed like a robot. She explained how common miscarriages are, how I probably would have passed the baby this week naturally had we not had our appointment, and how she had had three herself. I say a robot because all of this was explained without emotion or empathy. I realize she can't get emotional as part of her job, but her cold nature made the experience even worse. Luckily, we learned at the end of the discussion that our normal OB/GYN, whom we really like, would be doing the procedure. He came into the room, took my hand and told my husband and I that he would take care of us and that we'd be parents someday. It was those words said with warmth that we needed to hear.

The rest of the day seemed to last forever. We began the arduous task of telling our families and friends that we lost the baby and the emotions were absolutely overwhelming. Thank God we were there together. I can't imagine if Reid had been traveling ... the thought makes me feel ill.

My mom came the next day, we went to the hospital, and I thankfully have no memories of the procedure that I had spent the previous 24 hours dreading. After returning home and having a long nap, I finally felt like the healing was beginning. The worst was done.

I feel stupid for saying it, but I honestly didn't realize how common miscarriages are (odds are as high as 1 in 4), and I feel silly for thinking we were in the clear at 12 weeks. Next time we get pregnant, I won't take anything for granted. Even more so than before, I realize how getting pregnant, and more importantly, staying pregnant is an absolute miracle. I do worry that I'll be a worry-wart next time around, but unlike this time, I will be better prepared for whatever is to come.

Over the last several days, we've realized how lucky we are to have each other and to have such an amazing support system. Unlike the feelings we experienced last Thursday, we both feel at peace now. While it wasn't meant to be this time, one day hopefully we will be parents and we'll love the little toes that we get to wiggle and the cheeks that we get to kiss.

So when are we going to start trying again? I don't know ... we can't try until I've had at least one normal cycle, which could take anywhere from 1.5 - 2.5 months. After that, we'll have to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, the bachelorette party, weddings and trip to Napa that are on the calendar over the next six weeks will be enjoyed immensely.

The secret is out!

2008-07-13T20:10:00.005-04:00

Christine and Matt were married on Friday, on one of the nicest days of the year, and we're very happy for the newlyweds! Christine was an absolutely gorgeous bride, the two could not have looked happier, and now I hope they're having the time of their lives in Mexico.

Upon seeing all of my friends, I just couldn't keep the secret any longer. Telling them lifted a weight off of my chest -- I no longer felt like I was living a lie when it came to my best friends. It was really great to be able to tell people in person, and although we're not quite at the end of the first trimester, we're really close and it was certainly nicer getting to have an in-person conversation versus making lots of phone calls or sending out a mass email. Basically, it got me really excited to tell everyone else important in our lives! We still need to tell our extended families, and Reid's friends as well. So fun.

On Thursday , I have my second prenatal appointment, which includes my first ultrasound. I'm really excited to hear Plum's heart beat, and make sure that there's only one baby in there! I hope beyond hope that they tell us that everything is okay and on track. About three days ago, my belly started to stick out a little bit and my energy is definitely coming back. I hope me feeling well means that everything inside is moving along too! The craziest developmental update of this week (week 12) is that Plum's intestines are moving from the umbilical cord into her little abdomen. Apparently, they grow so fast they can't fit inside to begin with -- when I hear mini-facts such as that, I'm floored by this whole process. It's so complex ... it really is a miracle that it typically all works out in the end. I say a little prayer every night that this is true for us and Plum.

Another week, another fruit

2008-07-07T21:15:00.007-04:00

We're into week 11 - and Wally is now the size of a Fig (we're calling it Figgy). I don't love this week's name, but feel good about the fact that it's only a name for six more days and then we can call it Plum. Much cuter if you ask me.

I think my energy is starting to return! I needed a cat nap this afternoon, but it's the first time I've needed a nap in a week and I'm sure it's because of the absolutely amazing weekend we had in Lake Placid with Steve, Brooks, Codes and lots of other people as we celebrated the 4th of July.

We were supposed to compete in the BBQ competition, but the weather was so incredible that we opted to just enjoy the days and do whatever we wanted instead of committing to a weekend spent around the speed oval, sweating over a smoker. Without a doubt, it was the right decision. The weather was perfect, the company was fantastic and Lake Placid didn't disappoint with all of its natural beauty and charm. If you haven't been there before, you have to go!

Lucky for us, this is another short week! One of my best friend's from college, Christine, is getting married on Friday so we're headed down to Brooklyn on Thursday and will be there until Saturday. I'm torn with whether or not to tell all the college girls this weekend ... we're very close to the end of the first trimester, but not quite there yet. And obviously I don't want to take anything away from Christine's special day either. She's told me that she wants me to tell people so that we can all celebrate, but I'm torn with whether or not it's appropriate. I say all of this now ... I bet there's no way that I'll be able to keep this secret any longer from my best friends!

Our first graduation

2008-06-30T08:05:00.003-04:00

No more embryo, hello fetus! Although this is somewhat of a scary thought, the most critical window of development is now over and our little guy/girl has graduated from an embryo to a fetus. Tissues and organs are going to start growing like crazy and apparently the little over an inch-long creature is beginning to have little finger nails and peach-fuzz is beginning to grow on the skin. One cute little fact I read on babycenter.com: apparently its little hands now meet right over its little heart. Cute!

We're taking creative liberties with the name this week. Babycenter says that its the size of a Kumquat, but we can't call it a Kumquat (try to make a nickname out of that!), and What to expect when you're expecting calls it a Prune. While I may like prunes every once in a while - and I'll never forget Kendra's and my road trip in the fall of 2002 when we decided to have a prune eating contest, during a road trip (IDIOTS) - I don't want to call our little baby a prune. My husband has suggested a Walnut, because that's about the same size. I liked it because we can call it Wally, so Walnut/Wally it is this week!

We had a great weekend and I'm said it's over - it was busy, but then there was plenty of time to lay out by the pool and relax. It felt SO nice to relax in the sun and swim. I fell asleep so quickly both Saturday and Sunday night after full days and lots of fresh air, and it felt great. Now it's a busy, but luckily short week! With Friday off and the Lake Placid I love Barbeque Festival this weekend, we definitely have fun things to look forward to in order to push through the way too many projects that need to get done this week.

If you can't tell, I got a great night's sleep last night and I'm full of energy this morning. Three or so more weeks and I should be back to feeling like this for a while. Woo hoo!

Week 9 ... Olive

2008-06-25T08:19:00.003-04:00

Not a lot of news coming out of upstate New York this week, but no news can be good news every once in a while. We had a fun time in Maine, Olive should be about an inch long, and with any luck, his/her tail should be gone. I'm still feeling tired, but that's to be expected for another three or four weeks, and then my energy should be back with a vengeance! I'm looking forward to that :-)

That's obviously not the only reason why I'm looking forward to life in three to four weeks - at that point, we should be pretty much in the clear that little Olive is going to come along. That means we can stop keeping this secret and start getting to work! I'm a planner, I'm excited to start thinking about the nursery and everything else that we need to work on before the end of January. It's going to be FUN.

Short post, but I need to get to work. More to come later in the week!

First prenatal appointment

2008-06-18T20:28:00.003-04:00

I have to preface this post by saying that today was a lot less exciting than I thought it would be. I think part of it had to do with the fact that the doctor's office seemed to be running very behind, so my physical exam was put off until my next appointment (in four weeks - July 17 to be exact). What was left was providing a urine sample (to confirm I was pregnant), having my height, weight and blood pressure checked, and then talking about nutrition and any questions or concerns we had.

One very good piece of news came out of the hour and a half (most of that time spent waiting, either in the waiting room or in my exam room): I need to be eating ice cream! Based on my current height and weight, and my current very healthy eating habits, the midwife said I could probably use more fat in my diet. She also said I should gain between 30 and 40 pounds over the next seven months. 30 I can deal with, 40 sounds like a TON. I know I'm annoying when I say this, but I've never had to try to lose weight before - well, that's not 100 percent true. I had to lose a few pounds to fit into my wedding dress, but I've never been overweight and had to lose weight and I really don't want to be in a position where that's the case. Oh well ... this isn't about me, it's about Razzle and Razzle needs some mint chocolate chip ice cream tonight. I might as well enjoy it!

I did find out today what my next appointment will consist of: I'll have my first ultrasound where they'll date the baby (tell me exactly how far along I am, even though we have a good guess now) and we should hear a strong heart beat. The ultrasound should take about a half hour and then I have to have a typical annual physical exam (pap smear, etc). In the meantime, I will visit the hospital to have blood taken so that they can run some normal prenatal labs. I am very much looking forward to the first ultrasound! If I had had one today, I guess we wouldn't have been able to hear the heartbeat. I'm willing to wait for that :-)

This weekend we head to Maine, where my brother, his wife and their 17 month son are vacationing for a week from Colorado. We haven't told them yet, we've been waiting to see them in person, so that should be fun. Other than that, we're still keeping this news primarily on the DL ... five more weeks and then this can be public info!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get a bowl of ice cream.

Our first cold

2008-06-17T08:20:00.003-04:00

Today is day three of having my first pregnancy cold - apparently they're a common occurrence because pregnancy makes a woman's immune system go down. This seems bizarre to me because I would think that my body would want to keep me as healthy as possible right now, but anyway, the fact remains that I am sick as a dog, and since little Razzle (the nickname we have for the Raspberry-sized, eight week embryo inside of me) is still in the first trimester, there's basically nothing I can take to relieve any of my symptoms. I've been drinking what feels like gallons of fluids each day and hoping that I can kick this soon!

Tomorrow is our first prenatal doctor's appointment and I'm very excited! I think I'll have my first ultrasound and there's a possibility of being able to hear the heartbeat tomorrow. Full post to come following the appointment.

We're also meeting with a financial advisor about life insurance tomorrow - now that Razzle is in the picture, we want to be sure that we're prepared for anything and everything. I hate to think about needing life insurance, it's such a grim thought, but life is not just about me or my husband anymore.

Gotta get to work!

Feeling great

2008-06-11T20:13:00.003-04:00

It's a big day for me tomorrow at work and I've just finished practicing my slides for the last time - woo hoo! I'm ready to present this bad boy and then hit the road for home so that I can get a bridesmaid dress altered. As background, I'm in my friend Christine's wedding in July, and while I admit to not being a fashion guru, it is absolutely impossible for me to understand who on earth they have designed these dresses for. Even with my abundant bosoms, the boob compartment on this dress is HUGE. You could easily fit a couple more of my D/DD boobs in there with no problem. Other than that, the dress is cute. It's a pretty taupe color (European taupe to be exact) with an ivory sash, strapless, A-line, made of thick figure-forgiving material.

Even though I didn't sleep that well last night - I had weird dreams where I was living in a cartoon and having to rescue people - I think the adrenaline associated with a big presentation is starting to kick in because I've felt energized all day long. I haven't felt like this in about three weeks and it feels great! I'm sure I'm not in the clear as far as the exhaustion goes - everything I've read says that will last through the first trimester and I'm only seven weeks in - but I'll enjoy it and appreciate when I can get it!

I'm guessing it's because Blueberry is growing a little bit each day inside of me, but I've started noticing pregnant people everywhere. Just today, I saw half a dozen in and around Harvard Square in a very short amount of time. Since we would like to continue to keep Blue a secret for the next six weeks, I'm happy that I don't look pregnant and can therefore live in camouflage, but it also makes me wonder how many other people did I see today that are pregnant and just don't look it. I think my pregnancy radar is about as heightened as my sense of smell these days.