sleep

Any tips on getting a baby to take proper naps without you holding them the entire time? Evelyn naps, but when put her down she wakes up screaming in about 10 minutes. We have started night time sleep training (letting her scream it out, going in to comfort her, but not picking her up on the doctor's recommendation). I have started trying that for her naps today, and it has been hard. I am currently holding a sleeping baby who fell asleep as soon as I picked her up... *sigh*
The last two nights have consisted of an hour of crying before she falls asleep, with the last 15 minutes or so being really MAD cries, and at that point she doesn't settle down when we come in anymore.

Any books or tips you can recommend would be welcomed!

We have already been recommended (I am using that word a lot this post!) "on becoming baby wise"

Also, any tips on getting her to sleep longer? She goes for about 6 hours at night (not bad) but wakes up at 4 or 5 like clockwork convinced she is going to starve! She is 12 pounds, so I know she isn't going to starve and she is plenty big enough to go without a nighttime feeding. Should I just try to conquer one thing at a time? I would love to be able to sleep through to 6 or 7 or even 8.... bliss!

Evelyn's 2 month stats

Hi, My name is Evelyn and I am 2 months old! Aren't I cute?


Evelyn is growing so fast! she needs to stop now... *sigh* but she is so cute! Promptly after taking these pictures she spit up all over her cute, previously clean, outfit... at least she waited until after?

Height 22.75" (75th percentile)
Weight 12lbs (75th percentile)
Head 39.5(cm???) (75th percentile)

I am amused that she is 75% all around, Kyle likes that she is above average :) he is hoping she will be a prodigy...






She is trying to roll over already, don't know that I am ready for that... and she can sort of scoot herself around in circles or very short distances when she is doing tummy time!

Evelyn is getting closer to sleeping all the way through the night, she currently will go about 5-6 hours (which she started doing on her own!) but no longer...

If you think about it, around 10 pm PST we will be putting her in her bed to put herself to sleep... it is going to be a looooooooong night. The doctor said this will be the hardest night, and then it gets easier and after 3 nights she should be fine... We have been rocking her to sleep, but as soon as we put her in her cradle she wakes up and starts screaming, so now we start this. We were going to start last night, but she had shots yesterday and I figured she had had a hard enough day already...

Mommy Rhapsody

Mommy Rhapsody from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

Oh, this is so life now... ^_^ What a creative bunch of women!

HT: NerdMom

One month!

okay, so technically she is 5.5 weeks now, but I have been busy!!!

This is Bea, the Bear. She was given to me by my Grammy. Evelyn's middle name of Beatrice is in honor of her, I thought it was only fitting to use Bea as the Growing Toy...

Evelyn's One Month Stats

Weight:
10lbs 8oz,
90th percentile (whatever that means... all I know is she's healthy and growing and that's good enough for me!)

Height:
21.5 in,
50th percentile (not too surprised here, have you seen us? we are a short people in this family!)


We had Evelyn dedicated at church last Sunday.
It was kind of exciting because it was our pastor's first baby dedication! He also got to dedicate his brother's youngest daughter who is just over a year old. Having both Kyle and my families there doubled our normal congregation size, woohoo!! yay for church planting!!

Picture (heavy) post

In the Hospital

First week home

Easter dress! It was so chilly and rainy that day, so we added a onesie and tights, but she was still cute!

Chillin on the blanket

Making faces at mommy

Learning how to play Peek-a-boo?

All dressed up for a party

What a sleepy girl! Kyle really likes the crease in her bottom lip, he thinks it's adorable...



I have a few videos of her too, just need to figure out how to post them on here... I know I can do it on FB

Oh, and she is going to be a month old tomorrow!!!! Who let me have a one month old?!?!
Love you my little Evie B!

Birth Story

Going to try to get this down quickly while the babe is sleeping!

Any men that read this, this is your warning that this post will talk about labor, female parts of the anatomy, bodily functions and other things that go along with all that. Continue at your own risk. You have been warned....





So, Tuesday the 23rd we went in for a scheduled induction at 12:30 PM. As of that Monday I was still only 80% effaced with no dilation, when we went in on Tuesday I was 80% effaced and 1cm dilated! They started me on the cervix ripening drug which is administered every 12 hours, so once I started the first dose I would have to wait 12 hours until we could see how far along we had come. At this point we were just hanging out in the hospital waiting... and waiting...

Because of the delay on the hospital pharmacy's side we didn't start the drugs until 2:30 PM, so that meant rather than be able to sleep mostly through the night the nurse came in at 2:30 AM to check me. The drug hadn't worked yet, but I had started contracting, and the contractions were too close together to give me another dose so they had to give me another drug to stop the contractions. It was nice to know that my body was able to start the birthing process though!

At 5 AM and after 2 doses of the contraction stopping drugs they were finally able to give me the next dose of the cervix drug. By that time I was dilated to 3 cm and had bloody show (TMI?). The contractions started in pretty well by then, and I was finally able to start to feel them. We continued to just ride through the process waiting to birth this baby! The contractions got worse and worse, and they gave me Fentonal (sp?) to take the edge off of the pain since I wanted to try to do labor naturally with no epidural. The first couple doses worked great, and then they didn't do anything!!

Oh, PS. No one warned me that you might puke when you are in labor... everyone warned me about having a BM while you are pushing, but nothing about puking up your dinner from the night before... ugh. and apparently Fentonal can aid in that...

So the pain keeps getting worse and worse. Kyle is being a trooper this whole time sitting by my side as I writhe in pain helping me focus on breathing and allowing me to squeeze the living daylights out of his hand. Also he got me a orange popsicle that I promptly proceeded to evacuate out of my body... dang it, I like orange popsicles too!

Finally about 11AM the pain is just too much for me to bear anymore and I beg for an epidural. Of course the anesthesiologist is in a C-section just then and can't come to me promptly. As they are calling for the back up anesthesiologist to come I happen to mention that I feel like I have to go to the bathroom, they promptly check me and lo and behold I am dilated to 8 cm!!! woo!! so they also call the doctor to come and break my water.

All of a sudden everything is moving quickly, the nurses start setting everything up for delivery, they hook me up to an IV drip of Pitocin, the best anesthesiologist in the world comes and gives me my epidural and the world suddenly is a much nicer place, my OB comes and breaks my water changes me to the internal monitors and tells me to start pushing. whew, are you tired yet?

After 1.5 hours of pushing, at 1:31 PM, less than 24 hours after we started this whole process and less than 12 hours after labor really started, Evelyn Beatrice was born.

Just about everything that was in our birth plan got thrown out the window, but then we kind of knew that would happen when we had to be induced instead of everything proceeding "naturally". We are happy to have a healthy, happy(for the most part) baby.

Also, I am happy to announce that we have successfully weaned off the nipple shield as of today. We never needed it really, but she was having trouble latching at the hospital and so they gave it to me so that she would eat... it only took hanging out in bed all morning with her feeding her every hour and listening to her cry like I was torturing her by nursing her to do it, but we did it!






...and now we return to our regularly scheduled programming that doesn't include talk of the female anatomy, bodily functions and labor... enjoy.

Evelyn Beatrice

Evelyn Beatrice was born March 24, 2010 at 1:31 PM.
She weighed 8lbs 13oz and is 20ins long.

Mommy was very tired after labor, can you tell?

Going home

Mommy is ready. (man they aren't kidding when they say you go home still looking like you are 6 months preggo! belly has gone down a bunch since then)




Love love LOVE! this picture!!!

tummy time

Evelyn just woke up. will post about the birth later when I have both hands free...

Martha!

I know many of you ladies who read my blog love you some Martha.

Well....


I just found out about a fabu offer to get a year of Martha Stewart Living (the magazine) for FREE!!!!!!



Go here and get yours, I just did...

http://www.rewardsgold.com/mags/ms_living/sg_ms_living_pg1.htm

Hurry though, I don't know how long this offer is going to last!!!!

By Request...

39.5 weeks
Come on baby! It's time to leave. I promise you there is much more room for you to stretch and kick out here... please?

Goings on...

My birthday was on Friday, Kyle was sweet and planned a little surprise family party for me... Chinese food, birthday cake, 3 kinds of ice cream, presents and family! a good night!

Today Kyle went to the grocery store and came back with the groceries and GIRL SCOUT COOKIES! I love me some Caramel Delights!


Still nothing from Baby Girl. She is hanging out and not looking like she is coming out anytime soon. Don't know if the Castor Oil is doing anything yet, hopefully it has, we see the doctor on Monday again, I hope it's good news! I have been doing "research" online for ideas on how to start labor. So, I have been periodically bouncing on my yoga ball, since I can't go curb walking or jumping on trampolines like Kate did. I also had Kyle pick up some Pineapple, (Mango was expensive and there were no Kiwis) they are supposed to help start labor. I will probably have him go to Jamba Juice tomorrow and get me a Mega Mango smoothie, it has Mango and Pineapple Juice... Tried having spicy food yesterday for lunch, but spice just gives me heartburn now (which is a bummer since I like spicy!) Planning to ask the doctor about Red Raspberry Leaf tea, it's supposed to help start things too. I know we are only at 38.5 weeks but I am so ready to be off of bed rest and for this baby to be born! I am hoping for early next week... *sigh* patience is not a very strong virtue in me.

Oh! I got my diapers this week too! I found them for about 2 dollars cheaper than anywhere else I had seen from an Amazon.com store. We had wanted to get all white ones, but these came in a "gender neutral" color pack so we have a few different colors, some I wouldn't have picked as "gender neutral" but diapers are diapers and I am glad we have them before Baby Girl gets here!

Off to finish watching The Sound of Music with the Sing-Along setting turned on!! and maybe to eat half of my box of Caramel Delights!! with a Pineapple chaser... ^_^