Happy New Year!

It's been a banner year.  So much has happened, and I have so much to be thankful for.  2012 has proven to me how wonderful and giving others can be.  I've found community, love, hope, and a bounty of blessings.   And of course, I gained a beautiful baby daughter that I still cannot believe is here...and is in my keeping.  She'll call me mama.  Sometimes it doesn't seem real.

I hope that in the year to come, I am able to stress less, and love more.  I want to strive to be the best mom and wife I can be.  Family and friends are the most important things.  I want to cherish them as much as possible this year.  And each year after that.

5 weeks in!

Well, I thought I'd pop in to say that things have been going so well since Fiona was born.   I know that I've been slack on updating the blog, but frankly I've had so much else going on with her and the holidays that I haven't really thought about it much.  But everything here is good.  She's now a little over 5 weeks old, and has been sleeping and eating well.  She's already up to almost 11 lbs.  And generally we're getting 6 hour stretches at night of sleep.  (I know.....amazing!)  This is what she looks like with all that sleeping...

Little mouth-breather.  LOL!

Thanks to Tonya, we were able to get hooked up with some donated breast milk for Fiona since I wasn't able to lactate.  Still haven't lost all the weight I gained from all those hormones by the way.  :-(   Other than that, Fiona has been on formula...and I think that's a big reason that she's sleeping so well.  That and we're big fans of seeing if she'll self-soothe first before picking her up during the middle of the night.  So far the combination of those two things has been working.

There are a ton of other things to say of course, but I hardly know where to start.  We just love her so much, and overall we feel so blessed.  At the start of this journey, it seemed hard to believe that we would end up with a baby.  I know that was the desired result, but it still seemed like a foreign concept that it would really happen.  And yet, here we are a year later.  And it's hard to imagine what life was like beforehand...

Someone's fox hat is still a little too big!

N has already started plotting for our next one.  Haha.  Of course, that will be several years away assuming we could even do it.  But I have to admit that we both know why people fall in love with babies.  I could just breathe her smell all day long...  :-)

Our little Christmas elf!

She's definitely the best Christmas present we could have ever asked for...
  

38 wks 2 days: Fiona's Arrival!

Fiona arrived the day before Thanksgiving!  She was transverse breech and B had to have a c-section (unfortunately), but otherwise it was great.  B did great and we got to be in the operating room with her.  I held her hand almost the whole time and cried.  It was very emotional.  And then little Fiona came out weighing 8 lbs and 12 oz!   We've had 48 glorious hours with her so far....and we're totally in love! 

 

Promise to give more details on her birth story and more pics to come.  We're operating out of a hotel room currently and still adjusting to life as new parents!!

38 week update

Fiona is in a transverse position, and the doctor wants us to wait to see if she turns before doing a c-section.  All of B's four previous pregnancies have been natural, so obviously none of us are wanting her to have to have a c-section if we don't have to.  And the baby was head down on Friday.  Please pray that she turns back down tonight!!!

37 weeks 4 days update: Freakout

Big changes and No changes.  Here's the quick and dirty, starting with the least interesting.

1.  I still haven't heard a peep from my HR dept about whether or not I'm getting any pay during my leave.  I've left messages, sent emails, had multiple conversations.  I'm trying not to freak out.  

2.  B went to her 37 week 3 day appt with the delivering OB yesterday.  He's a different OB than her local one in MS.  (B/c of legalities, we are trying to deliver in AR.)  He's 2 hours from her house.  This craptastic doctor didn't check her to see how much she was dilated or give her an ultrasound.  (Note, I wish she'd simply ASKED him to check her since she felt like she should be checked.  But I'm trying not to focus any frustration onto her at this moment.)  I'm trying not to freak out.

3.  She went into her local MS doctor today for him to check her and give her an ultrasound.  On the bright side, we got 100% proof today that the Fiona is a girl.  I'll spare my child the mortification of showing photos her underside splashed onto the internet.  It was very exciting though b/c all our other ultrasound techs told us, "I'm 99% sure it's a girl."  But this was the extra 100%.  I'm trying not to freak out (in a good way).  

4.  At the local MS doctor today, he checked B to see how far dilated she is....and she's 3 cm dilated and 80% "thinned out."  (I have no idea what that means other than that we now need to change our flights and get down there much sooner than anticipated.)  Note, she's not having contractions yet.  I'm trying not to freak out.

5.  She's going back to the AR doctor on Monday so he can "check her out to see if she's 3cm dilated according to what he's seeing."  If so, then he's going to induce on Tuesday....assuming she hasn't gone into labor beforehand.  Are you still following all this mess?!  I'm trying not to freak out.  

6.  We changed our flights and are flying down Sunday.  Trying not to freak out.  Holding it together. 

7.  I'm about to be a Mom!!!!  Still trying not to freak out!!!!!!!!  :-)  

What I learned today is that things never go according to plan when you're dealing with a baby...especially when it's in someone else's belly.  More to come soon!

Update: Paid Maternity Leave Drama

So it's day #2 trying to deal with the bombshell that my company won't pay for my maternity leave because I'm not the one who's technically giving birth.  This infuriates me because the company pays for other women's maternity leave.  Am I not equal to them?  Is my child somehow lesser than because I was not able to carry it?

Human Resources is currently "discussing the matter" with the VP of Benefits in my company, and I hope they can come up with a solution that allows me my pay.   But I'm livid about getting this sprung on me so late in the game when they knew my situation.  This makes me so angry.

If it doesn't get resolved by the end of the week, then I'm taking it directly to the President of the company.  This is outrageous!

36 weeks: Long overdue update

So today is 36 weeks, and I'm long overdue for an update.  A lot has happened since my last one... We set up the baby's nursery.  We decided on a name.  Hurricane Sandy hit Brooklyn.  My friend and mother-in-law threw me a baby shower.   Human resources at my job dropped a major bomb on me.

But first, let's start at the beginning...

Two weekends ago, N and I finally had a free moment to buckle down and put the baby's room together.   What started out as a simple rearranging of furniture, turned into larger painting project too.  The baby's room had already been painted and so we felt like we were in good shape, but when we started moving stuff around in our dining room (now our catch-all family room) we realized the walls needed some major help.  Anyways, the end result is great and the baby's room is really cute.  Here's a peak.

Our baby room theme is loosely based on a children's book called "Maude & Claude Go Abroad."  It's about two little fox siblings that want to travel the world and end up meeting a whale who becomes their friend.  (The book was merely a way for me to decorate around foxes, whales and travel.  Oh, and with a little vintage mixed in of course.) 

N is making the baby (who's name is 99.9% likely going to be Fiona) a mobile with characters from the story.  And I'm making her a patchwork baby blanket that consists of napkins from our wedding.  I'm getting much further along and hope to finish it this weekend.

Then Hurricane Sandy hit, and we were cooped up in the apartment for days.  Fortunately we had power so we were able to continue working on our baby craft projects, but sadly many of our friends and co-workers were not so lucky.  We feel very blessed to have come out of everything alive and well.

After spending the entire week on our sofa (attempting to work from home), we escaped to Philly for the baby shower.  It was great seeing friends and family come together to celebrate Fiona's arrival. My friend said it was the first time she'd ever been to a baby shower where the mom was double fisting champagne.  (Oh well, there's a first time for everything!!)

This cashmere blend baby blanket with a fox on it is probably my favorite gift that we received.  It's sooooo soft and it's not PINK!!  :-)  Plus I love foxes!

Unfortunately today, Human Resources at my job decided to ruin my day when they came down to inform me that it doesn't look like I'll be able to take a paid maternity leave.  What?!?  WHAT?!?!  This is news to me and coming at a very late stage in this process.   Tomorrow I have another meeting with them to further discuss the matter.  As it turns out, if you're not pushing the baby out of your vajayjay, then the world seems to want to rain on your parade.  Oh well....hopefully I'll have better news on that.