I just wanted to tell you how crazy we are about you, we love how you wiggle and smile, the way you stretch and make little kissy faces :) You squeak all the time and it is such a sweet noise, we try to let you rest in your bassinet or your pack n play, but you just love to be held and truthfully it's really wonderful to snuggle you up.
You made mommy laugh when you were scared of the "kleenex monster" when mommy was trying to wipe your face. Daddy said that when you were sleeping today he was sure that you giggled, and he can't wait until you laugh for me :)
You are so active already flailing your arms and legs about, and you don't like to be swaddled but sometimes it helps you rest when you are overtired. You have the sweetest little cry and it breaks my heart when you do, I just want to make you happy all the time.
I am sorry that you and I are having such a hard time breastfeeding, I appreciate you trying so hard and it's not your fault that it's so difficult. I just love you so much, and daddy does too. You just started crying so daddy is going to offer you your soother and rock you a bit.
We love you Carly Grace!!!! xoxoxooxxo
2008-04-16 (baby has arrived)
A quick update Life with baby is very busy! Showering and eating fall to the bottom of the list of things to do when there are much more important things to do for your little one :)
Carly, Pete and I are doing well It's funny though that we tend to take shifts, so that one of us is always with her, I don't know when we will break that habit lol we are lucky that both of us are home with her all the time so we can do that.
She just started to become fussy sometimes, The Happiest Baby on the Block REALLY helped us a lot. Last night I swaddled her, gave her the soother, did the shushing, put her in her swing and put on white noise from the radio and she slept for three hours woo hoo! Normally when she is fussy you can only put her down for five minutes before she wakes up.
She has been formula fed since I needed a strong antibiotic to clear up a UTI from the stupid catheter at the hospital. I have been pumping and dumping though, my supply is nowhere near where I would like it but I am determined to try breastfeeding and bottle feeding my milk to her, starting tomorrow. Woo hoo! My nipples are flat except after pumping so I am going to try pumping for a minute before feeding her and see how that works.
We love our precious little critter, and every little thing that happens seems like a miracle!
2008-04-06 (baby has arrived)
Baby Carly Wow our baby is so wonderful, the recovery from the c-section has not been that wonderful! I would do it a hundred times for her though that's for sure.
She loves her swing that her cousin Zackery lent her, since we found out it reclines she is much more comfortable in it :)
Me and Pete have not been sleeping very much at all, we had a stressful situation here, the room I've been referring to as baby central, with tons of baby stuff in it, flooded with quite a bit of water. The guys that came to drain it had huge industrial buckets and they sucked out tons of buckets worth of the floodwater. The landlord paid for us to spend the night in a motel while they cleaned, but the next day we came home and the room started flooding again. This time they didn't call anyone to suck out the water, the landlord just came and put towels on it. I am very unhappy with that, in fact the carpet is still quite damp, and I'm sure it's just the perfect environment for mould to grow underneath. Just what we need with a one week old baby!!!
The landlord agreed to pull the carpet out of that room thank goodness. I don't know how he feels about the carpet in our bedroom because the water did leak over all along one wall and is quite damp still. Pete and I are filing a report tomorrow morning with pictures of the flood to the housing committee, hopefully they will agree to rush us into assisted housing if repeated flooding is going to be happening here. You never know it could help.
I am in a lot of pain today, I have a bladder infection and then the pain from the c-section. It's all worth it for Carly though! She is starting to get more animated now with facial expressions, it's really sweet--she wiggles her eyebrows, and when she wants to eat she throws herself into the "eating position" and shows us her "hungry mouth" which is a wide open mouth mixed with a smile :)
I never really got settled from the hospital because I was recovering from the surgery, then we had to pack up again and go to the motel, and now I've been moving clothes out of baby central so they don't start to smell. It's upsetting because I don't feel like we'll ever be settled.
Anyway, we are both so in love with our beautiful daughter xoxoox
2008-04-03 (baby has arrived)
Carly's Birthstory
The morning of March 28 we arrived at the hospital at 5:50 am, scheduled for a c-section at 8:00 am. I got into a nightgown and they started the prep pretty much right away. I was so nervous that unfortunately I started to get really super gassy!! How embarrassing, especially since when you’re getting prepped for surgery there’s nowhere to hide if you know what I mean. Once I was all prepped, they rolled me to a holding area, where I had to lay there next to a very elderly lady, I don’t know what surgery she was getting but she looked pretty frail, and then of course to soothe us pre-op, they played the radio which was super annoying guitar riffs!!!! I was getting very aggravated listening to that stuff at eight in the morning.
The anaesthesiologist was very nice, but when he came over to meet me he put his big heavy book down right on my catheter so I had to tell him which was a big laugh. In the O.R., while I was getting my spinal, everything started to seem more real and I was scared! So I started to cry, and a couple of nurses comforted me. The epi-morphine blend they gave me worked like a charm and provided pain relief for a long time after the surgery.
Well, Pete almost missed the birth of his daughter, because they had him wait all the way across the maternity ward in our room, and the stupid nurse just grabbed some random guy that was standing outside the O.R. and told him to come on in. So some stranger came in and saw me all cut up, and then the nurse started laughing when they realized it wasn’t Pete. I began to sob, since I didn’t want to deliver alone, and the anaesthesiologist got ticked off at the nurse because I said “it’s not funny!!!” Pete ended up running into the room at the very last minute before his daughter was born. I couldn’t believe it but I was so so glad he was there. I just felt like she would be more safe if her dad was there.
It took her a couple of minutes to start crying, when she did I started to cry again, the relief was just unbelievable. Everyone in the delivery room was saying how pretty she was. She was born at 8:52 am, at 8 pounds 5 ounces, with lots of hair. She has been the most wonderful part of my life since she was born, I can’t remember what life was like before her arrival and she is really so special. My ob-gyn told us that my little girl had her cord tangled around her neck, and without the c-section she was a tragedy waiting to happen. I can’t believe how lucky we are and we love her so so much.
It was annoying being at the hospital with all the antics of the annoying nurses, I am so glad to be home now, I still have pain from the c-section of course but at least I don’t have to cripple my way out to the hallway to beg for some pain relief every four hours then wait until they feel good and ready to give it to me. Glad to be home with our little bundle of joy.
It's funny though that we tend to take shifts, so that one of us is always with her, I don't know when we will break that habit lol we are lucky that both of us are home with her all the time so we can do that. 