Big Blog News! HUGE!

I’m moving! Well actually the blog is moving, in fact it’s already been moved. I now have my very piece of internet real estate and some fancy new digs. Check it all out by click the image below.

GO NOW!!!!

1 Month

Well, Sophia, you’re one month old today. Your dad and I were successful in keeping you alive, not just alive but thriving (you 10 pound porker), for an entire month without losing our sanity. Yes, I know it’s debatable that the reason we didn’t lose our sanity is because neither one of us ever had it to begin with but we don’t need to split hairs.

You have transitioned your laid back ways from the womb into the real world and for that we thank you. You appreciate sleep just as much as we do and the night when you slept twelve hours was awesome! We had a bit of a rocky start with breastfeeding but I blame that partially on those witches that call themselves lactation consultants at the hospital, I know you hated them as much as I did. We found an interim plan and now you’re eating like a champ without any crutch and you’re no longer causing me toe curling pain and for that my boobs thank you.

You’ve had a lot of firsts in the last month. You had your first (of many) trip to Target at 4 days old and your first vaccination, which you took like a seasoned veteran. You celebrated your first Fourth of July; it still counts even if you slept through the fireworks that Donald Trump set off in our backyard. You’ve suffered through two God-awful heat waves and barely broke a sweat. You’ve also met the majority of your extended family including all those cousins and aunts and uncles you’ll spend years trying to keep their names straight. (Don’t feel bad your daddy still can’t keep them straight.)

You’re making a lot of headway in the development department. Right now you’re going through what I anticipate to be a huge growth spurt which is difficult to comprehend considering all the weight and growing you’ve done in the last month. You’re also becoming proficient at holding your head up and I already see signs that you’re attempting to roll over as well. Your dad and I also like how alert you’ve become and the occasion smile we can get out of you by making complete fools of ourselves.

We can’t wait to see what the next month holds for all of us.

Back In the Kitchen Again!

I promised myself I wouldn’t turn the blog into a full on “mommy blog” once Sophia was born. Not that there’s anything wrong with mommy blogs, some of my favorite blogs are in fact mommy blogs but I started this blog well before I was pregnant and I still have other interests and an identity beyond Sophia.

Towards the end of my pregnancy I started getting super lazy tired and cooking fell by the wayside because I couldn’t stand for more than ten minutes without needing a nap. Now that Sophia and I are getting a rhythm, dare I say a schedule, for the week I’m going to venture back into the kitchen and start cooking meals again. I’m also aiming to eat a bit healthier because I’m nursing Sophia and hoping to get into better shape (I certainly wasn’t in my top form before I got pregnant) but that’s another post for another time.

I spent the better part of an hour and a half yesterday looking for recipes to make my meal plan for the upcoming week. Below is what I came up with; I’ve linked to the blog or recipe that was inspiration but I’m sure I’ll have my own twist on each dish. I’ll be sure to post my actual recipes at the end of the week.

Monday: Buttermilk Grilled Chicken with Pasta Salad and Mixed Veggies

Tuesday: Smothered Pork Chops with Sautéed Apples

Wednesday: Chicken Taco Salad with Warm Tortillas

Thursday: Grilled Eggplant and Hummus Sandwiches

Friday: Mediterranean Pizza

Saturday: Mustard Cream Chicken with Rice and Mixed Veggies

What’s on your menu for the week?

What Happens When Your Kid Sleeps Through the Night

I thought I would do a jig on the roof of my house when Sophia slept through the night for the first time. She wasn’t a bad sleeper to begin with but getting up every two to three hours for the first week and a half while trying to recover from pushing her out of my body just wasn’t flying. We quickly found out, after her nasty umbilical stump fell off, that a warm bath is just what this kid needs to help fall asleep and stay asleep for longer. Hey! Me too! Once we started the nightly baths we started getting three to four hours of sleep out of her at a night, suh-weet! So when Monday night came upon us and we bathed her, swaddled her, fed her and put her to bed we were expecting to get up again around 1 a.m. Imagine my surprise when I woke up with thoroughly swollen boobs at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning thoroughly confused because there wasn’t a crying infant in the other room begging to be fed. I waited a half hour, sure she was going to start squawking like a chicken demanding food the second I fell back to sleep. Four a.m. rolled around and still no squawking.

This feeling of dread started to creep into my head. All of these “what if” scenarios started running through my head. I hesitantly got out of bed and walked across the hall to her bedroom. I opened the door and walked over to her crib. She was still all swaddled up, very unusual considering she usually breaks out of it within ten minutes of being put in the crib. I didn’t know of a better way to check if she was still breathing so I just put my hand up to her mouth and nose. Sure enough she was still breathing and sleeping.

Triumphant and a bit bewildered I went back to our bedroom, pumped, shared the good news, that our child appreciates sleep as much as we do, with Tim and went back to sleep until 8 a.m.

So it’s a wonderful victory when your kid sleeps through the night for the first time but you sure as shit aren’t going to be able to enjoy it because you’ll be worried your kid stopped breathing while you got some much needed sleep.

More Pictures of Sophia

Here are some new pictures of Sophia that I’ve snapped over the last three weeks. You’ll notice how there are no pictures of me and her, I need to force a camera into her father’s hand.

Stories From the Office

Tim came home from work today and proceeded to share an enlightening conversation he had with his co-workers. Apparently men’s preference on a woman’s body is directly related to their choice in chicken. Like breast meat, you’re a breast man; like dark meat, you’re a leg man. As Tim was re-telling the highlight of his day to me I could immediately see where this was headed and he didn’t disappoint. His female co-worker asked “What about an ass man?” Tim wanted to know as well because he considers himself to in fact be an ass man. His co-worker touting this wisdom paused for a moment and then simply replied “Mmm, chicken ass”.

An Open Letter to Mr. Softee

Specifically the driver of the Mr. Softee truck that has been frequenting my neighborhood in recent weeks…

Dear Mr. Softee,

I know it’s not popular knowledge that I have just had a baby (I’m still getting the “ZOMG! I didn’t even know you were pregnant!” messages on Facebook). It’s not like I advertised the fact on my front lawn with a giant stork or anything like that. But I swear to God if you don’t stop parking your effing truck right in front of my house at 8:30 at night while my husband or I are trying to get our newborn to sleep I will shank you. Not to mention the fact that you’re blocking in my car, my husband’s car and our next door neighbors’ cars.

It didn’t really bother me the first time you did it. I gave you the benefit of the doubt telling my husband it was just luck of the draw that this is where you chose to stop and make some cash because the neighborhood kids just happened to flag you down right there but now you’re making a habit of it and it’s not cool. Between your young customers screaming with delight over your offerings (“ICE CREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”) and your insanity inducing theme song, I can’t legally be held liable for any actions that I may take to make the madness stop. So please, for your safety and my wish to stay out of jail, park you friggin truck away from my house and hopefully I’ll be able to get my newborn asleep in under two hours.

Please and thank you.

She’s Here…Finally!

I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath to hear how Sophia finally graced us with her presence. On June 20, my due date, there was absolutely nothing going on in the “going into labor” department. Tim and I went to my OB appointment and we scheduled a non-stress test and an amniotic fluid index scan for Thursday but Dr. Ricci really didn’t think I was going to make it. Well she was wrong and I went to the appointments on Thursday. Ms. Sophia passed the non-stress test in a hot minute and the fluid scan, which is just another ultrasound, showed she was super low but completely content to remain upside down inside me. The ultrasound tech was surprised at how much fluid was still left considering I was post-term. She also said that the machine was estimating Sophia would be about seven pounds and twelve ounces; this was a higher estimate than what the last two doctors had guessed (seven pounds four ounces and seven pounds five ounces). Since everything look text book perfect the OB’s office scheduled me for an induction on Monday, June 27 unless I went into labor on my own before then.

Yeah, that never happened.

So we got the call on Monday morning to come into the hospital around seven a.m. After a quick breakfast stop, we registered with the hospital and were taken up to labor and delivery where I got to strip down and put on a sexy ensemble of too big, too thin hospital gown and non-skid slipper socks. Barbara my first nurse came in and set me up with an awesomely painful IV in my wrist and started pumping fluids (I love this mysterious term) into me. I had to wait an hour or so for one of the OB’s from my practice on duty that day, Dr. Rosen, to come in check me and write orders for pitocin to get the party started. They started the pitocin at a rate of 2 cc an hour around 10 a.m. and planned on upping it every half hour until things really started going. According to the monitors contractions started soon after the pitocin started but I couldn’t feel anything. Around noon I finally started to feel the contractions but it was nothing, I was hungrier than anything else and watching the Food Network was not a wise choice on my part. This lack of physical pain went on all afternoon, I decided to get my epidural around five p.m. because I was bored and wanted the doctor to break my water, which they didn’t recommend until after I got my epidural.

Out of the entire pregnancy and labor and delivery, the epidural was by far the worst part of the whole experience. While we were registering, I remember thinking to myself that there was something wrong with me if I was voluntarily allowing myself to be pumped full of drugs that were intended to cause me immense pain, clearly I was wrong on this count. Having a doctor stick a needle in your spine while you’re hunched over a giant pregnant belly and pillow in order for the bigger needle not to hurt is just fucked up and I’m pretty sure the local anesthetic never completely took because I felt a lot of pain when the catheter went into my back. Thankfully the meds worked fast and I was feeling good within fifteen minutes. I actually felt pretty high and had to ask Dr. Rosen if it was normal to feel a little “loopy” from the epidural. She looked at me like I had two heads and asked me if I was feeling okay, hell yeah I was feeling good. She broke my water and left me to labor on in my epidural heaven. About two hours later she checked me again and I had went from 3 cm to 7 cm. Woo Hoo!

I made a lot of progress by eleven p.m. and was 9 cm with a lip. I just needed to labor a little more and I’d be able to push. Right around this time though, the epidural started to wear off in my upper right abdomen, right where Ms. Sophia had hooked her monkey toes into my ribs. The new nurse Janine called the new anesthesiologist in to give me a bolus of the epidural. When he asked what my pain level was on a scale of 1 to 10, I calmly told him 9. He looked at me and laughed. “We’ve got a girl who’s 2 cm down the hall and she’s screaming and climbing the walls.” Sucks not to be me…I was feeling pretty damn good after the second hit, enough to sleep on and off for a few hours.

While I was waiting my nurse Janine had to go help her other patient push so I was being reassigned to another nurse Carly. Carly was awesome. I wish she was my nurse the entire time I was in the hospital that’s how awesome she was. She came in and told me I was 10 cm and just to let her know when I felt ready to push and we could start. Around 2:45 a.m. on the 28^th, I buzzed her and said I thought it was time to push. She got us all set up within fifteen minutes and at 3 a.m. I started pushing.

This was the part I was dreading. I had heard some many stories of the epidural being turned down so you can feel when to push or the epidural wearing off. I didn’t go through all that pain of getting the epidural just to have it fail me when it really counted. Thankfully that wasn’t the case. Carly and I watched the monitor and when a contraction would start she’d have me push. Pushing was a breeze. I actually said about twenty minutes into it how easy it was and in between contractions Carly, Tim and I were laughing and joking around, so much so we missed two contractions. According to Carly, I was a professional. By 3:40 a.m., she was calling for Dr. Rosen to come in and deliver the baby. At 3:52 a.m. Sophia made her grand entrance and surprised us all weighing in at eight pounds three ounces and measuring twenty and a quarter inches in length. I have no idea where the hell she was hiding because I still didn’t feel that big when I walked into the hospital.

With the exception of being induced and being in boring labor for almost twenty-four hours (without food, minus the Tic-Tacs I was sneaking), I couldn’t have asked for things to go any better. Post-partum was a whole other story and honestly if I could find a doctor to give me an epidural at home I totally would have my next kid at home but I doubt that’s ever going to happen so I’ll take my wins where it counts.

And here’s what you really wanted to see:

Having a Baby Takes Up All Your Blogging Time

This is a statement of fact!

We’re all here safe and sound. It’s been hectic (to say the least) but I think we’re all finding our groove. I’m hoping to have a post up either today or tomorrow with all the details of the last week.

Yeah, I’m Serving an Eviction Notice on My Daughter

I don’t want to hear anything along the lines of “Oh she’ll be here when she’s ready” or “First time moms usually go into labor late” or “A due date isn’t an expiration date”.  I’m uncomfortable, semi-lame (as in can’t walk) and haven’t slept for more than an hour straight in over two weeks…I’ve earned the right to be a little cranky and cannot be held liable for what will spew from my mouth in the event something like the above is heaved my way by some “well meaning” person.  Maybe I should just put a giant “BEWARE” sign around my neck.