Has it reall been 3 months already?

Little Miss will be 3 months old tomorrow. I can't believe it. I stopped swaddling her last weekend, daddy found her first tooth coming through and she is finally pooping less than 8 times a day. My little girl is growing up too fast.

I decided yesterday that I needed to capture her in time so we had an impromptu photo session. She is just the most adorable little girl in the whole world. These days, Little Miss is often found babbling up a storm, showing off a cute new cloth diaper cover, or lifting her head to look around during tummy time.

Naps have still been a bit rough, but since clever daddy found that achy tooth at least we know what's bothering her. I've found that if I go in and rub her gums and let her suck on my finger for a few minutes when she wakes up at the hour mark, she will usually drift back off for another hour or so. It's not ideal to have to go in during the middle of every nap, but if the kid is in pain she will get the extra loving she needs. She's still sleeping great at night and hopefully when teething is less of an issue we can get her back to a full nap without our help in the middle.

UPDATE: It wasn't a tooth that daddy found. After a trip to the dentist (I knew it wasn't a "normal" tooth), we were told it was a dental lamina cyst. She has several other smaller ones too. They are benign cysts found in newborns and they will resolve on their own, thank you Papa. I was really worried she'd have to have some procedure to get rid of it. She is definitely teething though but no signs of real teeth yet.

Nap Time Troubles

Little Miss will be 12 weeks old this Thursday and I'm trying to fine tune her schedule. She was doing great on a 3 hour schedule for quite a while but she started having nap trouble about 2 weeks ago. I'm trying to figure out if she needs shorter or longer naps, more or less time between feeds, or something else.

Here is what we have been doing.

6:30 am - nurse and right back to bed
9:30 am - nurse
10:30 am - nap
12:00 pm - nurse
1:00 pm - nap
3:00 pm - nurse
4:00 pm - nap
6:00 pm - nurse
6-9 pm - usually fussy, sometimes nap, sometimes not
9:00 pm - nurse, bedtime routine, down for the night

Like I said, this was working beautifully for quite some time and then she started waking exactly one hour into each of her naps. I thought it was the 45 minute intruder that they talk about in Preparation for Parenting (more on that another time). I thought maybe she was waking up hungry so I tried feeding her when she woke. Sometimes she was hungry but often times she wasn't. I would often pick her up only to have her fall right back to sleep in my arms.

Seeing this, I next tried leaving her in the crib but patting, shushing, or singing to her. Sometimes this worked but other times it just made her more upset that I wouldn't pick her up. When it was apparent that she was just getting more worked up by seeing me, I started letting her cry it out. That doesn't seem to be working either. Over the weekend at my parents' house, Little Miss seemed to not be feeling well so when she woke up after an hour, I just let her finish her nap in my arms. When I do that, she sleeps until the next scheduled feeding time.

I am feeling unsure of myself and I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I think I've come to the conclusion that she wakes up at the end of her first sleep cycle and doesn't know how to settle herself back down for the rest of the nap. She isn't hungry, seeing me makes her cry harder, and holding her for the second hour of every nap is not something I want to do regularly.

I know her ideal wake time is close to 60 minutes. For a while, it seemed to have lengthened to 65 or 70 minutes but it now is back to right around 60 minutes again. There is a great post over at Chronicles of a Babywise Mom about Optimal Waketime Lengths. I'm not sure if this changing waketime length issue has anything to do with the middle of the nap waking issues we're having.

So today we are trying something new. For the next week we are going to try this and see how it goes.

7:00 am - wake up and nurse
8:30 am - nap
9:30 am - nurse
10:30 am - nap
1:00 pm - nurse
2:30 pm - nap
4:00 pm - nurse
5:00 pm - nap
7:00 pm - nurse
8:30 pm - nap
9:30 pm - nurse
10:00 pm - bedtime

This morning went very well with Little Miss sleeping solidly for the first two naps. We are on nap number three right now and she has been fussing on and off from 45 minutes in until now (an hour in). Hopefully she'll adjust in the next day or two and naps will be a bit smoother for a while at least.

The Birth of Little Miss

This is the long version so don't say I didn't warn you.

On December 20th I started having really bad back pain and contractions about 6 minutes apart. I was 35 weeks and 1 day. We headed to the hospital (this was our 4th visit to labor and delivery) and had to wait an hour for a room to open up all while having what I thought was back labor since Little Miss was breech and contractions every 5-6 minutes. I finally got into a room and settled. They checked me and I was still only 1 cm dilated and 20% effaced, only slightly more than the week before.

After a few hours of continued pain and monitoring, they figured out I had a kidney infection which was actually causing all the back pain and probably the contractions too. Sometime in the middle of the night they started me on antibiotics and magnesium and gave me something for the pain. I knew then I was going to be there at least for a few days on the IV antibiotics. I ended up getting "magged out" over the next 24 hours and having a terrible experience the following night with a less than sympathetic nurse. They lowered my magnesium and I felt much better within a few hours.

From then on, they were able to keep me relatively comfortable with the magnesium and Tylenol for the back pain. Over the weekend (Saturday was Christmas), we got mixed messages about whether they would try to wean me off the mag and send me home to cook the Little Miss a bit longer or if they would be keeping me until delivery. It was the day after Christmas that I hit 36 weeks and breathed a little easier. I was getting several different opinions though of how she might do, particularly with breathing, because of my diabetes along with the fact that she was measuring HUGE...already full term size before 36 weeks.

At one point they tried to wean me off of the mag and I started having more uncomfortable contractions within an hour or so and that idea was given up. They decided to “humor me” and do an amnio Wednesday to see if her lungs were ready. The night they did the amnio she measured in at 9 lbs 2 oz by Dr. T's measurements and he said there was no chance her lungs would be fine yet with her size and my diabetes. He also said that if I were to go full term she would make the papers because she would be 13 pounds. The next morning the preliminary amnio results came in saying the lungs were mature so we waited to hear from Dr. J (the one we liked better) when the c section would be scheduled. We found out just before lunch that Little Miss was going to be born that evening and called the family.

Dr. J scheduled the c section for 7 pm so they didn't let me eat from lunch on. In the intervening hours, I showered, we cleaned up our hospital room, and tried unsuccessfully to rest. We were super excited and a little nervous. I went really low twice in the hour and a half prior to the section and they had to give me IV dextrose since I couldn't eat anything and both his family and my family were all in the room and I felt a little overwhelmed. They finally said the OR was ready and came to wheel me back around 7:15. The hall outside was filled with more family.

When My Love and I got back to the OR they had him put on a white suit, cap, booties, and mask. It was rather comical watching my 6' 5” husband trying to cram himself and his size 15 feet into the sterile garb. He ended up wearing the booties over his socks because his shoes didn't fit. We had to wait for Dr. T who was assisting because he was stuck in traffic. They finally took me in to get the epidural started and before I knew it, they were opening me up. I was a little out of it from whatever they gave me but I perked up when I heard that one of her legs had been delivered. Then she was out and I waited for that first cry. It was beautiful.

I kept asking how she was and after what seemed like forever, they said she was great and asked My Love to go cut the cord. She was born at 8:05 pm weighing 7 lbs 11 oz and 19.5 inches long. She had a beautiful full head of dark brown hair and the longest fingers and toes.

I was really uncomfortable though as they were still working on me and they said because of having been on the magnesium and her breech position my uterus was really soft and having a hard time contracting down so they gave me pitocin and something else to help with that. I wanted something for pain but not until after I saw her. The nurse finally brought her over and then Ricky came and held her up for me. We took a few pictures and then they were out the door to the nursery. They gave me something more for the pain and I dozed while they finished stitching me up. Dr. J did a fantastic job with dermabond and steri strips on the outside and it looks amazing.

I continued to doze in recovery and asked for my mom and more pain meds. She helped me test my blood sugar (118) and eventually My Love came in with Little Miss. They ended up being totally full on the post-partum side of the floor so they took me back to my room on the L and D side. As soon as I was settled in bed, I wanted to try to nurse and Little Miss did great even though it had been about 2 hours since the delivery (longer than I would have liked but it turned out fine). The rest of the night was a blur but I will never forget those first hours with my precious baby girl.

A New Normal

A lot has happened since I last blogged. Most significantly, this...


Little Miss was born Dec. 30, 2010 at 8:05 pm. She weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces and was 19 and a half inches long. I'll post the birth story another time but now that she is here, I feel like I have lots to share with the world.

My life changed forever the day she was born. My days are now filled with diapers and spit up and nap times, car seats, lullabies, and cooing. I am a wife and a mom and I am content. As I have added yet another role to my list, I am finding my "new normal" and trying to keep being Papa's Girl at the top of the list.