First birthday approachith!!!

So I know it's been... forever, and time is still not on my side, but as Wynne's 1st birthday looms, I think of nothing but her so I decided to take a break from not working today and do a blog post... try to catch up since in the blog world, she's still only what... 2 months old?!

So at this point it's hard to remember the highlights or lowlights of what was going through my head at that point. Although I'm sure they had a lot to do with struggles of breastfeeding, and going back to work.

Going back to work restored (or in her case created) order into both of our lives, so I was never all that upset about it. I took a picture of her coming home from the very first day of daycare:

I had been so worried about car rides, being by myself driving with a potentially screaming infant in the backseat. Could I survive it?? Would she survive it?! Well, I lucked out with a great car baby. I love going on car rides with her and I think she likes it too.

I still can never shake the fear that at any minute she'll start screaming and be completely inconsolable, but I think that's just my biggest parenting insecurity; her being super upset/me not being able to make her feel better/me being unable to accept that she will be just fine.

Incidentally, it's one of the only areas of disagreement between Kyle and me as well 1) I pick her up because she's fussy, 2) he sighs angrily because he feels like I'm coddling her, 3) I get upset because I feel like it makes me a bad mom being overly solicitous towards her, 4) he gets upset because he wasn't calling me a bad mom. Vicious but harmless circle, thankfully we're solidly on the same page on almost everything else.

Switching gears entirely, because that's enough of that, Kyle took the "sleep when the baby sleeps" mentality very much to heart in the beginning:

They found in each other the cuddle bug they so craved. I found I was completely in love with her sleeping. Oh, and ha ha, not for the obvious reasons. Just look:

 

Can't wait to break out some of these for the future boyfriends. Right around the February/March time is also when she started to smile (January 31st, according to my Facebook post) and babble a little, and we had grand conversations.

She also loved talking to the TV, they had even better conversations.

In true Rugrats fashion, most of her early videos are as if someone told her that it was a clamquarter and if she clammed up while it was pointed at her, someone would give her a quarter. So these are the highlight reels.

Seriously, the rest are just me talking in an annoying sing-songy voice at her until she gets distracted by the TV or the camera or starts crying.

But next up, Wynne's little personality starts to shine through, we laugh when she laughs, and she starts doing stuff other than just sitting or laying around!!

Cue the awesomely endless procession of visitors!!

If you're someone who likes visitors, even a little bit... HAVE A BABY!! I love visitors. So as soon as we brought Wynne home, first Kyle's mom and her boyfriend stayed with us (Rae Rae and Yeti), then my parents (Oma and Boppi)...

Yeah, by the way, she has no "Grandma" or "Grandpa"in case you were wondering :)

But she has an Oma, and a Boppi, and a Rae Rae, and a PopPop, and a MumMum, and a Yeti! Really, variety is the spice of life.

Then I can't remember when everyone else came, but they just kept comin'!! My grandparents, his grandparents, his dad, his great aunts, my aunts. Cousins, friends...

 G

 "G"

 Aunt JoJo

Unka Keith

I have an embarrassing lack of photos of all this visiting actually. I was busy accepting all the compliments on Wynne's behalf ("Why yes thank you, she is very very cute") and Wynne was busy sleeping in everybody's arms. There are a lot of photos on Facebook, I bet, and on other people's computers. Anyway, we saw a lot of people!

And they brought us A LOOOOOOOTTA FOOOOOD!!! For this I will be eternally grateful. My mom brought a cooler every time she visited. And she visited a whole bunch in the beginning (she still insists upon seeing her first daughter's first daughter every two weeks or so). She helped me get sleep in the beginning, she helped me eat healthy. She CLEANED MY HOUSE!! She made sure I did normal stuff, like taking a baby to the grocery store:

Her first outing not to the pediatrician

She couldn't help us not get thrush though. If you hate someone and you know how to do voodoo, give them thrush. It's a totally harmless yeast infection that breastfeeding mothers and breastfed babies commonly pass back and forth between each other. Common, right, but not one of my friends or family had ever had it! So while there was stuff online, I had no firsthand advice. My milk wasn't coming in, I was convinced she wasn't latching properly, and I was bleeding profusely out of my boobs. I had to be doing something wrong, right?!?!

I don't want to rant too long, because I could go on and on about how I emailed La Leche League (I couldn't call, I started crying every time I talked about breastfeeding...) and no one emailed me back, or how the pediatrician and the nurses gave different instructions on the medicine, etc... but the one thing I do want to rant about is how much EVERYTHING says "Your nipples might be sore for up to two weeks if you're breastfeeding."

Just let me compose myself, 9 months later and I'm still so angry.

See, I feel like this is part of the reason why Wynne and I never had the successful breastfeeding relationship that I had dreamed of having...

Everything you read, everything everywhere, and everyone you talk to will tell you that your nipples will be sore, and so every time I was in pain, I assumed I had to just suck it up because it was going to get better. Maybe something somewhere should say "Yeah, your nipples may be sore, but if it feels like needles are shooting out of them every time your baby suckles, that's not normal." And maybe even "You shouldn't feel like a failure if this happens."

Yeah, that would have been nice.

Anyway, so pain and bleeding caused me to not feed her every time - we supplemented with formula, pretty early on - and so less and less breastmilk came in, we had to give her more and more formula... To sum up, some women just don't produce enough milk, maybe I'm one of them, but I'll never know because I couldn't feed her the way I wanted to because I was in so much pain, and I thought I just had to suffer through it. I got little help from those who could have or should have offered it.

That being said I got oodles and oodles of support from my family and friends, which helped emotionally, and Wynne and I still bonded, she didn't care if I was cringing or crying :)

Also, importantly, thankfully, this only affected me while I breastfed, I was perfectly fine the rest of the time. How could I not be?! We found out Wynne makes this face when she poops:

And this face when she gets a bath:

While I was still at home on maternity leave, we had our first photoshoot, which I wanted to have so that I could have super stupid-adorable pictures for the baby shower thank you cards. She was super cooperative, so I think we might have a mini-diva on our hands...

 

Who needs a professional photographer?!

And some outtakes:

 "Come a little closer, buddy, I'll teach you to take advantage of a helpless infant!! This is extortion!!!"

 "Uh oh, Ma, you weren't particularly fond of this blanket were you? That was a juicy one!"

"Are we done yet?!?!"

And a little schmoozing after her set with the extras:

Yes, you're not imagining things, Bailey is terrified of being within two feet of Wynne, like she'll explode any second or something. She actually got pretty fat there in the beginning because she stress eats, and I was too busy to pay attention to how much food she was getting- I would just fill up her bowl if it was empty... I'm awful.

Anyway, next up, Wynne and Kyle do nothing but sleep! And Wynne starts making cute noises and smiling!

The only way to start is to start

Wynne is almost 8 months old (AHHHHHH!!!!!!!) so starting back at the beginning is like... whoa!

But it'll be fun, getting to relive it. There's a lot about this technological age that's really annoying, and then there's the fact that I have no chance of forgetting any moments, no chance to say "Man, I wish I had pictures of the first time she smiled or got into a pool or crawled or..." you get the picture.

My grandmother (G) said when my mom was born, it wasn't custom to have a camera around for everyday use, only special occasions. When I was born, it was a bit more common, but you still had to have film on hand, then develop it? What?! So now with our digital cameras and camera phones and digital video cameras and video cameras on our camera phones, my generation's kids don't stand a chance!

So with that, I think I have pictures and/or video of almost every day of this poor child's life. Don't get me wrong, I spent lots and lots of time just staring at her, but when I wasn't staring at her, I was staring at her through a camera view screen.

Her very first "official" (that means I took it and released it, I gave myself consent) and her first picture with Daddy, on his birthday, holding his birthday present (yeah, I think I literally said "I didn't get you anything else.")

Thankfully Kyle thought to take a picture of me too.

I try to stare at this one a lot, I can hardly remember when her hands were this small.

During the same nap, I watched her go from sleepy-smile-face to sleepy-worried-face. She was 2 days old! What was she dreaming about?!

So that's what I have of her first few days of life, spent in a very swanky hotel hospital. My parents and I'm sure Kyle's parents have more pictures, but I can only spend so much time gathering up every picture of her ever! And see, I've circled all the way back around to the beginning again; this gosh darn annoying digital age. Stupid Facebook!

So next, we bring her home, and I would never have survived if not for the multitude of family and friends those first few weeks.

Getting ready for baby!!

We were adamant (it only took me four tries to spell that word right) OK, wait, I was adamant not to know the gender before she was born. Everyone and their sister gave me a hard time about it, I mean, not a horrible nasty hard time. But even my mom, who was surprised for all three of her kids, at one point said accusingly "I could shop better if I knew what you were having!"

There are so few surprises, and seriously, in hindsight, I am not at all sorry about the colors we chose for her room or her clothes. Hello, newborn clothes are all soft colors anyway, and trust me, the baby does not care; she pooped on them and peed on them and puked on them just the same :)

ANYWAY, I say this because when we decided not to find out what she was going to be a she, we still had to paint its room and such. So what did we do? What any selfish people would do, painted her room our favorite colors:

That's right, Kyle loves green and I love orange. Yes, they go together quite well, thank you. Especially when you accessorize with cool rugs:

And cool bedding:

I give my child the orange room I never got!! Embarrassingly, the walls are still almost as bear as they are in that first picture. I keep saying I'm going to make some paintings for her to look at, but so far I'm adding that to the pile of projects that I haven't gotten around to... yet...

She never got a mobile:

I made the monkey... *hangs head in shame*

She never got a knit hat made by her Mama...

 



But I'm holding out for when she's a little older and can also wear this stylish pea coat and these awesome little boots, that I will somehow find the time to make...


Oh, and she got plenty of knit hats from relatives and friends. She had her first photo shoot (at about a month and a half) in a hat made by my cousin Dani:

(she was so good!!!! I did it one day after a bottle, she had no objections to being nakey OR being man-handled by her own mother OR flashes in her face)

And family and friends just kept shoveling on the awesome stuff:

With a few personal touches thrown in from one scientist to another:

("When I grow up I want to be a mad scientist, mwah ha ha")

So now that I have a girl, I spend half my time shopping for her, since she must have the best, and I'm totally living vicariously through her awesome little outfits from Tea Collection:

 

I am seriously addicted to Tea Collection. I thought that all mothers of baby girls had to dress their little girls up like princesses. Well they don't, but what surprised me even more was I still love dressing her up, just not in pink :)

So anyway, I hope to post some things that I actually make, but for now, this is what was going on shortly before and after she was born, I mean, clothing and accessory-wise.

Next up, BABY STUFF!!

Because I'm having a hard time getting my act together

I will imbed the code for her photo books as I make them, along the right hand side of the blog. And as I get the chance, I will post her videos. I promise I'm trying to get this rolling, but of course, she's seven months old (!), so I'm back tracking, and of course I've got a lot of material! So thanks for your patience!!

April 28th, 2012

The seventh consecutive morning waking up with severe cramps, after seven sleepless nights...

I peed on a stick... Gross... It glowed bright red plus sign, I was already a week late, so, that and the bright red, blazing plus sign, made it pretty obvious. Looooootta hCG... in the peeeeeee

Sorry, I won't talk about pee anymore...

We moved to our new house on May 31st, 2012. Kyle's best friend Dan surprised us by taking the whole week off work to come help us pack up our townhouse and unpack into our new house. I wanted so badly to tell him he was probably saving our unborn child's life... Don't lift heavy stuff! Because of Dan, I didn't have to.

June 13th, 2012
Here's her first picture:

While my mom was the first to know, everyone else knew soon after this ultrasound was taken. She was very strong, I was able to hear her heartbeat at 8 weeks! Of course, right now she was just Peanut, an it.

No morning sickness, just sleepy, but I broke out like crazy, and ate massive amounts of WAFFLES!

July 4th, 2012
I felt a flutter for the first time. I assumed I was imagining it because I thought it was too early. But as it got stronger, I realized that what felt like little muscle twitches was really a little monster inside me, getting bigger and bigger and KICKIER AND KICKIER!!!

6 months and 50 pounds later...

I get a PhD:

My mom and sister throw me a shower.

At my 39 week appointment, my blood pressure was high, and they decided to induce me. So I don't have a panicked labor story, water breaking in the middle of the night stuff. I went home, Kyle and I ate dinner, had a leisurely drive to the hospital...

I won't go into nitty gritty details about how many centimeters and water breaking grossness.

I labored for 8 hours before asking for an epidural just so I could get some sleep... then slept for 3 hours, and started pushing at 6 AM. The whole process, while not a fun picnic in the park, was not nearly as devastatingly terrifying as I thought it would be, just uncomfortable (the hospital gown, the bed, the dragging around my IV bags to go to the bathroom), jarring (the contractions), stinging (IV insertion, epidural insertion, stitches). And I don't know if my brain erased it due to adrenaline or trauma, but I don't think pushing hurt that bad either... I'm going to say this one gross thing, I apologize ahead of time... ever been really constipated? That's all it feels like, then it feels all better after about 15 minutes of really good grunting.

6 PM December 17th, 2012 - 7 AM December 18th, 2012... that's where I was.

My reward:

Wynne Bennet James
7 lb 7 oz
20.25 in

She didn't cry, her Apgar scores were awesome, 7 (1 minute old) then 9 (5 minutes old)

We laid together for over an hour, just chillin' out together, that was the best

(except for I had to get some stitches, to my memory, the most painful part of the whole experience)

So that's where we start!! And off we go!!!