I think Clara is trying to smile! It is so tremendously cute. Especially in the mornings, she'll have the most pleasant look on her face, and really try to smile! It looks great on her - can't wait to see its full glory.
Today was a wonderful summer day. The girls went to Ms. Teri's for the last time this morning, and they were not at all confused or concerned by it. Ms. Teri was very reassuring and gave them big hugs, lots of love, and then got all teary as we walked out the door together. It was hard to leave, but I'm really sure that I'm doing the right thing. She truly does love my kids, though, so I hope I didn't burn any bridges.
It's interesting to think about what is different between each pregnancy, each child. This time, whenever I nurse Clara, I get the most horrendous, overwhelming feeling. It happens about 30 seconds before my milk lets down, so sometimes that's as we sit down to nurse, and sometimes it's just after a passing thought of my baby, or just a totally random moment. But I have this feeling of dread, anxiety, and guilt, all at once, almost to the point where my stomach is upset and I kind of want to throw up. It would be one thing if it was just a feeling, but it lasts long enough to manifest itself into actual thoughts, like, feeling guilty about not spending enough time with Audrey, feeling anxious about whether I made the right daycare decision, or dreading going back to work. And that's just the tip of the iceberg - I have lots to feel guilty or anxious about, I guess! It's weird, because I'll get wrapped up in this feeling, and then consciously tell myself that I'm only thinking that because I'm letting down, and I've got enough time to finish whatever I was doing (brushing my teeth, fixing a sandwich, carrying a child) in order to clutch myself for the letdown. It's ridiculous, and mentally tough work! I can see how new mothers can get postpartum depression, if their hormones or chemistry is dictating these thoughts into their heads all the time, instead of just 30-second intervals throughout the day. I don't remember it being this vivid with either Emily or Audrey; I think I would've described it then as suspenseful, like the top of a rollercoaster kind of feeling. Anyway, I'm tired of it, and would like my brain back!!!
Clara continues to be a good sleeper. She generally is only awake once per night, eats well, and goes back to sleep after a change. I could not be more thankful!! It's funny that right now I feel like I can continue this schedule, no problem, but as soon as I get more sleep I won't be able to go back to this, once teething or sicknesses keep her up at night.
We're going to start the cloth diapers tomorrow. I've got them all folded and ready, and I think they'll fit her okay. I have a feeling that she'll go through her allotment of 7 diapers each day really quickly, and we'll use a fair amount of disposables still, but that's fine with me, since I planned on using disposables at night anyway. I've gotta say I'm actually excited about it, so we'll see how long it takes before I decide that they're a pain - and get tired of the stink! She's starting to blow out the size 1's, so hopefully these will be a little more secure.
Clara had her 2-week checkup this week, although she turned 3 weeks old today! She was 10 lbs, 2 oz, and had grown more than an inch in length!! She's of the chart for head size and height, but hovering near the top for weight. She charmed everybody with how alert and beautiful she is, and did a great job tolerating all the poking and manhandling. Emily chatted on and on, telling the nurse and doctor all about Clara, while Audrey saw an opportunity to get into trouble. Guess those birth-order roles are getting more and more solidified!
I should write more about what Emily and Audrey are up to these days, but I'm tired, and this seems like an adequate posting so I'll quit. G'night!
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Raving about my little one
So, it's been a busy week. :)
Little Clara is an excellent sleeper. She's been regularly doing 3-4 hour sleep stretches at night, and once slept for SIX straight hours! She eats quickly and goes right back to sleep, so I'm generally only up with her for less than 30 minutes each time, and I'm really feeling good as a result. I've had a lot of help over the past week and been able to physically take it easy for long enough that I'm thinking I can start doing things like going for short walks, or doing more physical activities around the house. For now, I'm just enjoying being able to curl up on the couch with a gigantic awkward belly in my way. I've lost 25 lbs in 10 days - also a good feeling. :) I can now climb a flight of stairs without getting winded!! I'm started to get regulated with Clara's appetite, too, so the soreness in my boobs is going away now, too. Such a relief!
But enough about me. Clara had a checkup on Tuesday, where she was only 1 oz shy of her birthweight, so that's awesome. She also passed a bilirubin check, since the doc thought she might be a bit on the jaundiced side, but I think she was coming out of that. She was pretty yellow on Sunday but by Tuesday she had pinked up again, and the check confirmed that. She's definitely like her sisters - nearly every diaper is poopy, and she puts on some serious displays of capability on that end. I think it's funny that my mom is so impressed by her output, but her other grandma thinks nothing of it - totally normal for a Sullivan, I guess!!
One morning, she woke up and looked at me with a Travis expression on her face, much to my surprise since to that point she had looked like sleeping baby Kristin. But the shape of her face, around her eyes, is definitely Travis's. She is such a pretty baby!! I swear she's trying to smile at us. It's not like she has a broad range of expressions yet, but she does have different looks when she's staring intently and thinking hard versus enjoying wiggling and hearing her sisters talk. She has such a pleasant expression then that it seems like a smile! Her little legs are long and skinny and floppy, and she really swings her arms around a lot when she's talking with her sisters.
Emily asks all the time if she can hold her, and if I set her up in the blue chair with the boppy, she does a great job and both girls really enjoy it. Audrey calls her Baby, because I think she knows when she tries to say Clara it comes out more like Carla, and if it's not right, she avoids it. :) But she's just as affectionate towards her sister... and opportunistic when it comes to us being distracted by the baby. Check out our family picture site for the mascara incident as just one example of how she is taking advantage of our diverted attention. She's a little stinker!
The big activity for this weekend is that we are writing a contract to hire a nanny! We interviewed a girl, Amanda, on Thursday who seems to be a great fit for our family. I'm really excited, and will have her here for 8 weeks before I go back to work. I know that seems a little crazy, but I have already put together a list of things I want to be working on while she has primary care of the kids. It's the kind of stuff you always think you'll do on maternity leave but of course you don't. Well, I stand a better chance this way, at least! I'm also hoping to use it to get 1-on-1 time with Emily and with Audrey, for maybe a special outing here nad there. It'll be so much easier when I do go back to work, because Clara will be in her own home with a familiar person, and being home on leave when Amand starts will make it easier for each of us to figure out how the other operates. The hardest part about this will be telling our current sitter, because she really is truly crazy about our kids. She knew we were looking, so it's not a surprise to her, but I still feel bad because the things that prompted us to go this route aren't things she can really fix. It's like breaking up with her "It's not you, it's me"-style.
Time to track down Audrey for a snooze. I suggested a nap to her yesterday at about this time, and she found her blanket and wandered off. About 10 minutes later I asked if anyone knew where she was - she was in bed!! My mom pulled down the shade in her room for her and kissed her forehead, and that was it. If only it was that easy at bedtime. :)
Little Clara is an excellent sleeper. She's been regularly doing 3-4 hour sleep stretches at night, and once slept for SIX straight hours! She eats quickly and goes right back to sleep, so I'm generally only up with her for less than 30 minutes each time, and I'm really feeling good as a result. I've had a lot of help over the past week and been able to physically take it easy for long enough that I'm thinking I can start doing things like going for short walks, or doing more physical activities around the house. For now, I'm just enjoying being able to curl up on the couch with a gigantic awkward belly in my way. I've lost 25 lbs in 10 days - also a good feeling. :) I can now climb a flight of stairs without getting winded!! I'm started to get regulated with Clara's appetite, too, so the soreness in my boobs is going away now, too. Such a relief!
But enough about me. Clara had a checkup on Tuesday, where she was only 1 oz shy of her birthweight, so that's awesome. She also passed a bilirubin check, since the doc thought she might be a bit on the jaundiced side, but I think she was coming out of that. She was pretty yellow on Sunday but by Tuesday she had pinked up again, and the check confirmed that. She's definitely like her sisters - nearly every diaper is poopy, and she puts on some serious displays of capability on that end. I think it's funny that my mom is so impressed by her output, but her other grandma thinks nothing of it - totally normal for a Sullivan, I guess!!
One morning, she woke up and looked at me with a Travis expression on her face, much to my surprise since to that point she had looked like sleeping baby Kristin. But the shape of her face, around her eyes, is definitely Travis's. She is such a pretty baby!! I swear she's trying to smile at us. It's not like she has a broad range of expressions yet, but she does have different looks when she's staring intently and thinking hard versus enjoying wiggling and hearing her sisters talk. She has such a pleasant expression then that it seems like a smile! Her little legs are long and skinny and floppy, and she really swings her arms around a lot when she's talking with her sisters.
Emily asks all the time if she can hold her, and if I set her up in the blue chair with the boppy, she does a great job and both girls really enjoy it. Audrey calls her Baby, because I think she knows when she tries to say Clara it comes out more like Carla, and if it's not right, she avoids it. :) But she's just as affectionate towards her sister... and opportunistic when it comes to us being distracted by the baby. Check out our family picture site for the mascara incident as just one example of how she is taking advantage of our diverted attention. She's a little stinker!
The big activity for this weekend is that we are writing a contract to hire a nanny! We interviewed a girl, Amanda, on Thursday who seems to be a great fit for our family. I'm really excited, and will have her here for 8 weeks before I go back to work. I know that seems a little crazy, but I have already put together a list of things I want to be working on while she has primary care of the kids. It's the kind of stuff you always think you'll do on maternity leave but of course you don't. Well, I stand a better chance this way, at least! I'm also hoping to use it to get 1-on-1 time with Emily and with Audrey, for maybe a special outing here nad there. It'll be so much easier when I do go back to work, because Clara will be in her own home with a familiar person, and being home on leave when Amand starts will make it easier for each of us to figure out how the other operates. The hardest part about this will be telling our current sitter, because she really is truly crazy about our kids. She knew we were looking, so it's not a surprise to her, but I still feel bad because the things that prompted us to go this route aren't things she can really fix. It's like breaking up with her "It's not you, it's me"-style.
Time to track down Audrey for a snooze. I suggested a nap to her yesterday at about this time, and she found her blanket and wandered off. About 10 minutes later I asked if anyone knew where she was - she was in bed!! My mom pulled down the shade in her room for her and kissed her forehead, and that was it. If only it was that easy at bedtime. :)
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Clara Nicole Sullivan
She's here! She's here! She's here!!!
I have about 20 minutes so I'll type as fast as I can to document the story of Clara's birth.
Travis and I left the girls with Nancy and drove downtown to Methodist for an 8AM induction appointment. Things got started at about 9 AM with a pitocin drip, which was super fun. I had had contractions since about 5 AM, but only enough to keep me awake and not enough to do any good at all. They broke my water at about 10:30, but that caused baby's heart rate to drop and she freaked out a little, too. The nurse checked me, suspecting a prolapsed cord, but fortunately that wasn't the case! Phew! That really scared me, because I did NOT want a C-Section, nor the drama of a prolapsed cord!! But it meant that they turned the pitocin off, and had to start over again at the lowest dose, so we spent the morning just waiting, and socializing with the nurses. Finally, the contractions got frequent and regular enough that they called the anaesthesiologist, which I thought should have been done a lot sooner because I kept saying I had nothing to prove, the sooner the better. It was pretty agonizing by the time he got there. The pitocin gave me the shakes, and I was freezing cold and shaking on the edge of the bed, clinging to a nurse, writhing in pain... it was horrible. But then after the anaesthetic took effect, it was amazing. I told Travis that it was kind of like the feeling you get when you've been struggling to stay afloat in freezing cold water, and finally you get out of the water, dry off, and catch your breath, and your toes finally get warm again and then you relax. It was that good of a feeling, only better because the pain beforehand was a LOT worse than swimming in freezing cold water!!
So, after that was all taken care of, I took a nap. :) I slept for about half an hour, then the nurses had to check something and rolled me over. Once I did that, I could totally tell that I was ready to have the baby. About half an hour and two key contractions later, she was born!! She was very, very purple, but beautiful and round right away, not at all red and wrinkley. I got to hold her for a few minutes, and then Trav was with her at the warming table, where she didn't scream much at all. He said a few of the nurses were impressed when her head circumference was announced - such a proud dad! And then they weighed her, and sure enough, she beat her sisters for size.
Since then, it's been a crazy mess of people coming to see her, coming to help me, coming to watch the girls... and now it's quiet while Travis takes the girls to the park in the Burley behind his bike, and Clara sleeps. Clara and I had some quiet time together in the hospital, which was really nice, but I think the massive amount of pitocin, and some other factors including a horribly uncomfortable hospital bed, made it hard for me to relax and sleep so I didn't really any solid rest until I slept in my own bed last night. Clara had a great night last night - only up twice, each time just a quick change, eat, back to sleep - so I'm hoping she's got another one of those for me tonight. She's napped a lot today, but also had two or three good hour-long awake times, so I'm hopeful. I'm still pretty sore, but feeling a little better each day. I'm impressed with just how atrophied I am!!
And, might I mention, Clara is just BEAUTIFUL. Her eyes are so deep and alert, and her face is just a perfect shape, and so soft!! She seems really mellow so far, although writing that probably means that I just jinxed it. :) After all the visitors she's seen, she follows the sound of my voice whenever I reappear, and Travis's and the girls' voices, too. My parents have been marveling at how much she looks like my baby pictures, but I'm sure she's Travis's kid: She's already had her first blowout diaper! She's spent all day today eating and pooping, so we're moving up out of newborn size to size 1 already. Her stash of cloth diapers is ready and waiting, but it'll be a few weeks before we venture to that. She also has the same relaxed, long legs that Emily had as a newborn, which I credit her Sullivan side for, also.
The girls are just infatuated with her, and very loving. They have obviously been stressed by all of this, and I'm seeing some behaviors from both of them that are unusual for them, but really not much and nothing that's at all concerning. Travis and I tried out some of our favorite girl names by having Emily and Audrey say them out loud for us, and to hear them say "Clara" really sealed the deal for us. My favorite moment of this whole experience so far -- Travis was holding Clara, with Emily and Audrey on his lap, too, and he asked them if they would like to sing Happy Birthday to Clara because it was, in fact, her birth day. They did, together, and it was possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my life. And Clara stared back at them both, VERY intently. I can't even describe the feeling... It was a moment I want to hold in my heart forever.
We are so lucky, so happy, and so very overwhelmed by everything. My heart is full!
I have about 20 minutes so I'll type as fast as I can to document the story of Clara's birth.
Travis and I left the girls with Nancy and drove downtown to Methodist for an 8AM induction appointment. Things got started at about 9 AM with a pitocin drip, which was super fun. I had had contractions since about 5 AM, but only enough to keep me awake and not enough to do any good at all. They broke my water at about 10:30, but that caused baby's heart rate to drop and she freaked out a little, too. The nurse checked me, suspecting a prolapsed cord, but fortunately that wasn't the case! Phew! That really scared me, because I did NOT want a C-Section, nor the drama of a prolapsed cord!! But it meant that they turned the pitocin off, and had to start over again at the lowest dose, so we spent the morning just waiting, and socializing with the nurses. Finally, the contractions got frequent and regular enough that they called the anaesthesiologist, which I thought should have been done a lot sooner because I kept saying I had nothing to prove, the sooner the better. It was pretty agonizing by the time he got there. The pitocin gave me the shakes, and I was freezing cold and shaking on the edge of the bed, clinging to a nurse, writhing in pain... it was horrible. But then after the anaesthetic took effect, it was amazing. I told Travis that it was kind of like the feeling you get when you've been struggling to stay afloat in freezing cold water, and finally you get out of the water, dry off, and catch your breath, and your toes finally get warm again and then you relax. It was that good of a feeling, only better because the pain beforehand was a LOT worse than swimming in freezing cold water!!
So, after that was all taken care of, I took a nap. :) I slept for about half an hour, then the nurses had to check something and rolled me over. Once I did that, I could totally tell that I was ready to have the baby. About half an hour and two key contractions later, she was born!! She was very, very purple, but beautiful and round right away, not at all red and wrinkley. I got to hold her for a few minutes, and then Trav was with her at the warming table, where she didn't scream much at all. He said a few of the nurses were impressed when her head circumference was announced - such a proud dad! And then they weighed her, and sure enough, she beat her sisters for size.
Since then, it's been a crazy mess of people coming to see her, coming to help me, coming to watch the girls... and now it's quiet while Travis takes the girls to the park in the Burley behind his bike, and Clara sleeps. Clara and I had some quiet time together in the hospital, which was really nice, but I think the massive amount of pitocin, and some other factors including a horribly uncomfortable hospital bed, made it hard for me to relax and sleep so I didn't really any solid rest until I slept in my own bed last night. Clara had a great night last night - only up twice, each time just a quick change, eat, back to sleep - so I'm hoping she's got another one of those for me tonight. She's napped a lot today, but also had two or three good hour-long awake times, so I'm hopeful. I'm still pretty sore, but feeling a little better each day. I'm impressed with just how atrophied I am!!
And, might I mention, Clara is just BEAUTIFUL. Her eyes are so deep and alert, and her face is just a perfect shape, and so soft!! She seems really mellow so far, although writing that probably means that I just jinxed it. :) After all the visitors she's seen, she follows the sound of my voice whenever I reappear, and Travis's and the girls' voices, too. My parents have been marveling at how much she looks like my baby pictures, but I'm sure she's Travis's kid: She's already had her first blowout diaper! She's spent all day today eating and pooping, so we're moving up out of newborn size to size 1 already. Her stash of cloth diapers is ready and waiting, but it'll be a few weeks before we venture to that. She also has the same relaxed, long legs that Emily had as a newborn, which I credit her Sullivan side for, also.
The girls are just infatuated with her, and very loving. They have obviously been stressed by all of this, and I'm seeing some behaviors from both of them that are unusual for them, but really not much and nothing that's at all concerning. Travis and I tried out some of our favorite girl names by having Emily and Audrey say them out loud for us, and to hear them say "Clara" really sealed the deal for us. My favorite moment of this whole experience so far -- Travis was holding Clara, with Emily and Audrey on his lap, too, and he asked them if they would like to sing Happy Birthday to Clara because it was, in fact, her birth day. They did, together, and it was possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my life. And Clara stared back at them both, VERY intently. I can't even describe the feeling... It was a moment I want to hold in my heart forever.
We are so lucky, so happy, and so very overwhelmed by everything. My heart is full!
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