April 15, 2015

What if?

I’ve started travelling down a slippery slope recently. Going over all the what if’s of my labor and delivery, trying to figure out where I went wrong and what I could have done differently to prevent losing those four precious hours of my daughters life while I was in recovery.

As we remember I had a C-section after 42 hours of labor, the epidural for the surgery didn’t work so I was put under.

1. What if I just suffered through the surgery being able to feel things, would I have passed out or would I have been full of enough adrenaline to be able to see my daughter in those miraculous first seconds of her life?

2. What if we had known about ‘spinning babies’? would I have been able to deliver her naturally?

3. What if I hadn’t given in after 36 hours and finally asked for an epidural? Would my labor have continued at its snails pace of 1cm per every 10 hours? If so would I have been able to have my planned birth?

4. What if the procedures were different in the hospital and as soon as I woke from the surgery I would have been able to see my daughter?

What if ? I ask myself this all day, almost every single day. Honestly if I hear one more person say “Well she’s healthy, that should be enough.” I am going to scream. Yes I have been blessed with the most smart, beautiful, kind, sweet little girl to have ever walked the face of the earth, she is healthy and perfect. BUT – I was robbed of the first hours of her life, robbed of doing skin to skin with her, robbed of what – to me – we incredibly precious moments of our time together. I can never get those minutes and hours back.

November 14, 2014

Bikini Body Mommy 2.0 time!

Ok. here we go… ts time to get my mommy body into shape. Enter Bikini Body Mommy Challenge 2.0 . I used to train 2 times a day 6 days a week because I wanted to one day compete in Fitness Canada competitions. Well, after 3 fractured ribs and a pregnancy drowning in fear of losing my baby, needless to say I am VERY out of shape. I wanted to continue with BodyRock.tv workouts but I just wasn’t feeling the new hosts and it seems pretty fake now that the original host is gone, and that I don’t even see Lisa that much 😦

So here I am at day 2 and it kicked my butt, I have NEVER been good at burpees, and I hate jumping, and this workout was full of both ! I did skipping jumps while Lady Bug was bouncing in her jolly jumper laughing at me. It was a little hard to focus 🙂

I made a big mistake of baking a cake on day one ’cause I was bored… now I’m working out and having cake for dessert… Once that’s gone im going to purchase the meal plan as well and really take this seriously.

These measurements aren’t exact as all I had was a string and a tape measure, but I will have a proper tape for my 15 day progress check. Starting weight is 122.5 lbs

October 14, 2014

Turkey and Gold

This weekend was Turkey Day here in Canada. Lady Bug had a great time. Her daddy came to visit and was here for 3 days of love and snuggles. We had a great visit with my family and she kept trying to steal my dinner. She is going to LOVE baby led weaning ! I can’t wait to give her, her first solids come this December when she is 6 months old.

We had such an eventful week, Lady Bug rolled over today from back to front 3 times all by herself, what a great milestone for her to reach. She also got her ears pierced, we used white gold earrings with cubic stones. She did so much better than me, she was definitely more angry that her dad was holding her head still than she was with the actual piercing. She also stopped crying within 30 seconds of having them done, which is faster than I stopped crying that’s for sure. My beloved Lady Bug is growing up! My little angel has also started teething this week and is loving to chew on anything she can figure out how to get into her mouth.

September 28, 2014

Beautiful Me Project

Hello, friends and readers. I would like to let you know about an amazing woman I know; Candice Tizzard. She was my doula for the birth of Lady Bug and has been by my side through my PPD and PPA. As a fellow woman who suffered from this she has been very understanding, loving and loyal. Candice has created an amazing project for women post partum and she is donating the funds raised to the Pacific Post Partum Support Society.

The Beautiful Me Project will be a book featuring elegant black and white of women from the lower mainland displaying their beautiful post partum bodies.

If you would like to be part of the book, would like to donate, or simply want more information please contact Candice on her blog: Beautiful Me Project

Please CLICK HERE for pricing and to find out more about this great project.

September 10, 2014

Growth Spurts?!

I am totally in love with the routine we have finally gotten into with Lady Bug. She has her little naps during the day, then her big 3 hour nap at 2pm and is in bed after her bath at 8pm. Lately though she has decided that she needs to fight her naps as though she were fighting for her life. The poor girl, she starts off with the most adorable “I’m tired” cry which quickly morphs into screaming and squirming and fighting with everything she has. Enter; the swing! Good luck little girl.

Now I don’t know if you had the same nurses I had, but we were told never to swaddle as it pretty much guarantees that we will give our daughter SIDS. I started swaddling weeks ago, which I have already talked about, but still to this day hate that the nurses, people I trusted, made me so afraid of something that is such a great help with young babies! I’ve talked about the 5 S’s and about how wonderfully they work and I still stand by those. As Lady Bug is getting older the things she likes are changing, she doesn’t really like the white noise as much anymore, now she loves listening to Canon in D, thankfully she’s not too fussy about the violin or piano version; she also loves Wiggle by Jason Derulo. Now I am using every trick up my sleeve; she gets swaddled on her top half, bounced on the ball till she calms down, put in the swing, given her soother and then the music starts to play, generally she is out cold within 5 minutes. No baby can resist the ‘big guns.’

This coming week I am sleep training her, trying to get her to go to sleep on her own. I will be putting her to bed when she is tired and calm, but still awake, and hope she will go to sleep on her own. I will not be doing the cry-it-out method as I think that is cruel and will just create more sleep problems in the future.

Wish me luck!

September 5, 2014

Oh. My. God. !

This last week has been amazing. It was my birthday on Monday… I’m now 33! I can’t believe it. B took me to Seattle for my birthday and I finally got to satisfy my year long craving for Red Lobster. Yes I’ve been craving those delicious scones for over a year! We stayed at a cute hotel by the Marriot and even better, I had a coupon from Hotels.com so we only paid $50 for the hotel room. It was great; king size bed, black out blinds that actually made the room black, and a big living room setting. Lots of space for our little family. Lady Bug sleeps best when the room is dark, so even better I slept in till 9:30 instead of her usual 7am. Needless to say we bought blackout curtains and now have them installed in her room, ours don’t work as good as the hotels, but I still get an extra 30-45 minutes most days!

Today I think was definitely the worst day I have ever had of being a mother. I was cutting Lady Bug’s nails with nail clippers, as I have done since she was 2 weeks old, and she moved at the last second and I ended up cutting her finger !!! She looked at me with the most heart breaking look I have ever seen. I scooped her up and danced with her in the living room crying the entire time. She was pretty much ok after about 20 seconds, stopped crying and even gave me a smile. The thing about finger tip cuts is they bleed, a lot, I had a hair appointment so since all seemed well I put her in her car seat and away we went. Well half way there she decided she didn’t want to be in her seat anymore. When she is upset she has a tendency to scratch her hands against her face, well since her finger had a little flap from her horrible mother it opened right back up and stung her, so now she is screaming bloody murder in the back of the car, I’m driving down the highway with some a-hole tailgating me, so I can’t pull over without risking being rear ended. 5 minutes later I arrive at the salon and run to the back of the truck to let her out. Holly crap the entire side of her face is covered in blood! I have never been more traumatized in my entire life. I was shaking so hard I almost couldn’t get her car seat buckles undone, I nearly vomited when I saw her. I scooped her out of the seat with her hand and her face covered in blood and ring the bell to the house of the lady that’s going to cut my hair (whom I’ve never met before) she answers the door to me bawling, Lady Bug screaming and covered in blood. At this point I am so hysterical that I can barely talk but I manage to ask for a wet cloth and to tell her that all the blood is only from a tiny cut on her finger. We get her cleaned up, she stops crying and eventually I stop crying too.

I will not be cutting her nails with clippers again for a very long time, nail file it is from now on!

August 29, 2014

See ya later Purple Crying !

Its been an amazing week. Lady Bug is finally coming out of her period of Purple Crying and I’m beginning to notice that I have a very strong willed and happy baby girl. I can’t express how happy this makes me. She loves it when I talk to her in Spanish, all smiles and coo’s. When I play hip hop and dance for her she does her own little laugh (though not real laughter quite yet) and kicks her legs like she wants to dance with me. This ‘new’ baby is amazing, she still screams when she wants something; my attention, for B and I to change the position we are holding her in, a better soother, but now she calms so quickly that I don’t think she cries for longer than 30 minutes in an entire day ! Heck, I’m sitting here drinking a hot coffee while she is laying ALONE in her crib and AWAKE. I haven’t had hot coffee since she was born, and this is the first week where I have really been able to put her down without screaming. Mothers of Purple Crying (Colic) babies, I know everyone already says this but : It does get better! There IS a light at the end of the long, LONG, LONG tunnel!

The funny thing about the end of Purple Crying is that after 3 or more long grueling months (13 weeks for us so far) when that switch goes off you are almost too scared to believe it. I was told by a NICU nurse friend of mine that this is exactly what would happen. It would be like one day you just have a different baby, it doesn’t always peter off, for some babies it just ends in a flash. Well for us it has ended in a flash. I have spent the last week on egg shells refusing to believe my good fortune, waiting for my screaming child to make her return. Its been a week and I still have my happy, though demanding, little Lady Bug.

Today I packed up her newborn clothes, she hasn’t fit them for a few weeks now but I was just refusing to believe that she was growing up. I cried. Whenever I read before that moms cry when packing up their babies clothes I though they were crazy. Well I guess I’m crazy, looking at and holding those teeny tiny clothes, then putting them in a little box broke my heart. I love that my little girl is growing up, but I am still shocked that it is all happening so fast!

Well I’m going to run away from the internet while she is having a glorious, on schedule, 3 hour nap. Yay, ME TIME !

August 21, 2014

Mommy Dates

I just had my first mommy play date! Those of you that know me are aware that I don’t have the most female friends, and the ones I have, have a tendency to leave me out of ‘play dates’ and meet ups. That’s normally fine by me, I’ve never really meshed with women, but now that I am a mom seeing others get together so close to me and not inviting me makes me feel snubbed; I want my little girl to have friends her age. “I thought we all liked each other, guess not.” Is the thought that crosses my mind every time I see this. So, I decided to stop wallowing in my perceived rejection and create my OWN mommy group and invite people myself. If I’m not invited to your soiree, I’ll make up my own 🙂

We met at Lafarge Lake, a small man made lake near my house. There were originally 5 of us getting together, but mommy duties forced 3 to postpone. So it was just me and one other woman (and our babies or course). “What am I going to say to her? How are we going to get along just one on one? What if she doesn’t like me?” I felt like a teenager again going on my first date. Well just my luck, she is a Chatty Kathy just like me. We hung out for 3 hours and the conversation never died down. She didn’t care that Lady Bug has day time purple crying, it didn’t embarrass her when we were eating sushi and my little angel decided to start screaming at the top of her lungs. We just finished our lunch, packed up, and went on our way. It was so awesome to have someone with me; if I had been alone I would have been freaking out that Lady Bug was crying and totally embarrassed.

At the end of our date we made plans to hang out again. I’m excited to maybe have another friend for me, and possibly a buddy for my Lady Bug. Now, what’s the rule for calling a mommy back? Do I wait the customized 42 hours? LOL

The photo was shot by me, just not during my mommy date. Check out my other work on Facebook: Miss Adventure Photography

August 18, 2014

Crazy Time

Its been a crazy couple of weeks. Lady Bug had her second baby shower (yup second, it’s what happens in divorced families) and she was the Belle of the Ball. Charming and cute and oh so… oh no wait, that’s not my daughter. She cried practically the entire time, nobody but me was allowed to hold her (according to her) and if they tried she screamed like someone just cut off a finger. I felt horrible with friends and family that I have known forever trying to hold her and all she did was scream. People took time out of their lives to come celebrate her, the least she could do was let them snuggle her. Unfortunately she’s a baby and she doesn’t see reason like us grown ups do. Geesh. Thankfully everyone there had their own kids. They knew what it was like, not only did they have their own kids but there were also nurses there, and even one that specialized in babies. I still was embarrassed that I didn’t look like supermom with it all together and the perfect angelic baby, but at least everyone understood.

I am still trying to come to grips with my lack of mommy skills, my baby has Purple Crying or Colic as it was once known and it wears you down until you think that there is no way you can go another day. Top this off with me being alone with her for 16+ hours a day and having next to no support you can be sure to welcome Post Partum Anxiety or Post Partum Depression. I am now suffering from both, lucky me. The anxiety presented itself first, or at least its what I noticed first. It is NOT normal for you to be afraid to do everything with your baby. I hadn’t even gone into a Starbucks until Lady Bug was 10 weeks old and when I finally did I was so anxious I nearly threw up. I would sit in the truck and let B go in for us. If we went in someone would spill their coffee on her, or step on her in her car seat, or they would trip and she would fall out of her stroller (yes she was strapped in, but anxiety knows no boundaries). Letting my mother in-law push her in her stroller also caused extreme anxiety for me. What if she leaned on the stroller and tipped it over? The one and only time I let her push the stroller I walked in front of them crying, shaking and again extremely nauseous. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I also wake up every hour or so just to make sure she is still breathing. I cant afford the Levana Oma so I don’t get the same security that this device would offer me by having an alarm go off if she stopped breathing. On top of all this I can’t seem to keep anything clean enough. B says the house is so clean we could eat off the floors, but I don’t see it. I am constantly freaking out because nothing s clean or organized. He has finally noticed me suffering and has agreed that we will go to counselling together. Thank God.

Not everything has been bad though. We have started a sleep schedule and for the last three weeks it has been going great at night time. I wrap her in her Woombie after having an aromatherapy bath and she sleeps for 2-3 hours at a time, wakes up only to eat then goes right back to sleep. This constant in our lives has helped me relax at night and I too am even getting a couple hours of sleep here and there. I also went and stayed with my dad and his wife for nearly 2 weeks and they were a great help. Lady Bug loves going to them and it gives me a break to pass her off to someone that I know will be able to calm the screams. This gives me some very much needed me time and I even had the luxury of a bath or shower, not to mention the joy of being able to brush my teeth and my hair! She is also turning into the happy smiling baby that I have been dreaming of for the past 12 weeks. Every single morning when it is time to wake up (so she says) I am greeted with great big smiles, and its at that moment that I know she loves me and is happy to see me, even if I am doing everything wrong.

I wouldn’t be able to continue without the help and support of my family. I am excited to start counselling and I can’t wait to be able to enjoy my baby without the constant crippling fear that something bad is going to happen and she will be taken away from me.

If you think you may be suffering from Post Partum Depression or Anxiety click HERE for a list of symptoms. Having friends and family around to help you is great for prevention but is not always possible. Search for a Mommy Group near you and don’t be afraid to drop in. They won’t judge you, trust me.

Lady Bugs headband was purchased HERE and was made by a talented Stay At Home Mom.

August 1, 2014

Vaccine day… dun dun dun

Now I know this is a hot topic, but I chose to vaccinate my daughter. I want her protected, and I want to know she is safe from diseases/illnesses that could easily kill her just ’cause I refused to get her vaccinated.

I knew these were going to hurt my little Lady Bug (as I shall call her in internet land) and I was prepared to cry a little bit myself. Heck when they did the heel prick at 2 days old I sobbed, and I mean sobbed. She was done crying at that time way before I was, sitting there nursing away as my crocodile tears kept falling on her face. One thing I learned was that nursing was a great way to soothe your baby when something crappy is going to happen, ie. vaccines, the only issue here is that Lady Bug is a power nurser. She goes from starving to totally full in 5 minutes, she always has. Its funny because as she’s getting bigger she’s not taking longer to feed, just sucking harder. Anyway I was truly hoping that the doctor would be able to give her all 3 (yes 3!) shots before she finished. NOPE. The rotavirus vaccine contains sugar water which is supposed to act as a pain reliever and the baby needs to suck away for 2 minutes for it to start kicking in, AHHHH she’s already been on for 1 minute. “Doc you’ve got about 30 seconds before she is finished eating, then we are in trouble.” Sure enough the doctor gives her her first shot. Her perfect little face goes bright red and she lets out a blood curdling, heart stopping scream like I have never heard her scream before. I was so upset immediately I nearly threw up. Im crying, I have my boob hanging out trying to get her to latch back on soothe can soothe herself, she’s screaming and the poor pediatrician doesn’t know which one of us to try to console first (he chose the baby, and told me to do whatever I needed to calm her down.) Oh yeah! Crazy Momma Bear Mode kicked in, I stood up and started bouncing, stopped crying and sang “Hush Little Baby” to my poor inconsolable girl not even caring if I looked stupid with my top half off, breast squirting milk everywhere and baby screaming. ( I guess we’ll clean that up later)

That stupid sugar water id nothing for my girl – or Delicate Flower – as the doctor called her. I guess she’s just a little extra emotionally sensitive compared to other babies. I finally got her to calm down , but I guess I was still white as a sheet since the doc kept asking if I was going to be ok. I said I was, took my girl to the truck and made sure to take a few breaths before I started driving.

The needles themselves were just the beginning.

Two hours later Lady Bug started screaming, the same screams I heard at the office. I ran to her and took her out of her swing and immediately checked her legs for swelling and checked to make sure there was no fever. Thank God there was neither. The poor thing was again inconsolable. Her appointment was at 11:00 am and she hadn’t slept since 10:30, it was now 2:30 she needs to sleep! So I gave her a single dose of baby Tylenol to try to comfort her, calm her and get rid of any pain she was feeling. Forty minutes later she falls asleep. I thought I had finally achieved victory. She woke up after 30 minutes. Now I don’t know what you know about 8 week old babies but the definitely need more than 1 hours sleep in a day. I spend the rest of the day trying to console her, co-sleep, bounce, rock, babywear and feed; anything to help her out. At 6:30 I say screw you to her 730 bedtime routine and give her a bath. The sound of the tub is one of her favorite things so I hold her while it fills, light a couple lavender oil candles and the give her a lavender and vanilla bubble bath. Next I swaddle her in her Woombi then continue with the 5 S’s that I’ve been trying all day. Still nothing is working. Since her 2 favorite things are the tub running and bouncing on the exercise ball I bring the ball into the bathroom, turn off the lights and leave the candles going. after 10 minutes she falls asleep so I try to move her. She immediately woke up so I sat right back down and bounced her some more. Now with legs that feel like noodles after bouncing for 90% of the day I move to sit on the toilet. I manage half an hour before my tail bone feels like its going to fall off but Lady Bug is still sleeping so I’m not leaving the bathroom. We ended up staying in there- water running and switching from ball to toilet to save my spine- for an hour and a half till my fiancé came home at 8pm. I pass her to him so I can get the feeling back in my arms. She immediately starts screaming again – from a dead sleep- so we give her one more dose of baby Tylenol and Momma Bear holds her ’till she falls asleep again. Finally she seems like she is down for the count. I get her into her bassinet and wolf down dinner with the man like its my first and last meal ever. She is pretty good, and sleeping like an angel for 2 more hours, then wakes up screaming for a feed, so I feed her and she passes right out again. This was the whole night last night. Every two yours woken by a screaming baby.

I am not looking forward to her 4 month shots, though this time I booked them for a Sunday so B can come too.