My Little Family

Scene- I'm sitting on the bed holding Mara, sitting up facing me on my lap.  Corky is about to leave for work.

Me: oh Mara.. You're lookin' like your daddy there honey..

Corky: Why, did she fart?

Me: No.

Corky: Does she have facial hair?

Me: (laughing) ...What? 

Hahaha I love my little family! 

Gym

***trigger warning (maybe?)***

I've been going to the gym.... No biggie right? Except it's in secret.  That's a problem, I believe.

This post is disjointed, I apologize in advance. I'm kind of all over the place. 

All I want is to lose weight, that's literally what's on my mind 70% of the day. Which makes me feel horrible because I'm a mom now and I feel like I shouldn't even be thinking about that.  But I do and I can't help it.  Make no mistake, I think about my daughter 100% of the day, but weight loss is in there too for a majority of it.  And I would never jeopardize my daughters health or safety for the sake of weight loss, in case you were worried.  When I go to the gym it's always when someone else was planned to watch her to give me a break and some time to myself. Originally I had planned to go to Starbucks alone or the grocery store, but ended up at the gym.

I sent a text to my friend yesterday saying "why is it that when shit hits the fan with my family my first instinct is to go to the gym and kill myself on the elliptical??"  That's that I've been doing!! Things went south again with my fam and I'm just so hurt I can't even stand it.  I just want to disappear every time I think about it. 

Sigh!! Sorry for the downer post, but here's some pics of my girl to make it better. :) 

Mara and her owl.

Neck rolls for days! 

Stinkbug :)

Snuggling with mommy on Christmas 

Not of Mara, but I'm almost feeling like myself again. Just need to tone up a little. So there's that! :D 

My stinkbug lookin' like her daddy lol

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas 

Love, Mara 

Love this

I came across this on Facebook just now, someone posted it and I snagged it off my newsfeed.  Excuse the language but it drives the points home! 

Mara-maduke

Corky's latest nickname invention for Mara is Mara-maduke (like marmaduke lol).  Cracks me up!  Anyway here's some more pics of Mara-maduke, because I'm so incredibly in love with her that I find it necessary to inundate you all with picture of her. ;) 

She reminds me of a stuffed pepper when she's all swaddled. Lol!! Or a potato bug (the roly poly ones)

I loooooove this pic of Mara with her auntie! Look at those smiles! 

My sweetie girl passed out after eating. 

LOL!!! Mornings at our house! I love how corky and Mara have the same hairstyle. 

My snuggle bug <3

This face. Cute little bean. 

Slipping

Yesterday I had my 3 week postpartum OB appointment.  Everything was fine and I'm cleared for "light workouts" (whatever the hell that means!) but not for teaching Zumba quite yet. Probably by January 1st I'll be good, said the doctor.  So that's good.

I found out my weight again yesterday.  Don't worry, I won't write it.  But suffice it to say it's a big change from the last time I found out, when I was like 8.5 months pregnant!!  On the one hand I really wanted to know because I was so curious.  On the other hand I know I tend to obsess over numbers when I know them.  As it turned out I didn't have to make that decision because Corky kind of blurted out the number.  So that was that. 

It wasn't a horrible number.  Not as low as my eating disorder would like but... could've been worse!  But lo and behold... I am obsessing. This morning I got on the scale here at home because I know the OB scale is off by a bit.  The number was 3lb lower here at home.  

The last week or so I've noticed the ED thoughts creeping in stronger and stronger.  I've written numerous times in my journal this week how all I can think about is losing weight.  Now that I know the number, I find myself thinking about goal weights and starting to more obsessively count every calorie (since yesterday morning.) This is a slippery slope!!! And I'm not sure how to arrest my slide, or if I even can! But I remember this. This is how it starts.

Totally off topic but here is a pic of my handsome husband and me ready to go to a board appreciation dinner for his credit union on Sunday night (12/14/14)

3am

Hello again middle-of-the-night darkness.  It's been a whole 24 hours (25 actually) since I saw you last.  No sound of rain tonight.  

I don't know what to say.  I feel like I should record this night but I don't know what to write.  It happened. I'm here. 

On a humorous note, this picture made me laugh so hard:

2am

Something about being awake in the middle of the night always makes me feel like the only person left on the planet.  Except, in this case, for my daughter.  The world sleeps peacefully while I'm feeding this sweet little creature who depends solely on me, typing one-handed on my phone.  

I'm exhausted.  I just want to sleep!  But baby's gotta eat and nobody can feed her but me.  I guess Corky could feed her formula but why would we do that to her when my body produces the perfect food for her? Breastfeeding hurts like hell sometimes but it's the best thing for her so I don't mind the pain too much.

Corky went back to work this past Tuesday. You'd be amazed (if you've never had kids) how tiring it is to be alone with a baby all day! 

The eating disorder thoughts are so bad and so loud.  I lack the energy to write anymore about that just now. 

My Sweetie Girl

Because I'm smitten with my little baby girl... here's a few more pictures of her!! I promise to return to regularly scheduled programming soon ;)

 

Mara after bath!

Her little chunk legs. I can't even!!!

Lil miss with her big blue eyes open.

Jax stands guard over "his" baby.

Gaining weight like a champ! 2 week check-up (12/8/14)

A pic I found on corky's phone. My hair looks great! (Sarcasm)

My big girl <3 12/10/14

Mara Soleil (birth story)

Saturday, November 22nd was my due date.  I went all day thinking, "Oh great.  I'm not in labor.  I'll probably have to be induced.."  This was not an exciting prospect because my OB won't induce until 41 weeks (which would have been November 29th) and I did not want to wait a whole extra week being as pregnant as I was!

11/22/14

At around 8:00pm, my water broke spectacularly!  It was awful, gross and hilarious.  I was running to the bathroom with my hands clutching fruitlessly at my crotch, amniotic fluid pouring everywhere, shouting to Corky (who was nearby), "I'm not peeing! I'm not peeing!"  For whatever reason it was more important to me that he know I wasn't suddenly incontinent than it was for me to point out the obvious fact that my water had just broken.  I reached the toilet and stood there, dumbfounded.  It was like it was raining.  Should I pull my pants down?  Just sit down with them on?  In the end, Corky came up and pants-ed me and I sat down.

While I sat on the toilet waiting for the deluge to stop, Corky ran around trying to get things ready.  At some point, while letting the dogs out, he stepped in a huge pile of dog poop in his workboots, which he then proceeded to track all around the house as he went from room to room collecting things.  Once he came into the bathroom where I still was and I pointed it out, he spent the next 10 minutes tracking down all his poopy footprints with BioZyme.  It was comical to say the least.  I stuffed one of Mara's newborn diapers into my underwear (because heaven forbid I'd be prepared for something such as this!) and off we went to the hospital.

We arrived at Labor & Delivery at about 9:30pm.  I was hooked up to monitors and the nurse tested to make sure my water had indeed broken (like there was any question??).  Once this was confirmed, I was admitted around 11:30pm.  They checked my cervix at about midnight and I was only at 1 cm!  Because my water had broken a few hours earlier and I wasn't having very many contractions, and the ones I had certainly weren't painful, the doctor on call and the nurse-midwife decided it would be best to start me on pitocin right away to hurry things along.  The longer I went without being in active labor, the longer the process would go, and the risk of infection would increase.  I agreed and they started pitocin around 12:15am on Sunday, November 23rd.

The contractions started getting stronger almost right away, but they didn't hit like a ton of bricks as I feared they would.  It was a gradual increase of pain, as though someone were slowly turning up a pain volume dial on a radio.  For the first few hours I was able to get through the contractions either just by breathing or whispering to myself.  Things like "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay."  This allowed Corky to get a few hours of sleep.  Every half hour they would come in and turn the pitocin higher.  By about 4am I was no longer able to get through the contractions quietly and I woke Corky up with my whimpering.  I moved from the bed to the chair to the bathroom and back for the next three hours, stopping every minute or so for a contraction.  They were awful.  I was freezing and shaking and nauseous.  At 3:30am they checked my cervix again... still at 1cm.  I was ready to cry (but I didn't!)

At 7 o'clock, the nurses changes shifts.  My nurse for the day was amazing (I'll call her Shauna because she deserves more than just an initial like I normally put).  She reminded me a little of a younger Celine Dion with curly hair.  Anyway, at a little after 7 she came in and started talking to me about pain management options.  I guess it was clear I was suffering!  I had been under the impression that I couldn't get an epidural until I was a certain amount of centimeters dilated, but Shauna told me that wasn't true.

"Tell me about my options," I requested.

"Well," Shauna said. "You can have the IV pain meds which is a fairly popular choice."

"Won't those make me all loopy?"

"Like you've had a few drinks, yeah."

I didn't like that.  "I want to be coherent.  What else can you do?"

"The epidural," Shauna said, taking my blood pressure.

"When can I get that?" I asked.  I could feel another contraction coming and blurted that question out fast before the pain came, so it came out like whencanigetthat?

Shauna waited patiently while I winced my way through the contraction (the spike on the monitor going past the maximum recordable line) and then said the three most lovely words I've ever heard:  "whenever you want."

By 8:15 in the morning I had an epidural embedded snugly in my spine.  It didn't hurt much,  but I've discovered nothing really does when being compared to labor!  8 hours of unmedicated labor really puts things into perspective.

I was much more comfortable after the epidural went in, however I couldn't get out of bed.  It was like having noodles for legs.  I couldn't even roll over without Shauna's help!  Also I had to get a catheter.  I tell you there is no such thing as modesty anymore when you're giving birth.  I always thought I'd be embarrassed of people looking at my hoo-ha but when you're in that situation you just don't care.  Besides, the nurses and doctors see this stuff every day of the week.  I just tell myself, well, I'm sure they've seen worse!  It helps. :)  Shauna checked me again and I was at a 2.  Slow progress, but progress nonetheless!

My parents and Corky's mom came to see us throughout the day.  The nurses cranked the pitocin up to 12 units per hour.  At around 3pm I started feeling the contractions through the epidural.  Not too bad at first, just some aching/tightening in the backs of my legs (like where my butt meets my thighs) but soon it increased to actual pain.  The epidural was never totally even, I had more feeling in my left side than in my right.  I started feeling pain in my left abdomen, near where I assume my ovary is.  I labored this way until about 5pm.  Sometime during that time, my bestie Alena showed up. 

At 4:00 or so Shauna checked me again.  I had gone from 2cm to 6cm! No wonder that hurt so much!  The anesthesiologist who administered my epidural had to come back in twice to top up my pain meds because I could still feel the contractions so severely.  Within the next hour I went from 6cm to 9.5cm.  The pressure that came with each contraction was unbearable.  I had originally intended to kick Alena out for the pushing part but I was in so much pain I couldn't even think.  She ended up staying the whole time.  At 5:20, Shauna checked me again and told me I was almost fully dilated - 9.5 cm.  

"Good," I said. "Because the pressure is so bad!"

Shauna and another nurse had been watching my temperature for a few hours because I was starting to head towards a fever.  Shauna left to go get some antibiotics to hang on my IV because I just broke the 38C fever mark.  She was gone 5 minutes and I grabbed Corky's hand during a contraction and said, "Go get Shauna.  This baby is coming!"  I've never seen him move so fast.

Corky said he went out to the nurses station and found Shauna.  "You better come back," he told her.  "Kate says the baby's coming."

"Then baby's coming," Shauna said.  "Mama always knows."

She came in, checked me and said, "Okay, you're at a 10!"

"I know!" I said, huffing through another contraction.  At this point Alena was still in the room.  As I mentioned, I didn't originally intend for her to be in there during the actual birth but by this time I did not have the wherewithal to even care that she was there, to say nothing of stringing together a tactful (or even coherent) sentence to ask her to please wait outside.  It's just as well because she'd have been waiting out there for 2 hours.

At 5:30pm I began pushing.  This part is a bit of a blur for me.  I remember Shauna telling me to push towards where I could feel her fingers.  Basically, pushing a baby out is like trying to push through the worst case of constipation you can imagine, to the 50th power.  I would feel a contraction building, grab my legs, curl my back and touch my chin to my chest and push with all my might for 10 seconds, exhale, deep breath, push again for 10 seconds, repeat until the contraction was over and then do it all over again with the next one.  I do remember feeling like I was getting nowhere.

Sometime during the pushing process, my mom showed up.  I remember being surprised that nobody had texted her that I was pushing!  Shauna asked if I wanted her to come in but I couldn't even think.  Finally I said something like, "Fine but she can't look and has to stand by my head where Corky and Alena are."  She did. 

After some time (could have been 5 minutes, could have been an hour.  Time doesn't exist to you in the pushing stage!) Shauna noticed that I was getting exhausted.  Now.. if you've ever said, "I'm exhausted" you would be wrong unless you were in the situation of giving birth.  There is no exhaustion like this.  Anyway, Shauna got me an oxygen mask.  I remember being worried that the oxygen would smell funny.  It did.  Well, the mask is probably actually what smelled funny, but I didn't care.  I breathed in that cool oxygen between contractions and it was wonderful.  I actually started falling asleep between contractions.  I had been awake since 7am the day before and hadn't eaten in like 30 hours.  At one point, after a contraction, I looked at Shauna and said, "I can't do this.  I don't have it..." but I knew that if you get to the point where you're saying "I can't" it means you're almost there.

Shauna asked me if I wanted a mirror to see baby's head.  That idea was gross to me!  I did NOT want to see the state of my lady parts.  "No thank you," I said.  I did, however, touch the baby's head during a push.  It felt slimy and after the contraction was over I told Shauna I needed a paper towel to wipe my hand.  Everyone laughed. 

At 7:00pm the nurses and doctors changed shifts.  The OB from the clinic who was at the hospital had been popping in and out throughout the day.  Shauna actually stayed 20 minutes past the end of her shift to assist the nurse coming on shift, named "Natalie."  At 7:20 Shauna came up and said, "okay, I'm going to hug you now and go home!"  I remember thanking her and wishing she wasn't leaving.  Natalie told me it wouldn't be long now.

"How long?" I panted.

"By 8:00 I would guess," she answered.

She was right.  About 15 minutes later, after a particularly painful contraction and very hard push, Natalie said, "okay... don't push, I need to go get the doctor."  As she spoke those words, in walked the doctor.  

"Whoa!" said the doctor, and rushed to get ready.  I was lying there trying to stave off pushing and I remember thinking the doctor was taking forever to get into her paper gown, gloves, mask, hat, goggles, everything.  Finally she was ready.

"Okay," she said, looking like a catcher behind home plate.  "I want you to give me the biggest push of your life on the next contraction and hold it for a full 10 seconds."

"'Kay," I huffed.

I pushed.  I gave it everything I had.  I felt pressure then pain, like burning. I remember thinking, This is it.  I'm going to have a baby now.

"Head is out," Dr. K said.  "Cord is wrapped once but it's loose, don't worry!  Baby is fine.  Now next contraction do it again.  Big push, okay?"

"Okay," I mumbled into the oxygen mask.  

I felt it building.
I let it build.
I waited as long as I could.

"Okay," I grabbed the bed handles.  And pushed.

You know in the birth videos you see how the head comes out super slow and then the rest of the body just kind of slips out?  That's exactly how it felt!  I will never forget as long as I live the feeling of Mara pouring out of me.  That's how it felt - she poured out. 

She was perfect and mad as hell, screaming her little head off.  I was so bummed because Shauna had missed Mara's birth by 18 minutes.  She'd been with me all day and I wanted her to be there for the end too.

"Happy birthday!" Natalie said to Mara as they placed her on my chest and wiped her off with a towel and put a little hat on her head.

Hello Mara!

"Hi baby!" I said, rubbing her back.  

They took her temperature and found that she was running a 102F fever.  No wonder she was screaming!  She cried for almost a full hour after birth.  

My dad, my mom, my sister, Corky, Alena, her mom and her brother all came in after I was all sewed up (I tore) and covered up and Natalie was doing Mara's stats.  I was drinking orange juice in the bed and not really paying attention to what anyone else was doing.  I was a little spacey from the trauma of the past 23 hours.  Suddenly I heard a great shout and everyone looked at me.  

"...What?" I asked, unsure of what I'd missed.

"8 pounds 14 ounces!" Someone exclaimed.

My eyes widened and I bent my arms, flexing my muscles.  Everyone cracked up.

They took Mara off to get an IV in her hand so she could have antibiotics too.  Corky went with her.  We stayed in the hospital until Tuesday night (November 25th) and have been home and doing fine ever since. :)

Mara Soleil

The font on this post may look different because I'm typing it from my iPhone.

My beautiful Mara Soleil was born at 7:38pm on Sunday November 23rd.  She weighed 8lb 14oz and was 21 inches long.  (Don't ask how I pushed out that much baby. I couldn't tell you!) 

She came out after 23 hours of labor (9 without pain meds!) mad as hell and screaming her head off.  She's absolutely perfect and is the spitting image of her daddy :) 

I love her so much!!!!

Due Date Video Up on YouTube

I know my due date is officially tomorrow (weird to write those words) but I made and uploaded a video today.

Click HERE to watch the video.

I hope to be too busy having a baby to post tomorrow.  But we'll see!  I've had a few encouraging signs of progression today so cross your fingers!  Also, I'll have to try to remember to write a post about my first acupuncture experience.  That's a story for another day.

Happy weekend!!!  xo :)

Picture Dump 11.19.14

It's been a long while since I've done a decent picture dump, so I just went through my camera roll on my phone and chose a bunch for you!  They're not in any order,  but they're all captioned so they'll make some amount of sense (I hope!)  They go from Halloween until now, so I apologize if there are any repeats because I can't remember what I've posted LOL!

Halloween makeup. Took me forever!

One of my closest friends and me.  I LOVE HER!

She is so rad.. and her Halloween costume was

creepy as f*ck. <3

My jack-o-lantern

Me and my no-feet, ready to go to Zumba 

a few weeks ago.

This is an old picture, from February 2014. 

It's of me and my bestie at ZIN Night 

  at Pulse PDX (in Portland) I am posting

it here for 2 reasons.  The first reason is because I think

I look pretty decent in this pic, and I love

my hair that color and am thinking about dyeing it that

way again in a few months.  The second reason is because

this picture makes me laugh - it was taken February 15, 2014.  

The reason that's funny?  I apparently wasn't the only one who thought 

I looked decent this night, Corky agreed... this was the night I got pregnant.

On 11/10, Abigail had surgery on her knees.  They

had to shave her poor little legs.  Doesn't she look like 

a little turkey??  Look at her drumsticks.

Trying to take selfies with Jax but he felt the need

to do some extreme sniffing just then.

Part of the mural my mother in law and I painted on 

the wall of Mara's room. <3

This one needs no explanation.

Here's a close-up of Abby's cute little nose to

brighten your day :)

Tastes vaguely like licorice.  It's Red Raspberry Leaf,

supposed to help tone the uterus and make

labor easier when it comes.  (Also

supposedly helps with menstrual cramps)

Feeling somewhat festive (and very very tired)

11.16

39 weeks (November 15th)

I celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, as I've

probably mentioned 100 times on here.  But this

picture cracked me up!

My baby boy snuggling with Hailey <3 :) Doesn't

he look like a little old man??

Jax.

NO this picture is not altered at all.  Pardon the stretch marks.

Mara moved in a weird position right as I had a very

strong Braxton Hicks contraction, and this was the weird

result.  It was like a shelf! I could set stuff on it.

Taken yesterday, 11/18

The Christmas section of my house.  Normally I'd never decorate

this early (never before Thanksgiving!) but this year I don't know

when Mara is coming and I wanted to make sure we got the

decorations up!  The Hanukkah section is almost complete.  I

will post a picture of it soon. :)