Road Trip #2

Our second family road trip didn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be. Due to a change in Andrew’s work schedule, and needing a lot of time to drive a long way with a baby, we were not able to make it to our friend’s wedding in southern Oregon. However, since Andrew was still able to keep his Friday off, we took a shorter road trip and went on a family adventure to Mount Saint Helens and then down to Portland, Oregon!

Kayley did great on this trip. Our trip to Leavenworth gave us a good feel for what her needs would be on our trip, and how to make our trip more fun and less stressful for us too. For us, lots of stops did wonders as we made our way to Johnston Ridge Observatory. I think we pulled over for almost all of the viewpoints. Each was so beautiful! Even though we know Kayley’s vision is still developing, we swear she was staring at the mountain at times. 

Inside the Johnston Ridge Observatory

We had a fun time going up to the mountain and back down. We knew we could have driven to Portland that Friday night, but to keep stress out of our trip, decided to stay at Castle Rock. The next morning we headed to Portland to spend time with our friends the Bauers. Sadly their lil one had a cold, so we didn’t spend much time with them, but we did have fun at a park. Kayley even went down a slide (with Andrew’s help) for the first time! The rest of the day we spent relaxing at a very yummy mainly vegan restaurant that I cannot remember the name of, and then going tax-free shopping for a few baby items. We took it easy in the evening to make sure we had lot of energy for Sunday.

Kayley's first slide experience

The place we had lunch at had dinos on the tables!

On Sunday we visited our Uncle David and Aunt Jan, and had the pleasure of introducing Kayley to them. To get to their house we had to have a police escort due to a triathlon going on. Then after that we started heading north and stopped just north of Vancouver (WA not Canada) to visit my friend James from college and meet his lovely wife, Vamma. They showed us around this old water powered mill that is still in operation and was grinding corn into cornmeal at the time and giving it out for free. I’m looking forward to making some corn bread out of it. Then they showed us around the farm Vamma grew up on. It was so cool to meet some of her family who are very devout Christians. We even went strawberry picking and got to bring some delicious strawberries home with us. And Kayley met a pony for the first time. We wanted to stay longer with them, but knew we had to hit the road so we wouldn’t get back too late. 

Inside the mill. The green thing is where the corn was being grind

Vamma, James, and us!

Thankfully Kayley slept almost the whole way home! We stopped to feed her once, but besides that, she was out like a light. Andrew tells me I was too… I guess I was tired from our fun weekend.

Things we learned about road tripping with Kayley:

• Make sure she gets plenty of face time and play time when we stop so she will sleep well at night
• Change diapers frequently. This keeps baby happy in the car seat
• Take your time and stop frequently
• Keep her bed time routine as much as possible
• Eat when she eats
• Don’t push the distance you want to go in a day
• Keep in mind her schedule will be out of wack a bit during and after the trip
• Let her enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the world around her
• Pack extra burp clothes. Bibs work great to keep spit off clothes
• It’s better to be slightly over prepared than under-prepared with baby clothes, diapers, etc
• Bring breast pump and all storing needed for breast milk (at least one bag/bottle more than you think you’ll need)
• If it’s hot, cool down the car a LOT before getting into it
• Sun shades for car windows are great!
• Bringing a night light with helps mommy see in dark hotel rooms at night when trying to get baby for night time nursing
• Make sure you bring extra clothes for you. You never know if Kayley will spit up on you a lot, or have a diaper leak.

This is post 100!!! Whoohoo!

The 1st and 4th

This last weekend was not only the 4^th of July, but also our first wedding anniversary. We of course decided to have a fun filled weekend, and Kayley was able to celebrate with us!

We started off the weekend with a little family BBQ on our deck. Well actually Andrew and I did try to have it be just the two of us outside cooking our hot dogs camping style (we were pretending our little BBQ was actually a campfire). We had Kayley inside on her bouncer and used our baby monitor for the first time. Little Miss Kayley was enjoying herself bouncing up and down and babbling until she realized we weren’t right there and started doing her “where did you go” cry.  So we brought her outside with us and I had her on my lap while we cooked, ate dinner and had smores. To make it feel more like a family camping trip, I taught Andrew some of the campfire songs I grew up with; like “The Second Story Window” and “Eddie-Gutch-A-Gatch-A-Gamma-Tosa-Nerra-Tosa-Nokka-Samma-Camma-Wacky-Brown”. We had a fun time and Kayley seemed to enjoy herself too.

I love smores!

How to make a smore

The next morning we got up and got ready to leave for Leavenworth, a Barvarian themed town east of the Cascades. We took the more scenic route there (highway 2) and enjoyed the beautiful mountain range and river. We even stopped to take a few snap shots on our drive, and to buy buffalo jerky. We discovered that it’s very tasty.

Leavenworth

Buffalo jerky

This was also our longest trip with Kayley thus far. We had no idea how she was going to do being strapped into her car seat for so long. We figured she’d fall asleep for most the drive, since she usually does that on car rides, but we didn’t know for how long. Plus we knew that would throw off her activity schedule for the day (she usually has wake time in the morning to early afternoon and then takes a nice long nap). She was great on the drive! We made sure to stop at a rest stop and feed her at her normal time. And we walked around a bit to let her soak in some of the sunshine we had, and to get some fresh air.

When we got to Leavenworth we were able to check into our hotel, and then walk around town a bit. Kayley was even looked around at the world and enjoying the sights and sounds. We took a nice little stroll to a park where we fed her again before having dinner ourselves. We were hoping she’d have an after dinner nap like she sometimes does. And sure enough, she slept through our whole meal.

Now our meal I really have to tell you about. We decided to have German food since we of course were in a German themed town. We ate at a place called King Ludwig’s Gasthaus. Andrew had what I can only describe as one huge chunk of meat! It was a joint from a large pig, cooked to perfection and brought out with a knife stuck in it. We both had no idea how he was supposed to eat it so we asked a waitress for some tips. I had literally half a duck cooked and served with a delicate plum sauce. Our meals were both so good! We couldn’t believe how much food it was, especially how much food Andrew got.

Huge chunk of meat!

Half a duck

The next day, for the 4^th of July, Kayley wore red, I wore white and Andrew wore blue as we started the day of our first wedding anniversary. We headed into town to enjoy Kinderfest, which had free food, activities and events for kids. If Kayley was older I think she would have loved it, but instead she slept through the whole thing. We enjoyed watching the families and imagining doing something similar with Kayley one day. And we also enjoyed watching the clown and looking at some of the people who were dressed in traditional German clothes.

Red, white and blue

Kinderfest

After that we checked out the rest of the little shops we were interested in. We both had fun putting on different hats at the hat shop, and putting fun headbands on our sleeping snoring daughter. We ended our day in Leavenworth with lunch before heading home via 90. 

Cowgirl Jessie from Toy Story

My knight in shinning armor

Our patriotic daughter

Since Kayley slept so much during the morning and early afternoon, she was wide awake for the first half of our drive home, and not happy about being in her car seat. It made for an interesting first half of a drive with me sitting in back trying to sooth and entertain her. Thankfully after stopping to feed her she dozed off into sleep for the rest of the drive. This makes us wonder what next weekend’s trip will be like with her. We’re driving down to the coast of southern Oregon for a friend’s wedding, and have no idea how long the drive will take with a baby. We’re praying for a good trip like this last weekend.

One of our gorgeous views driving home

Anyway! We had a great weekend celebrating our first wedding anniversary and look forward to the many more to come!

Photo by Cindy

Photo by Dina

7 Weeks at a Glimpse

Oh my it’s been a while. What can I say? I’ve been distracted with my little one. ^_^ A lot has happened since she was born just over 7 weeks ago. Here’s the past 7 weeks at a glimpse:

• Six days after Kayley was born we moved from one side of the lake to the other. We were blessed to have family and friends do a lot of the work for us.

• Kayley has been able to meet her three grandparents. My mom stayed with us for two weeks and put a lot of our apartment together. A couple weeks ago Andrew’s parents were able to visit us for a week and helped get our home more in order too.

2 weeks old with her Maimie

5 weeks old with her Grandparents

• Kayley’s first day at church was when she was two weeks old. She loves the music!

• Kayley loves to O, and also loves to make a sound that sounds like “owl.” At three weeks old she started Oing back and forth with us. At 6.5 weeks she just started to discover how to mimic intonation.

• Kayley loves bath time! She only cries when you take her out of the water.

• Kayley hates being restrained (i.e. put in her car seat, stroller, swing, and bouncer), but she loves them all once they start moving.  

• Kayley frequently practices holding up her head by herself and is quite good at it now.

• Kayley loves to be in a sitting position so she can look at the world around her. She will let you know if you are not holding her upright enough so she can look around.

• Kayley loves to look at her bear mobile. She frequently babbles at it and smiles when it is in motion, and gets frustrated when it stops moving if she isn’t done observing it.

• We have a great bedtime routine that she falls asleep to. Her last night feeding (she is breastfed) starts at 9pm. While she eats Andrew reads to her from one of her bible story books, then he reads our devotional book, followed by reading a chapter from the Bible. When she’s done we lay her in bed, turn on her bears and go brush our teeth. We’re ready for bed when the bears stop their music, and I then sing her a lullaby I made up from a song my mom sang me. She tends to fall asleep quite well.

• Kayley typically sleeps for 5 hours straight at night, and then for another 3 usually.

• We had our first family trip to the zoo when she was four weeks old.

• We took a day trip to Snoqualmie Falls as a family to go to Andrew’s alumni gathering for The Masters College when Kayley was 6 weeks old.

I swear the falls are behind us. It was just really misty

• I had my 6 week check-up. It went well, but Doc S thinks I’ll need at least a month more to heal up from having to have stitches and all.

• Kayley has been given a head bath more than a couple times by my sister’s dog Charlie. He adores her.

• Kayley loves to work out her legs by kicking and putting weight on them as you hold her under her arms in a standing position.

• Hoshi the cat has realized Kayley is staying as part of the family and likes to lie near her when we allow her to. Hoshi also comes and gets us if she thinks we’ve let Kayley cry too much.

Both Kayley and Hoshi taking a nap on Andrew

• We take family evening walks when it's not raining. Once we walked to Safeway and back (3 miles)

• Just a few days ago I was without my babe for the first time for 20 minutes while Andrew took her on a walk. I didn't know what to do with myself.

• Kayley is a very tactile baby and will let you know when she has been alone long enough.

• Kayley is starting to recognize my voice and Andrews. She’ll calm down and look around for us if we’ve been out of the room and she was upset.

• Kayley smiles back at you! ^_^

And so many more things! I love my little family!

One Month Plus a Day

Kayley turned a month old yesterday! She went from this…

7lbs 11oz and 19.5 inches

 To this...

10lbs and just over 21 inches

Happy one month Kayley! We’re happy to have you in our lives! It’s been a joy to watch you grow and develop so far, and we can’t wait to watch you learn more and grow more as the days go on. We love you our sweet little girl.

Birth Story: Tadpole Enters the World

Contractions are a feeling women can compare to cramps during their menstrual cycle, but of course they get more intense than your average cramp. However, as women know, you can have this feeling in your front and in your back, and the same goes for contractions. Not all women experience this back pain during their period or during labor, and it tends to be more painful and uncomfortable if you do experiences it. I tend to have back cramps when I’m on my period, so this meant there was more of a chance of me having back labor. Let me tell you, it’s not fun.

And on top of that, Kayley was pushing against my sciatic nerve. Your sciatic nerve runs from your lower back (under your uterus) to your legs. It’s the largest nerve in the human body and controls the sensory and motor functions in your lower back, butt, and legs. So basically when Kayley was leaning against my sciatic nerve on the left my lower back, left butt cheek, and left leg all the way down to my left foot would have intense severe pain on and off. We tried to relieve the pain by having me lay on my right side, but sadly that didn’t work too much, and then the anesthesia from my Epidural mostly went to my right side instead of being even between my left and right. I was not a happy camper with this new pain.

At this time (3:40pm), Andrew was trying to take a nap in the waiting room so he could have energy for the big event yet to come. My sister was trying to help and massage the parts of my body that were having the pain from my sciatic nerve. I think my mom was going back and forth between helping and taking a walk in the hall. I don’t really remember…

At about 4:00pm I noticed a new sensation, so we called the nurse in to have me checked. My nephew, Derek, called at 4:02 to see how it was going and if his cousin had arrived yet. We say he was the lucky charm, and that Kayley was just waiting for her cousin to call before she decided to start really entering the world. The nurse was checking me at this time and informed us I had dilated to 10cm! It was time to start pushing! My mom went to get Andrew who was just finally almost asleep (poor guy didn’t get shut eye =(), and Andrew became my main coach again. ^_^

Just after 4:10pm I started pushing, and Doc. S arrived in his scrubs at 4:18. It was interesting to have the Epidural and push. Since I had the Epidural I wasn’t able to feel the contractions much, but I could feel the sensation of my uterus tightening, and Kayley’s head dropping. Whenever I though a contraction was starting I announced that I thought it was and then the nurse would check the read out from the monitors to check and see if I was right. I was ever time! Then I would wait for the nurse to tell me the contraction was at its peak and then push three times for each contraction.

Since the Epidural was helping me to relax at one point in between contractions I said “Gosh I feel like I could fall asleep like this right now.” It was nice to have a little bit of rest time in between contractions even though that time didn’t last long at all. One time when I was pushing there was a gush of amniotic fluid that came out and got all over Doc S. It was pretty funny and we all started laughing. I told Doc S that I just thought he needed another shower, which made everyone else laugh some more. But this made it so Doc S had to go change his scrubs really fast, so the nurse took over more. And remember, during all this time I was still dealing with my sciatic nerve and back labor. Andrew massages my back whenever I demanded “Back! Back! Back!” and my sister massaged my left leg while my mom waited with the camera for her granddaughter to arrive.

Kayely’s head started crowning at about 4:50 and people were telling me they could see peach fuzz. I just had to push a few more times with some effective pushes, and wa-la! Kayley Gianna arrived into the world at 5:03pm! She entered the world with one hand next to her face, causing her to give me a nice punch on the way out that bruised me really bad and tore me so I needed stitches. It ended up being a medium tear that they did a “running” stitch on. I ended up losing about 800ml of blood and became really light headed and my blood pressure became low (which I already have low-ish blood pressure). It took a while for them to stop the bleeding, which the nurse and Doc S said they tend to see more in redheads than other women, and they have no idea why. Redheads just like to bleed I guess. 

Kayley also had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck loosely. Thank God she had a long umbilical cord so it wasn’t tight around her neck! Doc S caught her, waited for her umbilical cord to stop pulsing with blood, and then Andrew had the awesome pleasure of cutting her umbilical cord!

Kayely got 7 out of 10 for her first APGAR test. The APGAR test looks at the baby’s heart rate, respiration, muscle tone, reflex response, and color. Since she had her umbilical cord around her neck she was a little blue. Plus she didn’t show off her lung capacity all the way at first. They had to give her a bit of oxygen, which helped her color change pretty quickly and then she showed off that God gave her some good lungs. Her score was a 9 when they checked her again. 

I had my sweet baby girl handed to me right away after her cord was cut. I can’t even explain what it was like to see and hold her for the first time. I didn’t want to let her go. I just wanted to continue to gaze at her and study ever inch of her that God created. I thought, and still think, she’s the most precious little thing in the whole world. To me, to hold Kayley, was so real and yet surreal all at the same time. Andrew and I are so happy to have our little girl, and it was so wonderful to finally meet her in person even though it was a long process and a lot of work for me. Kayley is totally worth everything we went through! We are so thankful for this little bundle of joy that God knit together in my womb and blessed us with.

So proud to be parents!

Andrew holding Kayley for the first time

My sister Heidi, my mom, Andrew, Kayley and me.

Little Kayley Gianna

Birth Story; Almost There!

After the Pitocin got into my system and my contractions became more intense and harder to handle, I decided it was time to go in the jacuzzi tub to help my body relax. I was very happy to be in the nice warm water, plus it was something I wanted to make sure I took advantage of while I was at the hospital. It really helped my body relax, which helped me deal with the contractions, but also helped the contractions to be more intense, but also helpful. Unfortunately my jacuzzi time wasn’t as long as I hoped it would be. 

My contractions were getting close to unbearable (unfortunately when you have Pitocin, this can be a side effect. The intensity of contractions changes so dramatically that your body has a hard time adjusting to it). It was getting pretty hard for me to stay focused and breathe through each contractions, and I was getting pretty loud. It was getting to the point that I was seriously thinking about getting an Epidural even though I really didn’t want to have too much medical interference to my labor and delivery. At this point I was also told that the anesthesiologist on call would only be available for the next 40 minutes or so because he had a planned appointment to go to that would make it so he wouldn’t be available for about 2 hours.

This made it so I had a tough decision to make. I really didn’t want to have an Epidural unless completely necessary and I was near that point, but not totally to it yet. Yet I only had a small window of time to make the decision of if I wanted it or not. Basically if I said no at this point, it would probably mean I’d have no chance of decided to have it later because delivery was nearing and an Epidural takes a while to get into your system and have an effect. So I decided to go ahead and have an Epidural.

The anesthesiologist (Doc B) came in at about 11:40am. My sister stayed with me for the procedure while my mom and Andrew left the room (they both don’t like needles). Doc B had me lean forward so he could put the Epidural into the lower part of my back (click here to read a nice description of what an Epidural is and how it is done), and asked me to stay as still as I could. The nurse described what it might feel like for me by saying I would feel like I was drunk or really tipsy. My response to this is that I had never been drunk or tipsy before so I have no idea what that feels like. The nurse then said she couldn’t think of any other analogy, which made us all laugh a little. When Doc B was done he told me that I was one of the stillest patients he’d ever had and that meant that he was able to do a really good tap for the Epidural. My thought was “you’re sticking a needle basically into my spine, why would I want or allow myself to move even a millimeter?”

It was really weird to have the Epidural. I know at some point I said to my sister “why would anyone choose to feel this way all the time?” (referring to people who have drink issues). Now I sort of know how you feel when you’re drunk and I personally would never choose to drink to feel that way. I just don’t get it. It just makes me more convinced to stay on my path of not drinking at all.

Anyway! The Epidural also had the desired effect of allowing me to relax through my contractions so my contractions could do what they were supposed to be doing; helping my cervix dilate. I was also starting to feel nauseated too, so I had some Zofran, an anti-nausea medicine, to ease my feeling of throwing up. I knew part of the reason why I felt that way was because of how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten since dinner the day before, not counting a small snack box of Cheerios. I was starving, but they don’t let you eat when you’re near delivery, or when you have an Epidural. I also wasn’t allowed to drink water. I could only have ice chips. When you have an Epidural you have to stay in bed since it’s a type of anesthetic and makes it so you can’t feel the bottom half of your body all the way. Because Doc B was able to do a really good tap on me, I was able to move my legs more than a lot of women who get Epidurals, but I was nowhere near being able to walk, let alone stand. So I was stuck in bed, hungry and nauseated.

BUT! I was also dilating more! At 1:00pm I was measured at being dilated to a “stretchy” 4 (remember dilating goes from 0 to 10. I was previously a 2 since my last doctor appointment). They increased my Pitocin intake to help me dilate more. At about 1:50pm more of my water came out in a gush. At this point, with the Epidural in place so I could relax more, I tried to take a little nap while having Emperor’s New Groove playing in the background. I was going in and out of sleep, but the sleep I was getting was more of that “I know I’m dreaming and not really asleep all the way” type of sleep.

At 3:00pm they increased the Pitocin again, but only for a little while before they turned it back down to what it was. At about 3:30pm the effects of the Epidural were wearing off a bit (it’s not a continuous flow of anesthesia, but doses of it when you tap a button. I was still on the first dose of it from when it was given to me), so I double clicked the Epidural button to get it into my system again since contractions were still being really intense. Around this point in time my cervix was checked again and I was at an 8!!

And that’s it for now. The last part of the birth story will come later.