A new normal

Getting back to normal. Riiiiiight. What's that? I know that eventually there will be a new 'normal,' but for now....everyday is different, interesting, challenging, rewarding and totally unpredictable.

I am still healing from the c-section and feeling totally overwhelmed and have really felt the desire to hibernate in the house with baby Miriam (and my mom because she has been over everyday this week helping me out IMMENSELY). I am still unable to do any lifting or a lot of walking, so my days are kind of limited to sitting in the recliner, feeding the baby, changing her and marveling over the fact that this little girl came out of me and is totally adorable.

Oh, and in case you didn't catch on....baby girl Milburn's name is Miriam Faith. And she is beautiful. More beautiful than I could have ever imagined. No exaggerating. She is amazing and soft and sweet and quite frankly, pretty smelly at the moment. She wasted no time letting us know she has no modesty when it comes to filling her britches. She'll fart in your arms, no problem. She loves to be rocked and held. She rarely cries for any other reason other than being hungry. She makes TONS of noises and faces in her sleep and loves to kick her way out of her blankets. She hates being naked and cries whenever her diaper is being changed. Often when Daniel changes her diaper, she pees all over the changing pad and her onesies. Oh yeah...and all those clothes we had......none of them fit her. She is too tiny! But, she is gaining weight like crazy, so I am thinking that within the next 2 weeks, she will be in regular newborn clothes.

Daniel is so in love with her. I have never seen a father so in love with his daughter. He marvels over her constantly and always tells me how cute she is. He is constantly saying things to me like, "Thank you so much for carrying her for us." "Thanks for working so hard at nursing her." He is the most amazing husband and has been so supportive. I can't imagine doing this without him.

I am sure that soon I will be ready to accept visitors and go out to show my darling baby girl off in public, but for now....we are concentrating on getting her to gain weight, latch on to nursing correctly and keeping her healthy. Being so small, she is slightly more at risk to catch things than normal babies.

Here are some pictures to tide you over until I am more motivated to update. : )

C-Section Success!!!

Well, we were hoping for a natural birth, but God had different plans! Which was fine with Heather, because by the time it became obvious that a C-section was necessary she definetely was tired of the contractions. (personally, I would have gone with the C-section about ten hours earlier, she is much tougher than I am)So they wheeled her over to the operating room, I sat behind her, and about ten minutes later came out little baby girl Milburn! 5 lbs 14 ounces & 17 inches of little baby cuteness! She is so perfect and beautiful, we have really been blessed.

We brought everyone through the room who waited to see her, and it was really awesome to have so many people's love and support.

We are now over in the recovery room, but it'll be a good while before we're able to get any sleep. We still have to feed her and get situated over here, and it's already 1:00 in the morning. Heather is still in a lot of pain, and is a little bummed about how lame the epidural was (apparently a slight curvature of her spine prohibited the meds from property entering her system), but she says it is all worth it!

I'll have her update the blog when she can, which will probably be sometime tomorrow (or in the middle of the night, when we are up for a feeding!)

5 Cms

Five Centimeters, water broken, and counting!!!!! Heather is doing amazingly well. She really is tough. The contractions are coming right on top of eachother now, one barely gets finished before the next one starts...at least, that's what Heather says it feels like! I'll take her word for it. :)

Afternoon

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since we've seen the doc, but we aren't expecting to see her until after 4:00 anyways. Heather is doing really well, she is taking the contractions and all other discomforts like a pro.

We've been blessed with a lot of visitors, and we really appreciate all the prayers! Thanks to everyone who has passed along a text or a prayer, it has really been great and made us feel quite loved.

As soon as we know more we'll update you all, so perhaps around 4:00. She's been having really steady contractions for about four hours now, so it should really be moving things along nicely. The doc hasn't checked things since 12:30, so about 2 1/2 hours ago. We're hoping that when she comes in, she'll find things further along than we thought.

Heather is going down for a nap now, we'll talk to you soon!

Morning arrives!

This is Daniel. So if this post is a little less poetic or sounds like it was written by a third grader, that's why.

Heather is progressing nicely! Last night she told everyone how they tried to put the IV in her two times....well, the finally got it on the SIXTH attempt. She was hurting a lot after that, as you can imagine. But back to the progress. She is 3 cm dilated and the baby has dropped to -2 station. She was a -4 this morning, so that's progress! (+4 would mean the head is out) She had to be put on oxygen because the epidural was making her a little light headed. The baby is doing fine, she is healthy and enjoying her nice little home for the last few hours she gets to. As Heather has been saying, she is getting evicted today so she better enjoy it while it lasts! It must be annoying to have your home try to sqeeze you out though...

The early bird gets the epidural....

Things sure progress fast when your feet are the size of Goliath's. We went in for our appointment on Friday afternoon and the doctor was pretty concerned about my blood pressure and the amount of swelling I had. She sent us over to labor and delivery and did some tests for preeclampsia. Everything came out ok, but she asked me to stay home from work Monday and come in again that afternoon.

Monday afternoon, my blood pressure was much worse and I was feeling pretty dizzy and miserable, so they decided to induce me on Thursday morning. The baby is doing great and is still happy in her warm little home, but they were afraid that she would get a little too used to my high blood pressure and if they tried to lower it by medication, then she would not receive enough blood. So, after the appointment, I went to work and filled out my paperwork for my leave and Daniel and I went home and started preparing to have our baby girl this Thursday. WOW!!!!! Talk about a bundle of emotions running through my body, mind, soul.....Daniel even made me turn off my phone and not answer any calls because I was feeling so overwhelmed.

So, here we are....it's Wednesday night and we have been at the hospital for about 3 hours.

In my brief hospital stay so far, I have eaten a fairly decent dinner, some orange jello, drank 2 liters of water, watched one fairly boring episode of Eureka (sorry Mom), gone pee about 10 times, had a very uncomfortable cervical dilation thingy 'implanted' and been poked for an IV twice.....both unsuccessfully. I am currently awaiting a visit from the anesthegeologist(for some reason, spell check is not telling me how to spell this correctly....) because apparently he is the best at finding veins (which makes sense, if you think about it).

Welp.....gonna sign off now. Soon, I will be taking some glorious medicine to help me sleep and then I will wake up, blog some more and hopefully get my epidural and pitocin at the same time. Yep...I'm not taking my chances. Let's get this show on the road.

And you thought I was cheerful....

Yep. Last night I uttered the words that were destined to come out of my mouth at some point in my pregnancy...."I am done." Done. That's right, folks. Get ready for a lot of ranting ahead. I am warning you now.......stop reading if you think you might a) hate the fact that I am complaining, b) think to yourself, 'wow.....she is really grouchy' and then post a comment to that effect, or c) take the spiritual aspect and start quoting verses to me about not complaining. I am very aware that what I am about to type will be.......unpleasant.
I have had people say to me some wonderfully encouraging things such as, "Wow. You are just so cheerful being pregnant." And...."It is so refreshing to hear you so excited about your pregnancy rather than complain like a lot of women do." Welp. Sorry to disappoint, but I am only human......a very large human with what feels like a very large child inside of her......and I have reached the brink. The brink where you can see the finish line, but way off in the distance and.....it actually MAY not be the finish line, you may have to go on for 20 more miles.
Oh, and did I mention my very large feet and ankles? Seriously. I am thinking that it is not swelling, but a very bad case of elephantitis of the lower legs. And don't get me started on my upper body. I have a line in the middle of my neck that clearly shows both how much water I am retaining and how many chocolate cakes I have eaten in their entirety throughout this 'growing a baby' process. I think it is similar to how you can count the rings on the inside of a tree to tell how old it is, except every line on my neck represents 10. And we have it documented in photographs. Not only photos of events we have gone to in which you clearly can't tell I am pregnant because the shot is only from the chest up (which only portrays the following: boobs that are threatening to choke me because my cleavage goes halfway up my chest, my tree-line neck, a quickly forming double chin and a smile that forces my enormous cheeks up into my eyes....eyes, what eyes? You can't see them in any pictures!) but we were also encouraged to take our picture for the church directory. I daftly thought to myself, "oh this will be sweet. A picture of me carrying our child and then the next picture in the directory will be of Daniel and I WITH our child." Yeah. Wanna know what was wrong with THAT picture? Besides all of the things listed above when I viewed it, I also remembered that the last time we had our picture taken for the directory was 3 years ago. THREE YEARS this picture will be present for all to see. I'm done.
Please don't take it upon yourself to assume that because I am done being pregnant, this also means that I am not excited to meet baby girl or that I don't know how incredibly BLESSED I am to have this child and an amazing pregnancy. Quite the contrary. I am excited. But, I am also excited to.......
1. see my feet
2. see my feet without cringing because they are hideous
3. shave my legs
4. paint my toenails
5. walk across the street at work without it taking me half an hour and being sorely tempted to hitch hike the last 10 feet.
6. drink a margarita
7. sleep....which I know won't come for a VERY long time, don't worry. I'm not naive. But, drinking the margaritas will help.
8. Eat sushi. I don't even LIKE sushi that much, but I am ready to be able to eat it.
9. Go to church without having 30 people come up to me in an hour's time and say the following: "Wow. I bet you're getting ready. When are you due?"
10. Clean my house. My fat feet prevent me from doing this.

If you are still reading....I apologize. But, can I get an 'AMEN'?