Adeline: 1 month

Adeline,

How are you already 1 month old?

It seems like just yesterday you were still in my belly, making your presence known by kicking me in the ribs.

Now, here you are, curled up next to me on the couch, wide-eyed and looking around at your new surroundings.

You have brought so many blessings to us in the last month. With each little sound you make, each brush of your hand on my face while I'm feeding you, you are making your Daddy and I aware of just what a miracle new life is.

You are such a good baby.

You sleep 2-4 hours at a time. Normally I nurse you during the day and prepare bottles for when Daddy is home so he can feed you. He likes to bond with you this way. Nursing was hard for us at first but we got the hang of it after a few weeks and now I think we are seasoned pros. 

You usually have your last feeding around midnight and then Mommy and Daddy goes to bed. You wake us up around 3 and then again at 6. Right now you are eating between 2 and 3 ounces at a time. 

 At first you didn't like your bassinet, but we fixed that by bundling you up really warm and cozy and you are doing just fine.

You cried your first big crocodile tears on April 16th because you were mad that I wouldn't pick you up.  Something about seeing tears rolling down your little cheeks completely broke my heart. 

You are still wearing newborn diapers but I think we are getting pretty close to 1's. You are growing so fast and now weigh close to 8 pounds! Your little face is filling out and you are starting to look so much more mature and less like a newborn. 

On April 18th, you held your head up for almost a minute! Your little muscles are getting stronger everyday and I can tell by the way you grasp my fingers or kick out when you are mad. You also smiled at me for the first time on this day. I was looking over at the computer and turned around to see you smiling up at me. It was the prettiest smile I have ever seen in my entire life. I can't believe that it is just gas, I believe that that pretty little smile was just for me! 

You love when your Daddy comes home from work. Your little eyes light up when you hear his voice. Some of your favorite things are your Soothie paci and cuddling on the couch. You also love it when we dance around the nursery after I change your diaper. You prefer sleeping on your side instead of your back, but I only let you do that when you are napping and not at night. You also love your vibrating chair and you will sit in it the whole time Mommy is taking her shower or working in the kitchen.

You are just like your Mommy when it comes to being bound up in your clothes. You aren't a fan of being swaddled and you will scream until we free your arms and feet. I hate having my feet and hands covered too so it's really hard for me to swaddle you. Daddy does the best swaddling job and he knows  how to do it so that you will like it.

You are changing more and more everyday Miss Adeline. We are starting to see faint traces of a smile more often, and I know that it will only be a matter of time before you are smiling and cooing and showing off all those cute expressions I know you will have. 

I can't wait to see how much you change in the next month. You are growing into a beautiful little girl. When I was a little girl, your Papaw McGee used to tell me that if God lined up all the little girls in the whole world and told him he could have any one he wanted, he would always pick me. Now I know exactly what he meant. You are perfect for us, and we wouldn't trade you for anything in the world.  

We love you so much. Happy 1 month birthday little girl. 

Love, 

 Mommy

Motherhood: Reality

Adeline will soon be 4 weeks old.

Until yesterday, I felt like the rockstar mom.

I feed her, change her, lay her down and we are good to go for a few hours.

Yesterday however, Adeline made a real mom out of me.

You know the kind, spit up all over your shoulder, hair disgusting, house a wreck. 

Yep, that was me.

For some reason when Adeline woke up she decided that she was going to do nothing but hang out on the boob all day (see told ya we say boob now without any reservation. Sorry if you consider that a bad word. Feel free to remove yourself from my blog because I'm sure over the next few months 'boob' will be said a lot. Fair warning has been given). She also decided that hanging out alone was completely out of the question and thus decided to scream at the top of her lungs each and every time she realized that she was by herself. Napping was non-existant which meant that any break I would have had to do anything around the house was also non-existant. All of this meant that by the time Landen walked through the door around 6:30, I was stinky, still in my bathrobe, and had used an entire tube of Lanolin cream. Even the dog was in hiding from all of the screaming and refused to come out until Landen said the magic "potty" word. 

Landen took one look at me, took the screaming babe out of my arms, gave me a hug, and said "Go take some time for yourself and I'll take care of her and start dinner."

{Such a stud muffin.}

So what did this mom do? I took a shower. Yep, with all this free time my husband had so generously bestowed upon me, all I wanted was some hot water to wash off the yuck of my first crazy-mom day. 

I am happy to remark however that today we are right back on track. She is back on her regular feeding schedule, which I am happily providing via Medela and a bottle to give me a break, and she actually took a nap earlier which allowed me to dust my living room and fold two loads of laundry that I started yesterday.

I'm sure that I will have many more days like this before Adeline is all grown up. 

I'm thinking my lucky stars that she has been such a good baby so far.

And as for her,

I think she enjoyed giving me a little taste of reality yesterday.

10 Things I'm Learning About Being a Mommy

1. Everything is cute. And I mean everything! Since becoming a mommy I have somehow mutated into some mushy-gushy gaga freak. Show me a picture of a baby in a catalog...oohhhh.  That kid in the wagon rolling down the street? Be still my heart. Oh, and I can't leave out the cutest little puppy just pinned to Pinterest. Look how fuzzy-wuzzy! Don't be fooled though, the cutest thing by FAR is this really adorable brown-headed cutie-pie named Adeline. Coochie-coochie-coo, I wuv you!
(Help, I need an intervention!)

2. Dryers eat baby socks. If I had known that those microscopic socks would disappear as fast as they do I might have taken back all the bottles and bought more socks. At least it's a little bit harder to lose a bottle!

3. Daytime TV sucks. For realz. In between all the infomercials, reality shows, and cartoons, I'm left watching Dateline: Real Life Mysteries for most of the day. Thank God for Netflix! Although I might have found a new career as an attorney. I'm getting pretty good at the whole guilty/not guilty thing. I'm right at least 45% of the time. (That's all it takes to be successful, right?)

4. It is still possible to keep the house 'tidy'. I'll be the first to admit that I am little anal retentive when it comes to my house. A place for everything and everything in its place is what I always say. So I'll be honest that the thought of my house falling to pieces during the "newborn" phase freaked me out a little bit. I'm finding though that I can still manage to pick things up during nap time. I can dust one room one day, load the dishwasher while giving her a bottle, and fold clothes while she looks around from her Boppy.

5. The word 'boob' and 'poop' are daily vocabulary words in our household. It seems like our conversations consist of nothing but "How many times has she pooped today?" "Oh man! That was a big poop!" "She ate off the boob today!" Funny, things that seemed awkward before being a mommy are now just second nature.

6. All the spotlight surrounding being pregnant is now transferred over to the baby.  One of the greatest things about being pregnant is all the attention that you get. People care about how you are feeling, how you look, etc.  Once the belly is gone so is the attention. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There reached a point where I was ready for the conversation to turn away from "pregnancy" all the time. Now I find, the conversation has turned to Adeline. And you know what? I am perfectly okay with that! I can talk about Miss Adeline all. day. long!

7. Shower anyone? Even though Adeline is just 3 weeks old, I have already found that I get in the shower and out in half the time it used to take me. I've perfected the art of washing off while rinsing the conditioner out of my hair. And those days of not leaving the bathroom until my makeup is applied and each hair perfectly in its place? Gone. Makeup gets applied in the car, and hair is done in between feedings and naps. 

8. A breast pump is household decor. What you didn't know that it was perfectly normal to walk into a house and see a breast pump sitting on the side table? Huh. Some things I have found, no matter how anal-retentie I am, have now come down to convenience. So yeah, my breast pump is visible when you walk into my house, and no I don't care. It's such a freeing feeling! Perhaps I'll take a picture and pin it!

9. Life is divided into 2-3 hour increments. Gone are the days of taking a nap or a long shower or a walk around the block. Now I live from one 2-3 hour block of time to the next.  Adeline is also extremely clingy to her mommy so she doesn't like her bassinet unless it's night time, but we are working on that part.

10. I can do this. When Landen went back to work that first week, I spent the entire first day crying like the newborn baby I held in my arms. I was so afraid that I was going to fail without him here to help me. But I did it, day by day, diaper by diaper. At the end of the week I realized that I was completely capable of taking care of my sweet little girl. I got this!

Adeline's Birth Story

It all started with a dream.

One of the teachers that I work with made a prediction a couple weeks ago based on a dream she had that Baby O would grace the world on March 22, 2012.

We all know how I feel about predictions, they never seem to turn out true for me, so I took it with a grain of salt and kept plowing the days away at work.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 came and Landen and I made the 15 minute trek to the baby Dr's office for our weekly checkup.  We were told I was about 60% effaced but was still only about 1 cm dilated.  Dr. Narandran predicted that I was right on target with my due date (March 29th) and that we should expect something to happen within 7-10 days.

Alrighty then, we have time.

Wednesday evening I developed a slight fever and pretty much felt like crap. I was coughing, freezing, sick to my stomach, all things allergy-season like.  

Thursday morning came and I still felt horrible but decided to suck it up and go on to work anyway since I had a meeting outside of school and had already scheduled a sub.

I arrived at the meeting right on time and even though I felt like poo I slapped a smile on my face and tried to act interested in Social Studies curriculum and content standards. 

Around 9:30 I decided I had to pee.  Peeing was something I was doing a lot of those days since Baby O was pretty much full term and was doing the standard lay on/kick the bladder routine. 

I went in, did my business, stood up, and WOOSH

Water, water, everywhere. 

I sat there thinking "No freakin' way! My water did NOT just break." 

I cleaned up, stood up, and WOOSH, the same thing happened again.

At the point I was pretty positive what had just happened.

I calmly penguin walked over the sink, washed my hands, and decided that the only thing to do was go back in the meeting room and announce what had happened.

I walked in, waited for the leader of the meeting to finish talking and step out and calmly announced to the three other ladies in the meeting:

"So, ummm, not to cause a group wide panic or anything, but I think my water just broke."

This was followed by lots of questions, lots of water, and one really weird conversation with the school nurse that included something about a mop and paper towels.

Once everyone was sure that my water did in fact break, I sent Landen the infamous text message: 

I believe he made the normal 25 minute trip in 15. 

When he got there to pick me up I had already called the Dr by this time and they had me scheduled to come into the office at 10:45. Looking back this was so stupid, I am gushing out baby juice everywhere but I need to come into the office. Dummies.

We made it to the office right on time after hitting literally every single light on the entire trip, and I waddled up the elevator and into the office leaving a slug-like path the whole way. 

Let me describe the conversation that happened next:

Me: Hello, my name is Amanda O'Banion, I called in because my water just broke.

Receptionists: Okay, just leave your sample and come back out and we will be with you as soon as we can.

Me. Um, okay, but just so you know, I am leaving a puddle in your floor right now.

Receptionists: Oh my! Okay well I will contact a nurse to come and help you.

Pretty serious stuff here folks. LEAVE A SAMPLE AND WE'LL BE WITH YOU AS SOON AS WE CAN!?!?!?! {insert head slap to receptionists here.}

So I left my precious sample, left some amniotic fluid all over their floor as a thank you present, and then was led into the examining room. The Dr came in, asked me some questions, rolled his eyes at the fact that they had me to come into the office in the first place and then looked at the floor and said "Is that from you?"

Um yesthankyou.

So he stuck some tape in it, it came back blue which means I had been right all along and in fact had NOT been peeing on myself, and had me transported to the hospital via a really bumpy wheelchair.

*Funny side note: being wheeled out into the pregnant-lady filled waiting room with water flowing out of the bottom of your pants was kinda funny. Kind of a "look what you get to look forward to" moment. I am glad I was able to leave them with a first hand glimpse of what was coming up in their lives. *

We made it to the room, got checked in, met Bridgette my nurse, and began to be slapped with the reality that holy smokes this was really happening.

Bridgette gave me my IV (which hurt like you know what, especially after she had to stick me twice because one of the veins blew in my arm.) And did an examination that showed that I was still about 60% effaced but I had dilated to 2 almost 3.  

I was hooked up to all these monitors, asked a ton of questions, and began having contractions.  At first the contractions were pretty mild, but then they began happening closer together and talking became harder.

Dr. Foley came in and checked on everything, asked some more questions, and then left.

About this time Bridgette told me she had mislabeled one of my vials of blood wrong and the lab had rejected it.

Third stick...perfect.

About this time the midwife came in and did an exam that agreed with what Bridgette had discovered and I started having some pretty intense contractions.

It was at this point that I noticed just how intently everyone was watching the Baby's heart rate.  I was so caught up in asking Landen if I was having a contraction, since he had become a pro at reading the monitor, that I didn't even really notice what was going on around me. 

Dr. Foley came back in, called for internal monitors to be placed on the baby's head (which left me yelling out for Jesus) and told me that if the heart rate didn't start showing some variations we might have to start talking about a c-section.

Okay then.
He also ordered Pitocin to be started and I got ready for the contractions to begin getting harder.
Shortly after this Bridgette decided that I was in a perfect state for the fabulous epidural to be administered. Brandi, the anesthesiologist came in and did a wonderful job explaining to me every step that she was taking to get me started on my wonderful pain-free journey to motherhood. At this point the contractions were getting more intense and I was more than ready and willing to have that huge needle stuck in my back.
The epidural was amazing! I was soon feeling happy and having a good ole time goofing off with everyone who walked in the room.
My parents, sister, and niece arrived right about this time and I knew that I was perfectly ready to have this baby now that they had made it. I was flying high, feeling good, and ready to pop out a baby when the mood suddenly changed in the room.
Dr. Foley had came back into the room, and after discussing quietly with the nurses made the call that I wasn't progressing the way I should be and to keep the baby out of harm a c-section was definitely necessary.
You would have thought I had been given a death sentence.
I remember Landen getting all teary eyed.
My parents walked out of the room to talk amongst themselves.
My best friend Charly came in to reassure me that after two c-sections of her own she knew that I would be just fine.
Strangely, even though everyone else saw this as a negative thing,
I was completely calm.
I didn't realize that my blood pressure was dropping rapidly and that the babies heart-rate jumped from 140ish to 180ish.
I remember looking at Landen and saying "Hey, it's okay! Whatever it takes to get the baby out safely is what we need to do, and look at this way. We will get to see it sooner!"
I didn't realize how soon!
Within minutes of Dr. Foley making the call I was flanked by nurses. One nurse came at me with a catheter, another with a razor, the anesthesiologist was pumping me full of more epidural medicine. It was happening so fast. The next thing I know I am hugging my friends and family and being raced down the hallway into the operating room in true Grey's Anatomy style. (And yes, I did make a McDreamy comment to the nurses to which they replied "We wish someone looked that good that works here.")
It probably should have hit me at this point that something was indeed a "bigger deal" than I thought it was, but again, I was feeling pretty good.
When Landen came into the operating room (looking mighty fine in his operating garb by the way) I think it finally hit me that this was it. We were going to be having a baby, and very soon!
One of the nurses predicted that her time of birth would be 5:38. I looked at the clock and saw that it said 5:23 and I about flipped out.
As I'm laying there on the table, surrounded by people who are doing God knows what to my body, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that this was all happening so fast. One minute we are in the delivery room waiting patiently for my labor to progress, the next minute I'm being strapped down and sliced open.
Landen stayed right by my side the entire time. It seemed like seconds until the Dr. was saying "Okay Daddy, come see what you have!"
Landen stood up, walked over, and I heard the precious words. "It's a little girl!"
I was so stinking excited!
My motherly instincts were right!
I knew it was a girl the whole time!
They brought her over to me for just a few moments and then Landen went over to take pictures and watch them assess her.

The hardest part of the entire process was having to stay strapped to that table while everyone else was admiring and loving on my little girl.
When they brought her back to me I was in awe at how beautiful she was. Olive complexion, dark hair, long skinny fingers and gigantic feet! Everything about her was so completely perfect. It's true, you don't know what love is until you have a child.



The rest of the day passed by quickly. We invited our families in to introduce them to Adeline SueAnn and I slowly began regaining feeling to my legs and started managing the pain that I was starting to feel.
Looking back, I can't believe that 2 weeks ago I was leaking fluid in a meeting, rushing to the hospital, getting an epidural, and having major abdominal surgery.
But when I look at the little girl laying next to me on the couch,
I realize something;
I would do it all over again, without pain medication, and have a hundred c-sections.
This little girl is totally worth it. We couldn't be more blessed.
Adeline SueAnn is perfect.