Little Surfer Girl

Tuesday, I took Kira to visit Grammie D at her house. She sometimes works from home and this was one of those days. I have taken her to see my mother a number of times but Tom's mom hasn't gotten to see her as much so hopefully she had a good time...I know we did! We had lunch together and then I took her on a walk around town (and we just happened to walk by Starbucks) while Grammie D worked some more.

Wednesday was Kira's first trip to the beach! On Wed., tom came home from work and asked if I would be up for taking her to the beach. I thought it was worth a try so we hopped in the car and drove the 50 minutes to a nearby beach. When we got there, Tom hopped in the water to use his standup paddle board and I put her in her sling and walked down the boards to get dinner with a girlfriend who came with us. She did so well! She basically slept the whole time and then right before we left, I fed her again and she was fine for the car ride home. What an adventure!

I was really impressed how good Tom was paddleboarding...I think this must take a lot of core strength to be able to do...I stuck my feet in the water to take some pics of him and the ocean temp was nice!

We got to the beach around 6PM and stayed until 8PM so it was a nice little excursion for all of us!

She stayed in her sling the whole time and slept away!

We took these pics when we got home that night...I think she was tuckered out from her time at the beach!

This morning, I took her to her doctor's visit and she is growing nicely...she now weighs 10lbs and is in the 75 percentile for height and weight. She is also sleeping a lot more nicely too lately. Last night she slept for a 4 1/2 hour stretch and the night before she slept for 6 1/2 hour stretch!!! It feels so nice to be getting more sleep lately.

An Ode to Tom

So I know I said our camera was broken and it was. I was actually excited about it because our camera is about 6 years old and I have wanted something that will take better pictures now that I have something interesting to take pictures of. Anyway, Tom came home from work a couple of nights ago and decided to take the whole camera apart and put it back together again...and he actually fixed it! So now it works again but he still let me get a camera anyway. YAY! We decided to get an Olympus Stylus Tough 8000. Sounds fancy but this camera is supposed to be indestructible-you take it out it freezing temperatures, you can drop it from a height of 6 feet and, most importantly to Tom, you can take underwater pictures to a depth of 30 feet! I think this last point was what convinced him that we could get it but hey, whatever works. So I should get the camera sometime next week but in the meantime, I will upload the last of the pics I took of her this past week on our old camera...

Amy lent me this swing for her since I had been having trouble getting her to sleep comfortably in her pack n' play. She takes most of her naps in there and seems to like it. It is nice because if she startles, the swing starts swinging from her movement and it kind of soothes her.

Her "bouncy seat." I put her in here sometimes when she is awake but she will usually tolerate it for at most 20 minutes. She likes to be held!
Daddy giving her a bath in the sink....we had put her in the bathtub in her little seat but as soon as we started pouring the water over her, she pooped so we had to empty out the tub and move her to the sink. She seems to like getting a bath, she doesn't cry when we pour water over her and just looks around, just like in this picture.
Tom holding her. He likes to hold her every chance he gets and I think she likes it too!
Sweet dreams little Kira

Kira's visitors

Since our camera broke a couple of days ago, I have been going crazy without the chance to take pictures of her, missing all these great "photo opps." So anyone that comes over to visit and see Kira, I ask them to send me their pictures...Kira had some visitors Monday night...Tom's aunt and uncle came by to see her. They also brought me all this great food that will last me for the rest of the week and was incredibly kind of them. Tuesday, Tom's mom and cousin (who lives in New York about 2 hours away) came to see her. These pictures are from that night. Tom, who has been working non-stop lately, happened to come in when they were there and wanted to hold her. He is so good with her, he wants to hold her as soon as he walks in the door explaining, "you get to hold her all day, I want to hold her!"

It is neat to watch her grow and change every day, she is becoming more and more aware of her surroundings and is awake for longer periods...
Tom's cousin holding her....
The family!

Yesterday, I went to the doctor to have them check on my hemoglobin levels. The good news is, I have lost 24 pounds so I have 7 pounds to go and my hemoglobin levels are back up to 11 which is still slightly low but much better than the 6.6 level I was at when I was discharged from the hospital.

Besides taking care of her, I have been reading "Polar Dream" the story of the first woman to travel solo to the North Pole. I have also been cleaning...I finally got around to dusting the top of the cabinets in the kitchen, which hadn't been done since we moved in 4 years ago. It was very satisfying to wipe up all that dust even though no one can see it, I knew it was there and needed to be done. As mom can attest, my least favorite cleaning job is dusting so it was pretty nice to feel satisfied in my work, even dusting.

Fun at Mom's

Since Tom has been really busy with work lately and yesterday I knew he would be away all day until after 9PM, I asked my mom if I could make a trip over and hang out with her for the day. Thankfully, she didn't have other plans so we spent the day hanging out and playing with Kira. Kira had some visitor's when she was there too, Grandmom Wallin, Ruth, my cousin Sarah and of course mom and dad.

Sadly, when I went to upload all the pictures from my camera, it wouldn't work. Two days ago, I dropped the camera on the floor and it cracked open. I put it back together and have still been able to take pictures with it but it seems as though I might have broken it since they will not upload. It's a shame too because I got some really cute pics of her in her swing....Anyone have any suggestions on a good camera?
Isn't she cute?

It's been a week now (wow! Where has the time gone?) since I last posted and Kira is now 15 days old. She has been sometimes a challenge (breastfeeding anyone?) but mostly a dream. I love watching her sleep, she is so cute. And since she is a newborn, sleep is what she does most of the day.
Mom has been wonderful coming up and taking me to her pediatrician appointments and spending time keeping me company.

Yesterday, we took her to her two week appointment at the pediatrician and she has already surpassed her birthweight! (she is now 8lb, 10 oz so she is definitely growing)

I wonder what she is dreaming about? She seems so peaceful...
I haven't done much else exciting these days (today I got a shower and did my hair...whohoo!), we did have company last night come and play games which was nice. I am still getting used to taking care of her. Since I am kind of stuck at home for the next few weeks, I am thankful I have been blessed with a lot of visitors on most days so I have something to look forward to. Oh, it sounds like she is waking up so that is all for now...

Birth Story

Here it is Wednesday and already a little more than a week since I gave birth to a miracle baby, little Kira Dawn.

Since Tom posted when I was unable, I thought it would be helpful to relate the story of her birth. On Tuesday morning at 4AM, I woke up out of a sound sleep and just felt "off." So I decided to take a bath and see if that would help me go back to sleep. While I was relaxing in the bathtub, I started feeling weird sensations in my abdomen that radiated to my back. They didn't really hurt but they felt different from the contractions I had experienced up until this point. So I decided to start timing them and by 6:30AM, they were consistently 5 minutes apart. So Tom called his mom (who had promised to be my coach for the birth) and she promptly jumped in her car and drove over.

When she got to our house, we decided to drive over to my OBGYN office and have them check me to see if I was really in labor. So we got there and met with my OBGYN and she checked me (I was about 3 centimeters). Then she sat down and said the funniest thing...she said, "I can tell just by looking at you that you are not in labor." I guess she thought I was too calm to be in real labor since I wasn't wincing in pain or anything. But she agreed to hook me up to the monitor to see if I was really having contractions. This she did and left for 15 minutes during which time, my mother-in-law and I watched the very real contractions show up on the monitor. When my OBGYN came back, she was very surprised to see that I was actually in labor and told me I should start making my way to the hospital. I think we got to the hospital around 11AM. I spent most of my time in the tub in the hospital since it made me most comfortable. Unfortunately, my uterus didn't seem to be working very well as the nurse told me afterwards that my contractions were about a minute apart for hours. As the hours went by, I became more and more exhausted, especially with my contractions being so close together, I never had a chance to catch my breath before the next one was on me. Tom and my mother-in-law and the nurse sat by, Tom holding my hand and encouraging me.

After what seemed like forever, I finally reached 9 centimeters so they had me get out of the tub to complete the last little bit in my room. However, my cervix seemed to stall at 9 centimeters and Kira was also posterior so my midwife had me lay on my left side and push very lightly to see if we could get her to turn and help my cervix past that 1 centimeter so I could really push. Thankfully, laying on my left side worked because soon I was ready to push. I pushed hard for 45 minutes and she was born at 6:51PM! She came out with her hand on top of her head and gave me what we later found out was a severe internal laceration in my cervix. For 2 hours after her birth, I was running on adrenaline, and there are pictures of me smiling and holding her. However, as time went on, I began feeling worse and worse.

The reason for this was that my uterus became atopic. That is, it worked so hard during the labor, that as soon as I gave birth to her, it stopped contracting. So I was hooked up to pitocin to try to help my uterus expel the placenta and afterbirth. The nurse kept coming in and pressing on my fundus to get it to contract and every time she did, I would loose a huge blood clot. Finally, they were able to get the placenta expelled but I continued to bleed and nothing they gave me seemed to stop or slow the bleeding. My blood pressure began rapidly dropping and it was soon decided that the only way to stop the bleeding would be to operate. I was rushed to the operating room and thankfully, they stopped the bleeding, found the internal laceration and stitched me up. I required 2 blood transfusions and 4 IV bags to bring me to the point where I was well enough to be discharged from the hospital on Friday night.

But it wasn't all bad! I was able to make it through the birth of Kira without the need of any drugs, which was one of my goals....and the nurses and lactation consultants at the hospital were so helpful and kind during my stay, I was able to get a good handle on breastfeeding so I felt very confident when I left that I could do it. And Kira is such a blessing...every day, I feel more and more love for her. Of course I think she is the most beautiful baby and I feel so blessed to have her in my life!

Kira Dawn

Well all...here she is! Kira Dawn S, 8lbs. 7oz. 201/2" long...cute as a button and looking more like her mother (which is good now...but not so good in the long run--have to buy a shot gun), but definitely has the TS hot gene!

Dawn had some complications last night, but came out fine! Breast fed this morning and she was ravenous...totally cool experience!

Overall, as you can tell below Dawn was a trooper throughout the entire birthing process--she went 12hrs strong and then only had about 50min. of pushing--she shot that sucker right out! Can't wait to have another! Dawn will provide more updates when she is able...enjoy the pics!