Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

So you may all recall my nursery design, lovingly hand-painted by a certain crazy 8-months-pregnant lady:


We got a comment last night on the blog post that highlighted the nursery completion from two random internet people named Bill & Claudia:

Hi, We came across your design, and thought it was amazing!

I hope you dont mind, we liked it so much, we copied it for our nursery. We dont take credit for the creativity, but it did take a lot of work.

We love the way it turned out. your color scheme was beautiful for a girl. We are having a boy.

you can see our room here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bng78/4006420092/

and also a time lapsed video of the room coming together here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bng78/4005643961/

Furniture is arriving next week.
Anyway, thanks for the design idea. you're very creative!

Bill & Claudia

I am sincerely flattered!!! (And, holy cow, maybe I really could do this for a living!)

The Continuing Adventures of Giant Baby

We took Claire to the doctor last week for a weight check just to make sure everything was going okay. Here were her latest stats:

Height: 25.5 inches
Weight: 16 lbs 11 oz (!)
Head Circumference: 16.25 in

According to her pediatrician, at 3 months old Claire is the height of an average five-month-old and the weight of an average six-month-old. However, her height to weight ratio is right on, so there's nothing wrong with her; she's just developing way ahead of schedule.

Hopefully we will have more pictures and cute stories forthcoming, as Claire will be going to the zoo with her cousin Alex later this week. For now, here's my recent favorite image:

Three is a Magic Number

So Claire turned three months old on Saturday. Somehow, we've already made it through the first quarter of the first year of her life without breaking her. We've fallen into a pretty stable routine by this point which Claire only occasionally manages to completely destroy.

Latest developments:

- Her face is starting to evolve into what I imagine she will look like as a toddler. She is gonna be cute.

- She has discovered that those two things on the ends of her arms, in addition to being great chew toys, can also be used to grab various objects and move them into her mouth (to be used as great chew toys).

- She is "talking" up a storm. She has periods of up to an hour where she will just babble on and on in an excited manner. We have no idea what she's saying.

- My prediction is that her first words will be "I love you". She is trying so hard to say that now.

- She is getting HUGE. We bought her a bunch of sleepers less than a month ago that she has already outgrown. When you stand her up, she looks bigger than many 1 year olds I have seen.

- She is regularly laughing and smiling when she sees her parents. This especially pleases her father, who is very insecure and needs constant validation.

- Desmond continues to be interested in her, but she continues to ignore him.

- She enjoys looking at picture books, but her tolerance is short.

- Her two favorite games to play with Daddy are the "push" game, where she lays on her back in Daddy's lap and pushes him away from her with her little legs while laughing maniacally, and "zombie baby" where Daddy holds her standing up in his lap and leans her in so she can "bite" his head or neck while Dad says "Nooooo! Save me from the zombie baby!" and Claire laughs maniacally.

There are TONS more, but the bottom line is that Claire is now fully interactive, which seems more rewarding than when she was input only (well, she always output into her diaper, but now there's other stuff coming out of her too! and not just drool and spit up).

Tune in next month (if anyone's still reading this). Who knows what she'll do next!

Expectations

As we round the corner to three months, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this "mommy" thing. Claire has fallen into a nice little schedule, I'm back to work, she's sleeping through the night, she eats like a horse, and keeps the meltdowns to about 1 a day. And even if she does melt down, I feel like I can handle it now. I have enough tactical defenses in the arsenal to be able to manage almost any situation with -- dare I say it? -- aplomb.

Still, I wonder sometimes if anyone had told me it was going to be this hard, would I have gone through with it? I'm definitely past the stage where I'm daily wishing for my old life back and feeling like I made a huge mistake. And we have an "easy" baby by comparison -- it's not like she has colic, or some medical condition, or I'm trying to raise her by myself. How do other people manage and not lose their minds, (or their marriages?)

Or is that why there are so many screwed up people in the world?

One of our friends came over for a visit last week. She's a sweetheart, and we always refer to her as one of those people who prove that Southerners are not as dumb as some people like to make them out to be. She's a pretty thing, and she's got the thick country accent, but if you talk to her for 5 minutes you realize that the pretty face also has a sharp tongue and a quick wit!

But I digress... Our friend came to visit and she asked us each what surprised us the most about having a baby. I had to think about it quite a bit, and I don't think I could narrow it down to just one thing. So here I present:

Top 5 Things That Surprised Me the Most About Being a New Parent!

5. Just how much a baby who is almost 12 lbs at birth will eat!
They made us crazy in the hospital. First, when you've just given birth, you're producing nothing but tiny drops of colostrum out of your breasts. The milk doesn't really come in for about 3 days. So in our case, they told us to supplement with 10 milliliters of the formula that they provided. After two days of SCREAMING baby we realized the poor dear was just HUNGRY so we fed her as much as she wanted! We asked the pediatrician if that was okay, and he said, "Yes. Of course. If she's hungry, feed her!" They had also told us in the hospital that we should WAKE her every two hours to eat. The doctor said, "No. If she gets hungry, she'll wake up! Of course if she is going 4 or 5 hours without waking, then I would worry. But as long as she's giving hunger cues, she's fine."

So a word of advice: maybe I shouldn't trust *everything* they tell me in the hospital if I have any circumstances that seem out of the ordinary. I suppose, in retrospect, that they were telling us what to do based on advice given to people who have 8 lb babies. I mean, when do they ever see and 11.5 lb baby?! They have no experience with that. The nurses also kept remarking how fabulous I looked for a woman who just had a c-section, and what a nice patient I was. After everything I had been told, I was worried about not being able to walk around, or eat, or that I would be too sleepy to appreciate my new baby. And except for some serious aching when I got up or down, I was pretty much fine the next day as long as I had some pain meds. But I'm a really good healer. Oh well. Live and learn.

4. How excited everyone else is about this baby too!
We put all the cards from the baby shower up on the mantle a few days after the shower. Since then we've been adding to them, and adding to them, up to and including this week! That's like 4 full months of excitement. Even if everyone didn't send a gift, they at least sent a card. That said, we got an amazing number of gifts -- we haven't had to buy more than the "big things" for the most part. Craig was opening cards from relatives of his he hasn't heard from in forever. There is just so much excitement around a baby. It's heartwarming and kind of stunning. Even my "heartless" sister is showing off pictures of the baby to waiters!

3. How much I would miss being pregnant.
As grueling as the third trimester was, I'm already waxing nostalgic about it. Feeling that little life roll around in there, taking naps and having an excuse to just lay about... It was kind of nice! Everyone was so excited around me all the time. When you're pregnant, strangers smile at you, and people are courteous and understanding, and everyone's curious about how you're feeling and how the baby is doing. But now? I'm back to basically not existing! Bah! But seriously, I miss that expectant feeling, of waiting for the big moment, of the excitement to come. I hear it's not the same when you have baby #2 either...

2. Post partum depression is no joke, and actually pretty horrible.
A friend of mine told me that the first three months with a new baby are "harrowing", and I think that's the most appropriate adjective I've heard to describe the situation thus far.

I understand that some people get the "baby blues" after giving birth. That's a cute little name for a temporary bit of insanity that makes you weepy after you have a baby and realize that it's a huge responsibility and who in their right minds gave YOU a baby?! That is not post partum depression. Try crying all day at everything every day for weeks, not sleeping, not eating...and I think I already mentioned the overwhelming feeling of having made a huge, irreparable mistake.

Because I have a history of depression, I knew it might be an issue for me. At one point in my life, I went through every kind of anti-depressant known, and then all the new ones as they came out, looking for the right fit. Eventually, I "trained" myself to not need them at all, and have been living SSRI-free for several years now. But because I knew I was prone to chemical imbalance, I advised them to prescribe me something while I was in the hospital. In retrospect, because those SSRIs take at least 2 weeks to really start working, I should have started two weeks sooner.

If I had started sooner, I probably wouldn't have worried my mother to death for a few weeks (enough so that my parents went back to NJ and then came back a couple of weeks later to give us extra help.) I probably would have appreciated those "tiny baby" moments in the first week or two more, and now I wish I had, because I know they're never coming back...

So my advice is, if you know you may need medication, take the medication. It actually helped reduce my crying jags and insanity to only once a day, and now they're practically non-existent.

But the number one thing that surprised me --

1. How much love I would have for this tiny little person!
Yeah, it's cliche, but it's cliche for a reason!

Don't get me wrong, I'm good at love. I love my family, and my close friends and my pets. I've deeply loved some of my boyfriends, and of course I totally love my husband. But this? This is a whole new level bordering on obsession.

If she makes the littlest sound while she's waking up, I'm all over it like white on rice to see what she's doing because I'm just so EXCITED to see her! The little faces she makes are cuter than kittens in a fluffy cloud universe. If she's upset, her shrieks are like tiny daggers into my heart, tearing out my soul, and I would do anything -- ANYTHING -- to fix it and make her happy again! And just one "Hi mommy!" smile from her and I'm a puddle of melted ice creamy love. I had no idea it would be like this. Just one of those things that, like they say, you just don't even have the capacity to understand until it happens to you.

Would I do it all again? Yeah, I think I would. At least the second time I will be more prepared...

Two Months!

Wow... if the first month seemed to go fast, the second passed in the blink of an eye. Here's what baby Claire looks like now:



And here are some things she's been doing lately:

- She now smiles and laughs in recognition whenever she sees me or Kathy, especially first thing in the morning or seeing one of us after being away for a brief while.

- She bats and grasps at objects near her face.

- She can support her entire core unassisted from the waist up while being held. She can also support her own weight, but her balance leaves something to be desired, so she won't be walking quite yet (this week, at least).

- She can push herself up onto her arms and has started to make attempts at crawling, but can't quite get traction yet.

- She "talks" A LOT! Usually happy little coos and gurgles, but she occasionally mimics something we day using her own versions of words, like baby Hooked on Phonics. Her favorite one to imitate is Daddy's "I love you" which from her sounds like "AH LAAAAAAAAH PHBBBBBBT!" using the same speech inflections and volumes as me.

- She's holding steady at about 14 lbs and 23 inches long or so, but she's eating like she's about to grow again. She typically takes in about 6 ounces of milk every three to four hours!

- She is officially sleeping through the night at this point, usually going down for 6-7 hours, occasionally as long as 8. We are obviously thrilled. If we get less than six hours of sleep on a given night, it's definitely not Claire's fault.

- Both Kathy and I are back to work now, which is why updates have been sparse. Hopefully October will find me with more time to fill everyone in on things.

If any of you are still watching our blog for updates, thanks for your support and patience! We love you! More soon... promise.

One Month?

Claire is one month old today.

Wow.

I mean, really... where did the time go? It seems like literally only yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital. A lot's happened, though, despite an astounding lack of blog updates.

- She's stopped screaming. The worst we get now is an occasional bout of crying which we're usually able to stop by picking her up. She gets fussy when hungry and grunty when gassy, but nothing like what we experienced during that first week.

- We went to Target! With the baby in tow. As ridiculous as that sounds, it felt like the biggest accomplishment to us after days and days of feeling chained to the house.

- She now turns her head toward the sound of Kathy's and my voices, and smiles in response to hearing or seeing us.

- She's still very regularly sleeping 4-5 hours, especially at night.

I'm sure there's more stuff, and we owe everyone an updated picture, but for now I'd say it's an accomplishment that the three of us are still alive! I can't wait to see what adventures month two holds for us.

Mother Nature has a twisted sense of humor

I'm going to give it to you straight:

Breastfeeding is HARD and anyone who tells you it isn't is either deluded or just a boldfaced liar.

It doesn't help that we had an 11 lb. baby. From the get-go I've been behind the 8-ball. In the hospital her blood sugar was low so they recommended we supplement her with formula right away because colostrum probably wasn't going to do it enough to keep her out of the NICU. And since then, my poor breasts have been fighting an uphill battle.

More than one person has made the joke in the past, based on my well-endowedness in the breast area, that my babies would never starve! No one apparently accounted for the fact that I would have an enormous baby...

It's a constant battle of supply and demand.

We went to a lactation consultant yesterday though, and she said that we're doing everything right. The main concern is just to work hard to keep the supply up. So I'm trying things like fenugreek and "Mother's Milk tea" to help too.

I was able to finally buy some nursing bras at the lactation center. They are cup size "G." Yes, G as in "ginormous."

Cruel joke number two courtesy of Mother Nature:

I'm already starting to forget how tough pregnancy was, especially at the end. It's all I can do to remember the trouble I had doing chores while 9 months pregnant, scrubbing the toilet and the shower with a giant baby-filled midsection in the way. I'm forgetting how hard it was just to roll over in bed, or get in and out of the car, or, well...do pretty much anything with the world's most achy breaky pelvis. My brain is starting to think, "Oh well, maybe it wasn't that bad?"

And this is why the human race has persisted.