It’s a new world, people. Get ready for change!
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Category: Uncategorized
Things I am thankful for, in no particular order:
1. My Millie
2. My Jesse
3. My family
4. My Sleep Number Bed
5. My car that I don’t have to worry about
6. My job that I actually like most days
7. Good friends
8. Jesse’s new job
9. Our collective good health
10. Our house
11. That Thanksgiving is over.
Hope everyone had a good Turkey Day.
For some reason, Typepad won’t load up on my computer, so I’m posting from my mom’s house. Damn you, Typepad!
So, what’s going on with me? Oh, not much, the usual, don’t ya know.
1. My thyroid is not working properly. I have been having tingling in my arms and legs, hot flashes (I’m way too young for that), shortness of breath, trembling, and heart palpitations. To figure out what is exactly wrong, I have to take a test involving swallowing a pill. If you know me at all, you know that that is currently impossible. So …
2. I have been seeing a hypnotherapist to help me learn how to swallow pills. He made me a tape that I can listen to to help me self-hypnotize myself. Now if I can only find a Walkman – he really needs to switch to CD’s.
3. I just got my hair cut like Sienna Miller’s short bob. Except my hair is brown, not blond, so the piecy part doesn’t show up very well.
4. We are planning Millie’s first birthday party. One word: monkeys.
5. Jesse and I are going on a cruise in September, without the Mils. It will be our first time away from her for longer than a night. Anxiety has not yet settled in.
6. We are planning a family trip to New York in October, this time with the Mils. E will meet us up there for a weekend. We are now trying to figure out exactly what we need to bring with us. I’ve heard of places where you can rent baby stuff, so maybe that will help to lighten our load.
7. We are still working on the bathroom. Two months later. It’s amazing how what we think are the simplest projects turn into the most grueling projects. Of course, good news is, it’s almost done.
8. I am in the middle of getting a crown, and I was in tons of pain for awhile. I was taking that Liquid Tylenol stuff (see #1), and it was making me nauseous. I was at the dentist’s office every week, telling them, "yes, it still hurts." They finally figured out that it was because I wasn’t flossing back near that tooth. Of course, I would have flossed if it hadn’t hurt so damn much. Catch-22 in action, y’all.
9. We just had another Game Night, which was alternately lots of fun and very exhausting. We figure, if we can’t go out, we will bring the party to us.
10. We had a landscaping company come out to give us an estimate on redoing the front yard. I innocently asked Jesse, "How much do you think it will cost?" and he said, "Around one thousand dollars." I smiled inwardly and responded, "I’m thinking more like five thousand." Their estimate: Ten Thousand Dollars. Our answer: Uh, no thanks. So we are now back to square one, looking like white trash. I love it!
As 2006 begins, let’s look back on 2005 – so much to remember:
1. Mid-January – I discover I am pregnant – my due date is September 24th. I immediately become nauseous.
2. I spend most of February and March alternating between eating tons of fruit and praying that I will throw up the fruit, just so I can feel better for a moment.
3. May – we start thinking about buying a house. We begin to go around with our real estate agent (Hi Steph!). We find a cute house with lots of potential in St. Petersburg. The owner likes the fact that I am having a baby, and decides to let us buy the house she has lived in for 55 years.
4. July 15 – we buy our first house. It needs lots of renovations, but we are excited to finally have a bigger place.
5. I start to swell – ankles first, then my feet, then my lower legs and then my thighs. The doctors start to monitor me more closely as my eight month of pregnancy approaches.
6. August 20 – I am admitted to the hospital for "observation" because the swelling has gotten really bad. I don’t even think to get undressed at the hospital – I just think I’m hanging out for the night. The nurses assure me that it is more serious than that, and I need to get into bed, pronto.
7. August 22 – Millie Clara is born one month early, and everything changes … for the better.
8. August 30 – Millie leaves the hospital and we stay at my mom’s house for a week while Jesse frantically tries to get the house semi-ready for our arrival.
9. September and October are a blur of late-night feedings and lack of sleep.
10. We have our first game night in our new house. Could I add any more stress to my already stressful life? But at least we get the front room painted.
11. I go back to work. I am glad to be around adults again. Jesse stays with Millie during the day, and I become slightly jealous that she is bonding with him so well.
12. December – Millie is the smiliest baby and finally has a personality. Every day is more interesting than the next.
13. I get a promotion at work. Finally, a chance to show what I can do.
14. We buy a dining room set – our first big adult married furniture purchase.
15. Christmas at our house. Lots of preparation, but ultimately it comes off without a hitch. Millie has no clue what Christmas is. Don’t worry, she will eventually.
16. New Year’s Eve – we go on a nature walk during the day, then hang out at home, our new little family ringing in the new year together.
Happy New Year Everyone!
Jesse and I have created a schedule, of sorts, to care for Millie in the overnight hours. We each get about five hours of uninterrupted sleep. Jesse takes the 12am-5am shift while I sleep, and then I get up and take over from about 5:30am-10:30am, give or take a few hours. Jesse doesn’t usually get any sleep during his shift, because Millie does not believe in sleeping during sleeping hours, at least not yet. She is very fussy from about 2am-5am, and I feel bad for Jess, because usually by the time I get up at 5am, she has conked out. So during my shift, I can sleep on the couch when she is sleeping, so I can get an extra 1 or 2 hours. So it’s only fair that Jesse gets an extra hour in the morning, since he can’t get it during his shift.
The schedule works pretty well, except for the times that I sleep longer than five hours (by accident, of course). One time I didn’t wake up until 7am, so he slept in until about 12pm or 1pm. It screws us up, because we can’t get ourselves going until around 3pm or so, and by then the day is essentially shot. We needed to go to Babies R Us the other day, and we didn’t make it out of the house until 6pm.
We spend the majority of our day inside – today in passing I casually mentioned that it might be nice to take Millie for a walk. Yeah, that never happened. Jesse got up at 11:30am today, and I took a nap until 2pm. Before you know it, it’s dinnertime. It’s amazing how quickly 10pm sneaks up on us. The days fly by now, because our sleep schedule is so messed up.
Tonight, I’m taking the early shift so Jesse can be up tomorrow morning to meet someone from the electric company. I’m really hoping Millie behaves, because I’ve heard her scream during Jesse’s shift, and I’m not as good at dealing with the screaming as Jesse is. It freaks me out, to tell you the truth. I do all the standard checks: diaper, check; hungry, check; cold/hot, check. But most of the time, it’s none of those things – 75% of the time, she just wants to be held. But it’s that other 25% that freaks me out, when she is just screaming to hear her own voice and nothing I do can stop the screaming. I sing to her and rock her and walk around with her, and those things help for a minute or so, but as soon as I stop, she starts screaming again. It’s very disconcerting. The last time I took the early shift, she behaved beautifully and didn’t scream at all. I’m hoping for a repeat tonight, but I’m not optimistic. Just a feeling…
So it’s 12:30am, and so far, so good. Millie is sleeping in her new swing (sidebar: the swing is a genius invention. We just got the swing the other day and it has allowed us to move about the house without having Millie in our arms 24/7. She likes to sleep in it – it’s nice and warm, in comparison to the Pack N Play, and we can put her in it and she will sleep for 2-3 hours), I just gave her her medicine for thrush and she didn’t wake up! She will need to eat and have her diaper changed soon, so I’m hoping that that series of events will not wake her up too much. The great thing about this shift is, there is still stuff on tv at this hour. At 5am, it is all paid programming, except on Bravo and IFC. I could try to sleep, but sometimes it’s just not worth it – as soon as I lay down, she will inevitably start to wake up, so I may as well watch some tv and play on the Internet.
But I am tired.
I’ve created a photo album of Millie pictures – come on in and see our beauty!
Did I mention that by the end of the pregnancy, I weighed 150 lbs? I had gained 23 lbs of water weight. So now that it’s all gone, guess who got STRETCH MARKS ON HER ASS?
So not fair. I thought I was going to make it through the pregnancy with no stretch marks whatsoever. I wouldn’t have had any, if I hadn’t gained all that water weight. Damn you, preeclampsia!!!
Wait a minute, wasn’t your due date September 24th?
Why yes, yes it was.
So … Millie was born five weeks early?
Yep.
Is she ok?
Oh yes, she is fine. She spent seven days in the NICU (all preemies do) because her weight dropped a lot and she wasn’t eating well, and she also had jaundice. So she got herself a nice tan and a feeding tube for awhile, but she was basically the most healthy baby in there.
So why did she come early?
That was my fault. Remember the swelling I was talking about in earlier posts? Yeah, it got worse. Plus, my blood pressure started to climb, and I was "spilling protein" (medical term) like there was no tomorrow. So I ended up having preeclampsia and the doctors decided it was best to deliver Millie early, while I was still relatively out of danger, instead of waiting for it to get worse. I was in the hospital for five days. They have pretty good pudding.
Are you ok?
Yep – the cure for preeclampsia is delivery. The swelling has all but gone away (just a little still in my legs), and my blood pressure has returned to normal. So I’m fine, thanks for asking.
How was the labor?
Relatively easy. They induced me on Monday at 6am. My water broke at 7am and the contractions starting coming pretty hard around 11am. I got an epidural at around 1:30pm, slept for a half-hour, and woke up feeling pressure. Four rounds of pushing later, Millie made her debut.
Whoa! Only 8 hours of labor? You got so lucky.
Don’t I know it! Actually, it was 8-1/2 hours of labor, but who’s counting? What’s funny is, I got the epidural when I was only 1cm dilated. I had always heard you couldn’t get an epidural until you were 4-7 cm dilated. So I asked my doctor later why he let me have it so early, and (ALL WOMEN, PAY ATTENTION) he said that recent research has shown that, contrary to the long-held belief that early epidurals slow down labor, there is actually proof now that an early epidural SPEEDS IT UP. I’m living proof – within one hour of getting my epidural, I had Millie.
So how were the contractions, really?
Um, not so bad at the beginning. I was able to breathe through them pretty easily – I was trying to self-hypnotize myself, so I would breathe through it, and after the contraction was over, I almost fell asleep. So that worked from about the time my water broke to about 11am. Contractions sort of feel like bad gas cramps, except they gain in strength. At 11am, they started to get worse, and I wasn’t really able to breathe through them anymore. I told my nurse it was getting bad, and she told me to try to hold out until my doctor came back at noon, and we would ask him for an epidural then. Yeah … by 11:20 I turned to Jesse and said, "I can’t do this anymore – go get me an epidural." He tried to get me to wait, but I (very patiently, I must say) explained to him that the longer we waited to ask for it, the longer it would take for the anesthesiologist to get there to administer it, and by then I might be forced to rip his head off. Until the epidural started to work at 1:30pm, I think I was in the most horrible pain I’ve ever experienced. I turned into the loud laboring woman that you see in the movies – the one that scares all the other pregnant woman. I was doing this primal scream thing and it was not pretty. The thing about contractions is, they intensify – so during a contraction, it starts out not so bad and then crescendos into oh-my-god-I-can’t-breathe pain. And you don’t have time to catch your breath before another one is starting. So, to sum up, contractions suck.
So, what’s Millie like?
Well, so far, she doesn’t do anything except eat, sleep and projectile poop. And I do mean projectile. Today I had to clean the floor, the crib, the walls and a table because her butt turned into a cannon. It’s like, she knows I’m trying to change her diaper, so she plans the projectile poop for just that moment when I get the diaper off. It’s a little evil, if you ask me. I’ve decided Jesse needs to be in charge of diaper changes from now on. I just can’t deal with it.
She’s a very good eater – I think the term for her is BARRACUDA. She turns into a little pirahna when she gets near my boob. My left boob is killing me because she chomps down on it like it’s a piece of steak and not MY BOOB. But she eats really well and way too often for my liking. We haven’t been able to get her on a schedule yet because she wants to eat all the time. But Jess and I have worked out our own schedule for the overnights – he feeds her from midnight to 4am and I take over from 4am til, well, midnight. But at least that way, I get four hours of uninterrupted sleep. And my boobs get a break for a few hours.
So far, she sleeps best when she is with one of us – she loves to lie on Jesse. In fact, she is on him right now, sound asleep. Whenever we put her down in her crib or her playpen, she fusses. It’s hard to hold her all the time, but she’s cute enough that we put up with it.
Are you still calling her Rhubarb?
No. And to all of you who actually thought we would still call her that – give me a break. It was a joke! We were never planning to call her that, we always had a name picked out. She has new nicknames now, like Baby Girl, Little Monkey and Squirmy McGee (for when I am trying to get her to latch on to my boob and she is squirming ferociously).
Do you love her?
Eh. She’s alright.
Seriously?
She’s the best baby ever. Jesse and I are head over heels in love with our girl.
Millie Clara, born August 22nd, 2:28pm
5lbs, 8oz 19" long
If you could see me now (sorry, I’m about to start singing!) – my whole body is swollen. It’s really horrible in my legs, ankles and feet, but I’m also swollen in my hands and face. Fortunately, my blood pressure is fine, so I’m not in any danger. But I am so uncomfortable – my legs feel so tight, I can barely walk. It’s gotten to the point that when I walk, I can feel the tightness all the way into my thighs. Scary. I keep thinking, eventually it’s going to spread to the top half of my body and I will become immobilized by all the water retention going on. It’s really amazing – if it wasn’t happening to me, I would be fascinated. Last time I was at the doctor, I weighed 137 – that was a 10 lb gain in two weeks! The doctor said it was almost all water weight. I look in the mirror and barely recognize my legs. The swelling has made sleeping extremely difficult – my legs are just so sore.
So I bought compression stockings today and I feel like a new woman (almost). They are so hard to get on, though – Jess and I were in the car, trying to cram my swollen feet into them. We both broke a sweat in our struggle to get them over my ankles. But once I had them on, I felt better. I’m still swollen, but it feels like the stockings are containing the swelling somewhat. And it doesn’t hurt as much to walk anymore – before, I could barely make it to the bathroom because my ankles hurt so much. The guy at the medical supply store said that I should see some good results in a few days, so I’m looking forward to that. The doctor is having me come in every week now because of the swelling, just to monitor it.
I keep looking at pregnant women’s ankles, to see if anyone else is swollen. Nope, just me. Ain’t I a lucky girl?
