while she is sleeping...life updates with pictures

Life has not been the same since January 21..and it has been an amazing journey.

 45 minutes old

I just had my 6 week check-up with my OB/GYN. I am sad the leave their office - they are an amazing group of women that have walked with us and our OB has been more than amazing in taking care of us and our daughter. I can't say enough good about their office! Hopefully now that my body has carried full-term, it knows what it is supposed to do and we can have more children down the road...a while down the road!

8 days old

Our good friend, Shelly Valentine-McCrady, offered to do a portrait session at her mom's house for us. To say it was enjoyable was an understatement. Shelly was so great with a somewhat-cranky Moira who refused to nap that morning (of course) and who also decided to pee numerous times on mommy, daddy, the blankets and on the kitchen floor (sorry!).  You can view Shelly's favorites at her photography blog here: Shelly Valentine Photography  We had a great time catching up with Shelly (the three of us had gone through school together from 3rd grade on and her mom was our long-term sub during the end of our 3rd grade year) and seeing her gorgeous daughter and mom. Thanks again, Shelly!

(almost) 1 month old

Moira is now 7 weeks old and doing fabulously.

• She is nursing like a champ (and has been, really, since birth.) and we are truly blessed to have breastfeeding working out so well for us. She was back up to her birth weight a week (to the day) after birth and  at one month, was 9 lbs. 9 oz.  We go at the end of March for her 2 month check-up and I'm excited to hear how much she's gained/grown. 

• Her hair, depending on how you look at it, can range from blonde to a light brown to a deep red. Her eyelashes have gone from white blonde to an auburn color. She is losing some hair but we're thinking she'll have some red in it when we're all done :) 
• Her eyes were the most piercing bright blue color I have EVER seen on a newborn but have darkened considerably since then. We're guessing they'll be a dark hazel or brown by the time they're done changing.

• She is starting to smile at us and while she still doesn't like diaper changes, she has decided that smiling at mommy/daddy during them makes them a little more tolerable.  

• She loves bath time so as long as the water is warm and her belly is covered. 

• She has grown out of her newborn clothes and socks (goodness, she has HUGE feet - between my wide feet and Caleb's size 15 foot...) and is now in 0-3 mos clothing as well as some 3 mos.  The 3 month clothing is a bit too big but it's what we have to work with - some of the 0-3 mos sleepers from Gerber are getting too short for her legs, so I think we're going to try to stick with Carter. 

• She is showing us a sort-of sleeping schedule that *hopefully* sticks. Right now she seems to sleep between 5 - 7 hours a night, going to sleep around 11pm. She usually wakes up between 5:30 - 6 and is back to sleep by 7. She then sleeps until 10 or 11 and cat naps (no longer than 45 minutes) from noon until 9, about every hour. She then is up until 11 and we start all over. 

• Last night, however, she slept soundly from 7:30 until nearly 10 pm...we were up at 2:30 until nearly 5 am. She did sleep from 5 until nearly 8 am and is alseep now (it's nearly 10:30)...I'm hoping she'll sleep a bit longer so I can shower and pick up. 

• I was looking at my husband's baby pictures and Moira is a spitting image of her daddy. She does make the occasional face that reminds me of my baby pictures but there is no denying that she is a Scott :)  
• After being totally certain that we would NOT give her a pacifier, we decided that she needed something to soothe herself other than using momma as a pacifier. Thankfully, the NUK Brand has worked extremely well for us. 

Being a mom is everything I imagined and yet, it's nothing like I had thought. There have been nights where I just sit and cry with her because I don't know what else to do (she's been changed, nursed, burped and swaddled). Thankfully, those nights were more in the beginning and have spaced out.  I have to be more mindful of when I do laundry/housework so that I'm doing it either when she's content in her bouncy seat or napping...otherwise my hands are busy snuggling.  And there have been days where the laundry and dishes don't get done because a certain baby needs her momma. It's been an adjustment for me to not do the housework immediately but I am learning the my daughter is more important. Thankfully, I have an amazing support system of friends and family that have walked this road and are telling me this is normal and okay. I'm glad I'm not a freak :)

6 weeks old and smiling!

I wouldn't have it any other way.

New baby

Our daugher, Moira Ellen, was born on Thursday January 21, 2010 at 10:31am. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 9 oz. and was 20 inches long.

Pictures will follow soon-ish :)

Disturbed

For those of you who actually read this and don't know, I am a carrier of Hepatitis C and TB.
Long and sorted stories shortened, we are unsure of where exactly I contracted either disease.

The best that either of my infectious disease specalists can figure, the Hepatitis C was contracted when I got a tattoo during my junior year at college. One color (red) was not opened in front of me and we're guessing that was the color that may have been re-used. A needle could not have been cleaned properly, although all of the instruments were opened in front of me. There is a slight chance that I could have gotten Hep C from blood transfusions I had as a premature infant back in 1982 (before blood products were tested in 1992) but my doctors have two theories about this: 1) most of my transfusions were from my father and he has tested negative and 2) the amount of Hep C that was found in my body was really too small of an amount to have been laying dormant for 24 years.  The best guess? The tattoo. 
I found out that I had Hep C after I attempted to give blood for the Red Cross during college. I have since gone through 48 weeks of horrible hell and concoctions of medications but have been in remission since July of 2005. I go in once a year for check-ups on my health and liver.  This year, I will go 2 months after Sprout is born to make sure the Hep C hasn't flared up.

The TB (found out about in 2006) is also an unknown; however, when the State Health Department called (talk about being freaked out!) and said that they need information to track where I may have contracted this, we think it may have been where I did my student teaching. The population there has a higher percentage of Native American students and families and evidently, they are in the higher percentage of the population that carries TB (according to this woman). Really, who knows where I got it. But I got it. Thankfully, it is inactive right now and I don't have to do much other than watch my coughing and go to the doctor if anything changes. I did try to to do the medication that helps combat the active TB but developed nasty side effects that were making it hard to function.

Anyway, after all that, I am very aware of what these disease do to your body and to your life. No, I don't let either get me down but I do have certain things I need to do to protect myself and those around me, especially my family.

So when I saw this article this morning, I was beyond irritated. It makes me want to cry, yell and throw up all at the same time. Those patients did absolutely.nothing. to deserve this.

This is an update from the original article, which I cannot find my link to...sorry....
"No Remorse for tech who gave Hep C..."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34920322/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/?GT1=43001

38 weeks and 5 days....

36 weeks

• I still can't believe that we've made it this far. 

• I can't believe that I am just a mere 9 days away from my due date. 

37 weeks

• I can't believe that this is my house - the house full of baby furniture, strollers, carseat, swing, rocker, Dreft and tiny outfits. 

• I still can't believe I'm going to be a mom to a beautiful daughter. 

38 weeks 3 days

• I honestly still can't believe that I'm pregnant.

Our house has thrown-up baby stuff everywhere. The nursery is still not ready but hopefully by this weekend, we will have furniture.  We have to wait until this weekend to get furniture in there but we still need 1/4 round trim, a transition piece between the floor and hallway carpet and felt pads for the furniture.

I still need to return a few items (tomorrow with my momma), get a pair of pants for the baby, get a lamp and a rug, some wall stickers and maybe a picture or two.  Definitely getting the bedding we need and pants, and the wall stickers. The lamp, rug and pictures may wait. Did I mention we changed how we're decorating the nursery? Yep. I'm neurotic.

The carseat came out of the box today and will be installed tomorrow. The swing is not out of the box yet, nor is the pack n' play or stroller.  We don't have our bouncy seat because Babies R Us didn't have it. I really wanted to have it before she came but it is going to have to wait. And we will have to wait on ordering more cloth diapers, get our wet bags and look at a breast pump until later.

Everyone keeps telling me that, in the end, it doesn't matter. And realistically, I know it won't. But I'm internally freaking out. In more ways than one. And I'm uncomfortable a lot of the time now. I have stretch marks, I can no longer bend over comfortably, I can't put on my own socks or shoes and my face is round. I haven't worn my wedding band in over a month and my feet and hands are swollen.

But I wouldn't trade it for ANYTHING....

I cannot wait to meet our little girl.

Christmas Scenes from 2009

This is Piper's new favorite spot...the basket o' blankets. And she gives you the look of "Don't you DARE touch me" every single time you go near her.

Our mantle, complete with stockings for the dog and cat. 

 

These are animated figures from Rankin and Bass' "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer". The penguin also sings, dances and hops around. All of them freak the dog and cat out. 

They have since been removed from this location and put up on a shelf. Everyone is much calmer that way. 

 Sprout's first ornament - cute and very appropriate for a little girl aptly nicknamed Sprout :) 

Ebony's new favorite snuggling spot - our bed and the body pillow. She loves it!

Christmas Thoughts

Well, it's here.

Christmas.

Actually, it's Christmas Eve. But still.

It's here and I'm so not in the mood for it.

Maybe it's the hormones, the stresses of being pregnant, not having everything ready and not being able to do much about it.

Maybe it's that I'm lazy and I just don't want to deal with it.

But it doesn't matter because it's here. And I'm trying to convince myself that I need to be in the holiday mood - for my husband, my family, my daughter, myself.

Having holiday sweets, especially the fudge and puppy chow, does seem to help some :)

Today was supposed to be a day for my husband and I just to relax. Together. He didn't have to work and we were going to watch Christmas movies, drink hot cocoa, make glass candy, make homemade spaghetti sauce together, and just be.

Instead, he and my lovely lovely lovely unforgiving, unselfish father-in-law are upstairs melting the varnish off of the nursery floor by hand with a heat gun (so graciously lent by my dad early this morning) and a paint scraper. We rented a sander yesterday to sand the varnish off but the sander just melted the varnish onto the sander pads and rendered them useless.  Poor Caleb was so incredibly frustrated last night and we were both near tears. It shouldn't be this difficult and it seems so silly to get mad about, but that's what was happening here. We thought this would be a semi-easy task. Instead it's been one flippin' headache after another. 
Currently, I'm downstairs praying that this will work (they're going to try to sand the area they've already un-varnished to see if it will work with this type of sander or if they need to get a different type) and just waiting to hear the results. Caleb and my father-in-law are going to return the sander today so that we don't have to pay for an extra day and re-rent it next week when we can work on it more efficiently.
While downstairs, I'm watching Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (the newer ones, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 were on yesterday all day and the older ones are all on today), snuggling with the kitty and watching my belly move.  Everyone keeps telling me to cherish this time we have without Sprout because by next year, she'll be grooving and moving all over the place.  And we are - very much so. I just can't wait to meet her and to see what she looks like and just hoping that we'll get everything done in time before she arrives :)

With that being said, I'm going to back to snuggling on the couch and wait to see what happens upstairs. It sounds like I should start making dinner around 4 so we can eat - I think we'll try to get to church for the 9:30 service. It's not too far and hopefully the nasty weather will hold off until we get home. 

Okay...seriously

I think that our house has a mind of it's own and when we're down, finacially and emotionally, it breaks It does this quickly without the bat of an..windowshade and does it with a smirk, I'm sure.

Case in point: We finally got the two flat roofs fixed so that they are now pitched to match the rest of the house and are no longer leaking (Praise God!). However, in the process of this, there was door in our bedroom (that led out to the roof) that had to be removed. So the guys had to use the siding from the part of the house they were covering up with the newly-pitched roof....only, they ran out of siding. So new siding was ordered and will be in Friday...which my husband has to put up. 
When the door was removed, the guys took the outdoor screen door off and left the indoor door still hanging. I pitched a fit when I re-read our proposal and it stated that WE had the choice to have the door removed. So the guy took the door off. And put a piece of drywall up where the door was...only he left the door frame.  So now we have to tape and mud the drywall and take off the doorframe and fix that.
With all of this, the ceiling still has a large hole in it that needs fixing - we did recieve some back payment from the company but for reasons that need not be discussed, that money had to be used elsewhere.  So, we still need to go get drywall for that, plus mud, tape and paint.  We do have the insulation. And a 5 pound box of roofing nails (don't ask...you're just better off not knowing) that we'll never use.
So, the ceiling needs fixing still, the siding still needs to be picked up, cut and nailed up on the house, the door frame needs to be removed and filled in/insulated (whatever you do to a door frame that is removed)....

and then the door broke.  The piece we need may or may not be available to us.

On top of everything else, we still don't have some necessary items for the baby and I'm slightly worried that even with returning a few items, we may not have the money to get what we would like to get. We have one more shower tomorrow for Caleb's work, so we'll see. I need to just trust that we will get through this. It's just very hard and having all these hormones running through my body is NOT helping. at all.

And I feel big and pregnant. Literally, overnight - yesterday I felt HUGE and I think it was due to the fact that Sprout was just sitting front and center. I was able to breathe (she wasn't in my ribcage for once) but was SO uncomfortable most of the day. I felt like no matter how I sat/stood/laid down/moved, I couldn't get comfortable. Today, I don't feel like I look as big as yesterday and I don't FEEL as big as yesterday. She's taken back to the ribcage, which is fine with me.

Enough of my complaining - I'm going to go get a bucket ready for Caleb to wash out paint brushes (he's putting up the last coat of paint tonight on the nursery walls) and then tomorrow, we're taking up the carpet. Please, seriously, pray that we find hard wood under there (we're thinking we will) so all it will need is a little clean up. I don't know how we're going to afford to put different flooring down - laminate flooring maybe...

i feel super stressed.