This Is How I Like To Sleep

Hello? Is this thing on? Since this is my first post on the blog, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Anna Katherine. I'm one month old. I have brown hair with highlights (every needs highlights in Utah County). I like sleeping, kicking, and sometimes eating. Though right now it gives me heartburn.

I have a big sister, who is very soft and nice to me. She loves holding me on her lap. I like her a lot. She's going to be the best big sister a girl can have.

This evening Mommy lay me down on a blanket. I rolled into a position that was comfortable for me. This is what it looked like.

Mommy and Grandma think it looks uncomfrotable. I wonder why.

A Good Morning

And now it's time for your favorite feature and mine: Ask The New Mom!

Oliver: Welcome, dear blog friends, to another exciting episode of Ask The New Mom. My name is Oliver, the New Dad, and I will be interviewing Kristin, the New Mom.

Oliver: Kristin, how did you sleep last night?

Kristin: I did not.

Oliver: Why not?

Kristin: (Look at the cute baby ballet slippers, actually socks, I bought to dress Anna up in.) Because the bed s*cks.

Oliver: Such course language for a new mom. Or maybe it's because you've just had a baby. You're entitled to such. How is Anna doing?

Kristin: I guess okay. I've hardly seen her much for the past 24 hours. I've had her for less than four or five of the past 24 hours. At most.

Oliver: For those not in the know, why not?

Kristin: Yellow baby. [Editor's note: her bilirubin counts were high yesterday, so she's spending time under the lights.]

Oliver: What is today's update on the bilirubin counts.

Kristin: They're down far enough that she won't need phototherapy. And hopefully she won't anymore.

Oliver: What does that mean for going home?

Kristin: We are. [Editor's note: the bilirubin levels are falling, enough such that we are going home and we'll go in tomorrow morning to get it rechecked. If it goes back up, which isn't expected, they'll probably do a bili-blanket at home.]

Oliver: Why aren't you playing along?

Kristin: I just want to go home.

Oliver: I think this interview is over.

Kristin: Well, we have to feed the baby so we can get her dressed.

I'm getting the sense the interview is done. Thanks to Kristin for being a (somewhat) good sport. I guess she has license; she did just have a baby.

An Update

Looks like Fifi has high bilirubin like Clara did. Rather than take her home and come get her levels check daily for the next couple of days, the doctors ordered some photo therapy. Check her out under the lights.

Oh, and I say her name in the video.

My New Little Sister

Paw Paw and Nanna came to visit yesterday. They've been playing with me all day today. I have no idea where Mommy and Daddy are. Paw Paw keeps saying something about a pital, but I don't know what that is.

Then, this afternoon, we went to the doctor and saw Mommy and Daddy. They have a baby with them. I think it belongs to the doctor, that's why we saw the baby at the doctor. Paw Paw took some videos of me with the baby.

I saw that the baby had a mouth, nose, eyes, neck, and hands, then I said, "All done baby." That means I want to do something new.

A little while later Daddy asked if I wanted to hold the baby on my lap. He seems to be very concerned that I like her. Which is weird, because I think she belongs to the doctor. Isn't the doctor going to take the baby home? Again, Paw Paw took videos of me holding the baby.


Mommy said I was very good for being soft. When I asked about Fifi and pointed to Mommy's tummy, she pointed to the baby and said the baby is Fifi. How did she get out?

All Clean

Here's a little video of our first moments with a clean Fifi. She spent a little over an hour in the nursery getting all checked out and cleaned up. She's the same length as Clara was, but a pound and a half heavier. Alternately we think they look quite alike and very different. You be the judge.

Bonjour, Fifi

At 12:52pm today we welcomed Fifi Katherine into the world. At 21 1/2 inches long, she was equal in length to her sister. At 9 lbs. 10 oz. she is a whopping one pound and six ounces larger than her older sister.

Mom was amazing. She started pitocin at 9:15am, was in transition by noon, and pushed for 10 minutes from 12:42pm to 12:52pm. Sans epidural! She was incredible and is now resting while Fifi is warming in the nursery.

Bienvenue au monde, Fifi!

Note: Her name is not Fifi. We're just still fighting over it.

Food & The Lack Thereof

Kristin had to stop eating at 10pm last night. But I didn't. So I just went to the cafeteria and found some decent food that was shockingly affordable. I know. Who would have thunk?

Whilst I was gone, a different doctor from the practice stopped by, verified that baby is head down (ha-le-freaking-lu-jah), and broke Kristin's water. The nurses just started the patocin and now the fun begins.

Did I mention they have a stash of cookies and Diet Coke for the dads? I'm liking this hospital more and more.

Ready ... Set ... Where's The Doctor?

The phone rang at 5:30a this morning. "Come on in. We're ready for you." We got up and I took a shower so I'd be human. Snow covered streets begged that we drive slowly. Once at the hospital we checked in, the IV was placed, the ultrasound showed a baby head down, and now we're waiting for the doctor to come confirm everything.

And we wait. As Kristin just said, "Let's get this show on the road."

Wait for it ... wait for it ... wait for it ...

Big Shoes, Little Shoes

It amazes me how big our little Clara has become. She is increasingly independent by the day. She has opinions about which toys to play with, which shoes to wear, which snacks to eat. (One might be tempted to wonder where this comes from, but let's be honest: have you met her grandparents?) She is changing so rapidly.

Tomorrow I will get to meet her little sister. (Name undecided. Suggestions in the comments.) I want to try to remember all the little moments that I'm starting to forget for Clara. Will she scream for the first hour of her life like Clara did? Will she have a mullet like Clara did? Will she make cute little noises like Clara did?

Don't keep me waiting, little one. I so want to meet you.

The End?

39 weeks and counting. It looks like Monday will be the day, unless every other nine-months pregnant woman in Provo decides to go into labor on Sunday night, or unless baby decides she's ready before then. At my appointment today my OB scheduled the induction, so barring a full labor and delivery unit we'll be heading in early, early Monday morning. Hopefully all will go smoothly and at least as quickly as Clara's delivery did. Wish us luck!

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Alternate title: Why do my children hate me?

Well, more accurately, why does the unborn child hate me? I'm 38 weeks today and she was supposed to be here by now. When I started having problems with blood pressure about six weeks ago the specialist I initially saw hoped we would make it to full-term (37 weeks) without my developing preeclampsia. Check. The plan was then to do another ultrasound and amniocentesis at 37+ weeks to determine whether or not baby's lungs were developed enough to go ahead with an induction to prevent the onset of preeclampsia. Amnio: check. Lungs: not so much.

I had the ultrasound and amnio this past Monday, and the amnio results came back in a marginal range, meaning that more than likely she would be just fine if she were to be delivered, but they were not high enough for them to say that with certainty. Since I'm not yet in a situation where delivery is absolutely crucial, we have to wait. Let me tell you, not the news this pregnant lady really wanted to hear, but what can you do?

Well, on Thursday everything just got even better. In addition to high blood pressure and a large-ish baby (at 37 1/2 weeks she was measuring at about 8 1/2 pounds), I have also been dealing with polyhydramnios, meaning I have too much amniotic fluid. All the extra fluid gives baby ample room to move, and during a routine ultrasound (I have short ones twice a week along with the non-stress tests) we found that she has flipped to breech yet again. She had stayed head down for nearly 4 weeks, so I was confident that we had left that particular hurdle behind. Not so, it would seem.

During my weekly OB appointment we discussed what course we'll be taking now, and the breech position complicates things. Assuming that I don't develop symptoms of preeclampsia over the weekend, we just wait. Nothing is set in stone, but if she flips back on her own by mid-to-late week we'll probably go ahead and induce while she's in a good position. If she doesn't flip, then by the end of the week (or maybe the beginning of the following week) they would try to turn her and immediately induce before she has the chance to turn again. And of course, if that fails, then it's off to experience the joys of a c-section. I can't wait to find out what that recovery would be like while trying to care for a newborn and a toddler on my own.

I have to admit, when the nurse who performed the ultrasound on Thursday told me that the baby's head was back under my left rib cage, I immediately informed her that this baby is already losing the favorite child contest. Maybe if she's really, really good and is head down again on Tuesday I'll change my mind.

The Home Stretch

Here we are at the end of February with six weeks to go until the anticipated debut of baby girl #2...except that we'll be seeing her much sooner than that. Thanks to some late-developing complications we'll probably be welcoming her in three weeks, if we can hang on that long. I've been banished to what I'm calling "couch arrest," which basically means I can get up to feed and clothe my toddler and myself; the rest of the time I'm laying either on the couch or in bed. Let me tell you, it's great fun trying to entertain a two-year-old when you can't leave the house all day. My only outings right now are to my thrice-weekly doctor's visits: two for non-stress tests at the hospital and one to my regular OB.

It's been interesting watching Clara process all this. She knows that I'm seeing the doctor an awful lot, so every time I tell her she gets to go play with a friend, she says, "Play (insert name here)? Mama doctor." Oliver played with her on campus during my first couple of non-stress tests, so now each evening when we go to pick him up from school, she expects that she's going to be left there to play with Daddy while Mama disappears for an hour or two. We've had a couple of lovely tantrums erupt when she realized that she was in fact not going to get to stay and play in the elevators or with the water fountains in the Tanner building. There is also far, far too much television being watched at the moment; I try to occupy her in other ways, but it's tough when you're glued to the couch. It's pretty sad when the first thing she says when I go to get her out of bed after a nap is, "Movie? Wall-E? Excited!" Hopefully it won't take too terribly long to readjust a month from now when the TV is banished for most of the day.

So that's the fun around here; I'm guessing this will be the story until the little one arrives. We'll have another ultrasound and an amniocentesis three weeks from today, and if her lungs look mature she'll be born either that day or the next. Oh, and everyone please pray that this kid will decide to turn head-down very soon and stay that way. She's been flipping between breech and vertex almost daily (a very uncomfortable process, let me tell you) and she really, really needs to remain head-down, as I really, really don't want to have a C-section. Really, really.

The Envelope, Please...

So who wins? Will Oliver's family curse be broken, or will it be mine? A boy was the predominant guess (by a 2-to-1 margin) by you, our loyal blog readers, which would break my dad's all-girls-all-the-time curse.

Will Clara be able to impart her vast feminine wisdom to a new sister, or will she need to learn to speak the language of trucks, trains, and bugs with a new brother?

We have the answer.

Oliver's family curse stands no longer.

We will be the first of Oliver's siblings to have two girls! Baby girl #2 was very accommodating; we didn't even need the ultrasound tech to tell us what we're having, it was that obvious. Everything looks good, she is measuring right where she should be at 20 weeks...well, except for her legs. They're long. They're measuring about a week-and-a-half ahead of where they should be. Big shock there. I'm pretty sure I wrote the same thing about Clara two years ago.

Now we just need to come up with a name. Pray for us on that one. Seriously.

(For those of you adept at reading ultrasound images, here is a sample for you.)

A Tale of Two Curses

This is the story of Oliver's Family Curse and Kristin's Family Curse. What might those be, you ask? Let me explain...no, there is too much. Let me sum up. (Points to anyone who can tell me where that comes from.)

Part One - Oliver's Family Curse

Oliver is one of five children - four boys and one girl. As of today, he and his siblings have the following children:

Matt - boy, boy, boy, girl
Jared - girl, boy, boy, boy
Oliver - girl
Sara - girl, boy, boy (soon)
Eric - girl, boy, boy

See the trend? Apparently there is only one girl allowed per family, period.

Part Two - Kristin's Family Curse

My dad is one of four children - one boy and three girls. He and my mother had two girls. He and his second wife had one girl. He now has three step-daughters through his third marriage. His first grandchild is a girl.

No boys allowed.

One of these curses will be broken in late March/early April. Anyone want to wager a guess as to which one it will be?

We'll let you know in about a month.