Our baby is one month old!

Today is our sweet baby girl's one month birthday!  We had a doctor's appointment today where they said she seems to be doing great developmentally (she's lifting her head like a champ during tummy time) and health wise, but is just not a happy baby due to tummy troubles.  We've got her on Zantac for reflux, which helps with her not eating so frantically and wanting to breast feed every 15 minutes, but still hasn't solved the problem completely.  But I have to say, today, on her one month birthday, she did finally smile quite a bit and had a much less fussy day.  She's also starting to coo, now that she has more wakeful hours where she doesn't seem to be in pain.  Here's to hoping by two months old this too shall pass.  Right now she lives in the Baby Bjorn, which is the only place she seems content...oh, and the bouncy chair that is where she's started sleeping at night.  She still makes tons of noise and wakes herself up frequently, but the vibration lulls her quickly back to sleep.

So are you ready for this?  Sierra weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs 3 oz and 22 inches long today!  I knew she was a good eater and chunking up, but that's amazing.  That's not quite as heavy as her brother was, but it was a huge jump over a couple of weeks ago.  It really is crazy to look back at Peyton and see how much they are alike.  Now that the spitting up is decreasing, I expect her to continue to chunk up.  She also is taking a bottle now of my pumped milk.  Her brother got to feed her today (he was SO excited) for the first time and it also gave Zack and I a chance to go out for a nice long dinner for our anniversary without feeling like we needed to rush home to feed her.  She has shown no problems switching back and forth, but I should feed her soon too just to make sure she'll take both the bottle and breast from me.  I've heard horror stories about babies who won't take a bottle from mom.  With the bottle being an option, we've started her on a probiotic, just to try and help with the gas pains.  I'm also trying to cut dairy out of my diet and see if that helps.  It's easier said than done.  I had no idea how many things I ate that have cheese in them.  So far today is the only day I didn't slip up.  Other things that are new are baby acne and a little cradle cap.  Our children go through the gamut of skin issues as babies.  Oh well, at least they are healthy and beautiful and we love them to death.

2 weeks old-Growth Spurt Time

Ravenous!  That's the best way to describe Sierra's current state of being.  I believe this is the first major growth spurt an infant has and all she wants to do is eat, eat, eat.  If she's awake, she pretty much wants to be eating and gets very upset if Mommy is not right there to feed her.  We went to her two week old well baby visit today and she weighs 7 lbs, 7 oz.  I forgot to ask how long she is.  She continues to be a very noisy baby (not crying, just weird noises all the time) as well as a very gassy and spity baby.  We're going to try and avoid meds for reflux, but if it doesn't get better in the next week with homeopathic colic meds, we'll go for the Zantac and hope this resolves quickly as her stomach sphincters get stronger.  It's terrible to see a baby so miserable, know what's wrong, and not be able to fix it.  Otherwise, she's a healthy, bouncing baby girl.

We attempted to have a family photo shoot with Amanda Court Photography yesterday, but neither of the kiddos were cooperating after spending the weekend in Steamboat and the morning on the 3 hour car ride back.  If Amanda got any good pics, it's definitely a testament to her talent.  Sierra was wide awake and only wanted to eat and pee (she doused me twice and Zack once).  Today she has not wanted to nap, but has finally gone to sleep for now, since her noisy brother has gone down for a nap too.  She's getting to that "not wanting to miss anything" stage and a nap would interfere.  She's cuter everyday!

One week (9 days) well baby visit

This morning we went to Sierra's last appointment with the midwives.  Next week she starts at our doctor's office.  Everything went fabulously.  She is up to 7 lbs 2 1/2 oz already.  I thought that was a lot until I looked back at my blog for Peyton at 8 days he was 7 lbs 3 oz, but he started smaller and had lost more of his birth weight.  I can't imagine that he was more of an eater than her.  She eats constantly.  She's a pretty good sleeper too, already sleeping at 3 hour stretches at night.  We'll see how things progress from here to 2  1/2 weeks, the next time I blogged for Peyton.  He had chunked up over 8 lbs, grown an inch and was becoming a nightmare to deal with because of reflux.  He was up at night all the time, inconsolably crying and that's when I became very sleep deprived.   It sounds like I was also "nesting" much like I am now, wanting to clean everything in the house from top to bottom, so I wasn't resting like I should have been.

Her skin and eyes seem to be clearing up some.  The hemorrhage in her left eye is definitely breaking up and the one in her right is nearly gone.  The "toxic erythema" (not bad like it sounds and apparently perfectly normal in 50% of newborns) that has caused her to have red blotches all over, making her look like she has a case of the chicken pox, is finally starting to lessen.  Supposedly it usually clears up completely by about 2 weeks.  Her hair looks to be already thinning a bit, so maybe it'll fall out and come back in blond like Peyton's did.  Our biggest problem, though, is that she's very gassy, causing her to spit up, and at times strain for hours (unfortunately mostly in the middle of the night) to go to the bathroom.  She yelps when she's straining and it's very hard to console her because nothing seems to help.  I'm hoping it's not something I'm eating coming out in my breast milk.  I think she's just swallowing a lot of air because it's getting a little better as her latch gets better.

That's pretty much it.  I've been home with the two little ones by myself the last 2 days and even took Peyton with us to the appointment today and he was super well behaved-he sat on the floor and played with trucks the whole time, you wouldn't even know he was there.  They've been really easy so far and again, looking back at Peyton's blog, it's so much easier with experience.  At both appointments we've been to everyone in the midwife office has said I look like a mom coming in at 6 weeks postpartum, not 2 days and 1 week.  That makes me feel good that I at least appear to be well put together (it helps I'm already 1/2 way to my prepregnancy weight, gotta love breastfeeding!).  We love our little girl more and more each day.  Zack has said that it already feels different to have a daughter over a son.  I think he's going to love it when she's a little older.  I think I am too. We're so lucky to get to experience the love for a son and a daughter.

One week old-time flies

I can't believe our little Sierra was one week old yesterday.  At her 48 hour post birth appointment she had only lost 3 oz. because she was already such a ravenous little eater.  Everything seems to be going well.  All her vitals and reflexes were good.  She is a spitter upper though due to extreme gassiness.   Every time she eats it's not a matter of will she spit up, but what volume and out of where (nose or mouth are acceptable answers).  It's been more a nuisance than anything except the one day it didn't come out and just went up her nose and she couldn't breathe.  She wailed (she's not much of a crier so far so not being able to console her was hard to handle) until we were finally able to suction all the milk out of her poor little nose.

She had hemorrhages in her eyes from birth trauma that are starting to clear up and she's plumping up nicely so she becomes cuter by the day.  She sleeps a lot more than her brother did (which I'm enjoying because I don't really feel sleep deprived) and she's wide eyed when she's awake.  Just like her brother she lifts her head already and wants to know what's going on in the world around her.  She smiles when you talk to her and look her in the eyes.  She still has some skin issues that will hopefully clear up soon.  The mild jaundice that she had started to develop quickly cleared once my milk came in and she got some sun.  Speaking of sun, she loves being outside.  She gets really bad, seemingly painful, hiccups that make her fuss and she calms right down outside.  I've been nursing her a lot outside to get her used to it so we don't have the repeat of our first camping trip with Peyton when he wouldn't nurse because he was so distracted by all the things in the great outdoors.  We hope to go camping by August.  If all goes well at her 1 week appointment on Wednesday we'll be taking a 3 hour car ride to Steamboat Springs for the hot air balloon rodeo next weekend too.

Peyton adores his little sister, holding and kissing her every chance he gets.  So far there really hasn't been any jealousy.  He's a big helper with diaper changes and fetching things I need while breastfeeding.  He's got a bag of toys reserved for only times when Mommy is breastfeeding Sierra and he understood the concept really quickly and looks forward to those times when he can play with "my toys!"  So far there hasn't been any regressing as far as potty training or any worse behaviors than he already had being in the throws of the terrible twos.

Tomorrow my mom goes to a workshop for five days, Zack goes back to work and Aunt Cathy goes back to Orlando, so I will have my first taste of taking care of the two of them alone.  I was extremely anxious about it initially, but feel ready to take on whatever they can throw at me come tomorrow.  I may even attempt the midwife appointment on Wednesday by myself with Peyton in tow.  I was considering a sitter, but we'll have to see how tomorrow goes.

I'm in love with my family.  We have two amazing, beautiful children that we love more than anything.  There really is room in your heart for two.  I didn't know how I could love someone as much as I love Peyton, but I do.  Life sure is getting interesting.

Sierra's Birth Story-Through Her Mama's Eyes

My water broke on June 25th at 8:15 am.  It started much the same as Peyton's birth in that I wasn't even sure it was my water breaking, but by afternoon it was very obvious that was the case.  I was keeping in touch with the midwife on call because I had 24 hours to go into labor or we would need to go in for a stress test for baby to make sure she was still tolerating things ok.  Laura, the midwife on call, also asked that we come in at 7:30 pm to be checked to see if my water really broke and to check if any progress had been made even though I wasn't having any contractions.  We determined I hadn't really made any progress since the previous week, but she stripped my membranes again with hopes of triggering contractions.  Whether that worked or they started naturally I woke up around 1:30 am having "real" contractions finally.

After determining I wasn't going to be able to sleep in between contractions because I spent the 10 minutes in between each one anticipating the next (and I don't do contractions well laying down), I decided to get up.  Around 2:30 Zack woke up to me walking around the room.  I labored squatting on a stool for several hours and Zack got me food around 2:30 am because I was ravenous.  I was very pleased at how well I was relaxing through my contractions and felt a lot more in control than I ever did during labor with Peyton.  Around 3 I was really feeling the fatigue of only about 3 hours of sleep and decided to lay down, even if it did slow things down.  It sure did.  My contractions went from between 4 and 6 minutes apart (I never had them consistent in duration or spacing) to about 10 minutes apart again. I would just begin to doze off when one would wake me.  I got up again sometime during the 4 am hour and Zack and I decided by 6 am we wanted to be at the birth center to be safe.  I didn't feel like things were really progressing, mostly because I was handling the contractions so well still.  We decided Sierra was going to be a lot slower coming into this world than Peyton was.

At 5:30 we left for the birth center to meet Tracy at 6 am.  That's when they changed midwives on call.  I was very excited because I really had wanted Tracy to be at Peyton's birth.  I always felt she really could guide me should things get hairy.  As it turned out, I was very glad she was there.  When I got there I was only between 3 and 4 cm dilated, but 90% effaced.  That was the last time we checked.  Zack, Peyton and I went for a walk to try to recover the consistency that we'd lost in the contractions from the car ride and change of scenery.  It worked, I started having them pretty frequently again.  She monitored Sierra's heart beat about every 30 minutes and otherwise marked my progress by changed in the intensity and spacing of my contractions.  It was very obvious that she is really good at what she does.  It was very casual labor.  We'd talk, I'd excuse myself from conversation every once and a while and have a contraction.  At one point Tracy had me take cotton root bark tincture to try and increase the contractions.  It was amazing how fast it did that.  The very next one was much more intense.

Finally I felt like I was ready to get in the water (I hadn't wanted to get in too soon and slow things down).  Tracy was on board so I got in.  It felt wonderful for a brief time and then I hit the transition state.  I asked Tracy if she thought that I was in a place that I could begin pushing.  She said she thought so based on the noises I had made during my previous contraction, it sounded more like I was fighting pushing.  I started to gently push, which initially was a relief, but then things got really intense.  I started to feel like I was going to throw up with each contraction, they got extremely painful, and I felt a strong need to push all at once.  This was my meltdown.  I started crying and was having a really hard time getting ahold of myself.  Tracy and the nurse, Shawn, were awesome, as well as Zack.  They were telling me I was strong and could do it, were giving positioning advice and advice on how to push and noises to make.  Tracy physically helped me get Sierra to descend to crowning when I didn't think I could do it myself.  Once she crowned it only took about two pushed to get her head mostly out.  They tried to hear her heartbeat with the doppler while she was in this position and I was waiting for a contraction and couldn't.  I was feeling a sense of panic, wanting to get her out, but not having the strength to push without a contraction to help.  Finally I felt the surge and with two big pushes and a loud grunt I pushed her out.  I was so much more present in the moment than I had been at Peyton's birth, where everything was a blur.  Sierra came out into the water, I turned over at Tracy's instruction and heard her say the cord was wrapped around Sierra's neck, which it had been with Peyton, but not nearly as tightly.  She lifted her up into my arms and she was blue with really low tone and not trying to take a breath.  Tracy asked the nurse to get the oxygen and took Sierra's pulse, which was down to 80.  I held her while they performed the resuscitation which was amazing.  I was crying, Zack was frozen by the video camera, and the nurse and midwife did their job to perfection, alternating giving her oxygen and checking for a good breath, and I never had to let go of my little girl.  She suddenly started breathing on her own, her tone came back and she immediately turned pink and started screaming at the top of her lungs.  It took less than a minute, but it felt like an eternity.  It was music to my ears.  We were all crying with relief and joy.  My mom and Peyton came in the room (smartly staying out of the room during the commotion) and joined the tear-fest.

We moved to the bed and got to spend time as a family.  They don't cut the cord for about 30-45 minutes to give the baby the chance to soak up as much nutrition from it as possible, so we just ate a snack, talked to my sister on Skype, and hung out as a new family.  Sierra took to nursing within 20 minutes of being born and hasn't stopped since.  She is a nursing fiend.  She became very content after that, not crying again except some whimpering last night when she was hungry.  We left the birth center 4 hours after she was born.  By then my adrenaline/endorphin high was gone and the stress of the day along with the physical exhaustion of giving birth and waking up at 1:30 am were getting to me.  As soon as we got home we all napped and I remembered how hard it is to let go of your newborn and trust that everything will be ok while you sleep.  I ended up sleeping holding her because I couldn't bring myself to put her in her bassinet.

So far everything has been great with her.  She is eating well, sleeping well, pooping and peeing really well and makes the cutest little noises and faces.  She's already lifting her head like her brother did, and although she was more lethargic than he had been after the birth due to the trauma, at 2 am she woke up wide eyed and interested in the world around her.  We love her so much already and so does her big brother, who is actually upset that he can't hold her constantly.  He proudly professes she is "my baby."  So now our family is complete and we couldn't be happier.

Stats:

Ok, we have a 6 lb. 12 and 1/2 oz, 19 and 1/4" baby girl! Bigger than her big brother was when he made his appearance. She was born at 9:55 am. Mom and baby are still doing great and looking beautiful!

She's here!!

No sooner did I publish the last post than I got a call. Sierra is here!! She's perfect and beautiful with dark hair! Mommy Connie is doing great. I can hear the crying in the background, this kid has some lungs! I'm crying with Maw Maw, Peyton is confused, and Sierra is screaming bloody murder. Happiness!! More to come!