Whistle While you Work

I go back to work on Monday.

I've been fortunate to be able to take 9 weeks off for maternity. When the 6 week mark hit I spent a lot of time thinking about how many of my fellow mommies had to return to work after just 6 weeks.  I could not imagine.   Not only were things only just starting to settle down with Kaylee at that time (barely a scheduled formed, breastfeeding just well established) but my body was still in serious recovery mode.  I mentioned that I rock at pregnancy right? Well it turns out that I don't rock at being not-pregnant.  I had troubles before my pregnancy began and now that my pregnancy is over a lot of health troubles have reappeared. Nothing serious mind you, but I just feel achy and sore and crampy and awful all the time.  (Lack of sleep doesn't help matters much).  By the way, is anybody out there a fan of IUDs? I don't need to hear horror stories, but it's something I'm considering.

So back to work.  It's a funny thing.  When Kaylee was still quiet a bit younger I had very little concerns when passing her over to friends and family to hold.  In fact, people have wandered off holding her, (close by of course), but I always surprised myself  to find that she was across the room and that I hadn't been watching her with eagle eyes.  For a while I thought this to mean I was going to be an ambivalent mother, and though I loved Kaylee I wouldn't have the commitment needed to raise her properly.  This is how I felt even after only 6 weeks.  While I would have been agonized to leave her at 6 weeks, I mostly dreaded the idea of going to work with life in such a rocky place, and with my health still just barely hanging on.  Terrible? Maybe.

Now that my return to work is in less than a week, I am finding that my attitude toward Kaylee has changed entirely.  Perhaps because things in life have settled quite a bit in the last 3 weeks, perhaps because Kaylee is actually showing that she likes spending time with me now, or perhaps because the truth of the situation is now upon me.   But I find at random moments during our play time together that I briefly imagine next week, when I will be at work, and somebody else will be playing with her- this thought flashes across my mind for a second- and my eyes well up with tears. She looks at my teary eyes and her expression changes. What's wrong mommy? Little does she know.  I hope she wont' be sad and confused or feel abandoned. I know thousands of moms have returned to work and churned out thousands of well adjusted, healthy babies/adults who still love their families and do not have attachment issues. But isn't it natural to be worried?

Kaylee never let me hold her much. Unless she was eating, she wanted to be with James, or swaddled and elsewhere. Lately, she seems to want me to hold her all the time. Which frankly, I don't mind. It is tiring, but I am getting all the cuddling in that she'll let me have because I have to leave her too soon.

I should be thankful that we have reliable, trusted sitters for Kaylee while we're working, but I have a feeling that this feeling of worry and regret of leaving and sadness to be missing so much will never go away entirely. So I guess I should just get used to these feelings and get on with it.

Kaylee

My daughter Kaylee Jean was 7lbs 9oz and 21" long born on her fathers birthday, has had her short life heavily cataloged. 

5 days old

I thought I would try to share some of the beautiful photographs my husband has taken of her. I'm lucky to have a photo teacher as a husband because we don't have to pay for beautiful family photos! (Although, photos of all 3 of us are few and far between).
We've taken pictures of Kaylee every day of her life. Some are epic photo shoots, some are, shoot! I forgot to take one...here is a quick click before bed.

 Kaylee has also taken on many nicknames in the 9 weeks we've spent with her. I quickly adopted the name Kaylee Pie.  Also, Sweet Girl, Girly, Squirmy-wormy, Kaylee-bear, Honey-bear.

James probably spent the entire first two weeks of Kaylee's life trying out every nickname on the planet. He'd call her Honey, Sweetie, Sugar, Pumpkin, Baby, Babe, Bug, Bear, and every combination thereof. 
He also accidentally called her Kylie a lot. 

 He seems to have settled on the honey-bear or kaylee-bear.  He also seems to lose one of her socks every time I leave them alone together.

 I love my family!

7 weeks

8 weeks

*Also please don't steal these pictures, there is no reason for anybody outside me and husband to have these photos! Thanks!

Birth Story

Disclaimer: This post may be lack clarity and spelling but I am in the first week of new parent exhaustion and am mostly concerned with being able to remember everything that has happened this last week. I think James' theory about memory & 2nd children is correct.  Parents get sooo sleep deprived that they stop processing and filing memories correctly during the first few weeks of a childs life. This causes them to only remember the good feelings about having their children, and none of the sleepy, traumatized ones. They therefore, have more children and the circle starts all over. 

2nd Disclaimer: I may include some TMI details but its stuff I want to remember so if you don't like it- don't read this post. 

Thursday August 22nd - Due date. No baby. 1 cm & 60% but no progress from weeks previous.  I go to work and my students freak out that I "could go into labor during class" The exact conversation was, "what will you do if you go into labor right now!?"

"Well...YOU will continue working on our assignment while I call an administrator down to sub for me, then I'd go to the hospital...Let's continue.."

Friday August 23rd - Work as usual for me. James stayed home to clean up the house after the fires...oh yeah...that's a story for another time, but basically our neighborhood caught on fire basically and burned the 2 houses next to ours down on Tuesday.

When I came home though we were desperate to get baby out so once it cooled off we went for a 2 hour walk around our neighborhood. When I came home it had lost my mucus plug which was exciting. 

Saturday August 24th - We're scheduled for an induction on Sunday night -but I really didn't want an induction.  We woke up early and went for another long walk. We walked all the way to Sonic, ordered some beverages, and walked back home.  Nothing new. Still trying to figure out what a contraction really felt like.

Sunday August 25th - My friend Sarah had just watched Firefly for the first time, and it was time for her to see Serenity.  Nerdy right? Well I told her sans baby we would watch it Sunday morning (Fellowship was already cancelled that morning just in case the baby was here).  So Sarah and Andrew came over we all watched Serenity.  I don't remember much about the rest of the afternoon but I know we ran errands. Last minute baby stuff. We knew we'd be getting induced if she didn't show - which it looked like she wasn't going to. So we bought groceries, fresh fruit, made some returns at Target, got gas etc.  Finally we decided we'd hit Panera Bread for a nice dinner - bring it home and watch the movie Wild America (J.T.T- childhood flashback- we found the movie at 2nd & Charles and couldn't resist) before going to the hospital. 

Around 6pm at Panera Bread while we were ordering/standing in line I felt a little trickle.  I had felt something like it a bit earlier in the day too and I thought it was my water breaking but then nothing else happened.  But this was different. The trickle didn't stop. So I told James, "I think my water broke, but let's go home and eat dinner."  And we did. I wanted to make sure the trickle really didn't stop like it had earlier in the day and indeed it did not stop, so we got through our dinner, and a few minutes of our movie when I called my doctor. No contractions to speak of though. 

I said - I think my water broke

She said- Yeah that can happen. Better head to the hospital, your room is already ready. 

So we did. We went to Parker Adventist. It was a really great place to deliver.  Strangely, James and I were pretty calm about all of this. At least I was, and he seemed to be although some serious nerves could have been boiling under the surface. 

Our first nurse was named Jessica and (shout out to Rachel) she said she was from the southwest and just moved here. I made sure she wasn't from New Mexico. Jessica was a great nurse. They ran some tests and confirmed that it was amniotic fluid.  This was around 8pm-ish.  It was decided that they'd wait and see if my contractions started on their own otherwise they'd speed things up with pitocin so I didn't get an infection.  My contractions did start and they were pretty regular but I couldn't feel them hardly at all.  At midnight I was still only 1cm 60% so they started pitocin.  They only administered a small amt. at first to see if it would signal my body to say HELLO LABOR! It worked. 

My contractions picked up in intensity very quickly. I never had more pitocin after that.  James was a great coach, he made sure I drank water, and helped me with all my IV's and monitors get to the restroom and he helped me breath.  I had no idea how it was going to feel so I didn't have a "birth plan."  I was undecided on epidurals and I wanted to wait it out as long as possible. Jessica brought me a birthing ball and this change of position (leaning forward to the bed) with James rubbing my back helped tremendously. They checked me again around 3:30am and very little progress was made. 3cm fully effaced. They said they would put in the order to give me another dose of pitocin.  It was at this point that I assessed my pain and said it was time for my epidural.  Not because of the "pain" as you might imagine though.  I knew that more pitocin would make what I was feeling even stronger, but that wouldn't be so bad. The pressure of the contractions was intense undoubtedly- I really had to focus through each one.  But the part that made my labor unbearable was the shaking and nausea. Regardless of the relaxation techniques I uses and how relaxed I felt in between contractions (and I really was) my whole body gradually increased in shakiness until I was convulsing uncontrollably all over.  It was totally involuntary and it was making me very nauseated. 

**Note: I am picking up my narration of this story as an 8 week old parent now**

So the epidural order was put in. The nurses said that some women shake during labor, and that was just the way it was, and sometimes an epidural helped and sometimes it made it worse. Ha! Well that was a risk I was ready to take.  Shortly after my epidural the nurses changed shifts and somehow the order to give more pitocin was lost and I never had any more...which worked out fine.  The epidural was administered around 4:00am and by 4:30 James and I finally were able to get some sleep.  

My new nurse, Candice, woke me at 7am to check progress, and happily announced that it was go time! 10 cm! She called my doctor.

Then I labored down for about an hour...waiting for my doctor to arrive.  This was very easy.  James and I just hung out and talked and it was nice and quiet and I was thankful for the timing of little Kaylee because the hospital was not yet flooded with visitors trying to get in!  In retrospect I feel bad for my relatives who always had a barrage of people waiting outside their doors DURING labor. Too much pressure for me. 

Sometime between the hour of 8am and 8:56 when Kaylee was born, Candice wanted me to "practice push," so that I would understand her coaching directions and so she could see how strong I was and if I was able to feel when to push. 

To sum up pushing..I basically rock at it. As with all things pregnancy apparently. 

I knew right when to push and after the 3rd practice push she alarmingly asked me to stop because the doctor wasn't here yet to deliver the baby! Geesh! So they had me wait and not push again for about 10 minutes (the baby was coming out anyway) and the doctor rushed in and said, 

"Oh! I almost missed it!" 

1 push later we had a head

1 more push we had shoulders and a baby!

The rest is history I suppose. I just remember when the doctor held up the baby I thought, "oh man, that's a baby!"  It didn't really seem real.  They put her on my stomach and when I finally said out loud, "oh my god," or something to that extent, she turned her head to me and opened her eyes. We proceeded to stare at each other for the remainder of the "birth." James cut the umbilical cord and we all got to spend a couple of hours together before the steam of visitors began.