Baby pictures

Thanks to my dear friend Lillian, I have some wonderful pictures to share. These were taken when Cecily was 11 days old.

that belly...

this one might just be my favorite

one more with mommy

Happy one month birthday!!

Today is Cecily's one month birthday! And Alex and my one month anniversary of being parents.

I made a peanut butter chocolate cake in the slow cooker that didn't look that great and ... didn't taste that great either. But it didn't really matter because Cecily didn't get any anyway.

She got a couple presents. She slept through the whole party.

Alex made her the benzene onesie and I made the other one. 

I got her a book. She wasn't terribly interested in it but I read it to her anyway.

So how is being a parent? Awesome. I love being a mom! I love contemplating this new little creature in my life and all the potential she has and all the exciting adventures we will have together. She has started to have random smiles which melt my heart. I can't say I like her (what feel like) marathon fussy sessions at night but I know she will grow out of them and someday I will miss the newborn stage. Not everything about the newborn stage, mind you, but it is such a special thing to have a spirit straight from heaven.

She had a pediatrician visit today and weighed 10#11oz! She went from average weight to 90th percentile in a month! Go Cecily!

This was her adorable Sunday outfit. Unfortunately, at the rate she is going, she is going to outgrow all her 3 month outfits in a few weeks...

This is a mei tai carrier I got in the mail today. Alex likes it. So does Cecily. 

Snug as a bug

A ring sling carrier my friend is loaning me. I am having fun with all the babywearing. 

Happy birthday Cecily! Here is to many more happy months ahead. And hopefully more sleep for everyone. 

Another whirlwind Boston trip... and a new home!

So, Boston...

In Boston the chance of finding a place to rent you actually want to live with 2 large dogs, 1 cat and 1 child: very small. Once we discovered this and came to the conclusion that we should try to buy if we could (this was last week), we found a home on Trulia that we liked and where we could see ourselves living. Let me tell you about the housing market in Boston: many of the homes go on the market during the week, have an open house on Sunday, accept offers Monday and are sold. So when we saw this house, that night we purchased a ticket to send Alex out there to see if it was "the one". I always miss that man when he leaves but I have never missed him so much as when I had a crying infant at midnight four nights in a row. In the end, it was all worth it. We made an offer and it was accepted today. This was not, actually, the home he went out there to see. That one ended up being not all we wanted it to be, mostly neighborhood-wise. This other home has pretty much all of what we want: it is close to public transport, in a good neighborhood, it has a decent sized yard for the area, and it also has lots of things that will be nice: close to shopping, close to parks and outdoor recreation areas, it has a garage, it has an unfinished basement with lots of potential. The inside is pretty outdated but nice enough and at some point we will probably redo a few things but for the time being we can move in to a very livable home.

There are two crazy things about this situation: 1) I never imagined we would spend so much on a home at this point in our lives. 2) We bought a house without my even seeing it!

So, I just want to say that we are 15 minutes away from the airport and we have a guest bedroom.

A few pictures of the home:

Gotta love the shower curtain

A couple pictures of snoozing Cecily:

sausage toes

I have been missing out on one of the cutest things a baby has to offer and I didn't fully realize it until yesterday.

This is why you shouldn't let your babies wear socks, mamas:

really, could there be anything cuter?

And since grandma wouldn't be satisfied with only toes pictures, here are another couple: 

please note the cute bunny feet. Even though they obscure the toes. 

The "O" face is her favorite face. Next to the crying face. She does that one a lot too.

bonding with baby in the Podaegi carrier. 

Our Birth Story

Cecily’s birth ended up being exactly what I wanted it to be, even if getting there was much harder than I could have imagined. Looking back, I am SO glad everything turned out the way it did.

I started having contractions Wednesday evening (two weeks ago today!) They were mild and about 10-15 minutes apart. I was fairly sure that is what they were but I didn’t say anything until right before bed. In the middle of the night I woke up and couldn’t sleep so I got up and did a few odds and ends. Turns out Alex also couldn’t sleep and so together we made finishing touches on the hospital bag, he gave me a blessing, and finally we realized we should just try to get some sleep before it became impossible. My mom heard us up and about and thought we had headed to the hospital before she got up and saw our bag still there. I got another hour or so of sleep, woke up, called work to tell them I wouldn’t be going in and then... sat around and waited. Alex, my mom and I had a relaxing day of me reading National Geographics and timing my contractions on my ipod, Alex sorting through and getting rid of things, and my mom working on her computer. That afternoon we decided to take a quick walk around the neighborhood and then ran a few errands and did some window shopping at Lincoln Square Mall. By late afternoon the contractions were about 5 minutes apart and I was having trouble talking through them. We came home, ate a quick dinner and headed to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital about 7:30 pm on Thursday. The nurse checked me and said I was 5 cm dilated. We waited and labored on the normal labor/delivery floor for about an hour while they opened up the 4th floor labor and delivery room for us and transferred us there. At this point I was doing great! Contractions were building in intensity but completely manageable. Alex was helping me into different positions, talking me through them, etc. When we transferred to the 4th floor, I got in the jacuzzi which drastically slowed my contractions. Thinking that a long labor was exactly what I didn’t want, I got out of the tub and used the birthing ball and rocking chair and whatever else seemed to help. I was really glad I brought my own popsicles at this point.

Now we start getting to the point where times elude me. Maybe Alex can add an addendum with the estimate of when things happened. I did ask him beforehand to keep track of when everything happened but he was a little too absorbed and occupied to do that. I am going to guess that around eleven or midnight my contractions were getting a little out of hand. At some point when I was thinking “what have I gotten myself into?” my midwife Ellen check me and I was at a 7, which seemed at the time not very promising considering how bad my contractions were. To summarize the next bit, after a while I got checked again, was at an 8.5, and decided that if, in another half hour, I had not progressed, I would consider an amniotomy (breaking the waters) to move things along. It was at about this point I believe that I started to recall what my friend Rachel had said about her natural birth: “when the contractions are so bad that you think you are going to die, then you will have your baby in 20 minutes.” Rachel was wrong. Her comment for some reason kept going through my head and each time it did I thought to myself wryly that more than 20 minutes had passed since I thought I was going to die so where was the baby? I also remember Alex at some point during hard labor saying that I had earned the right to name our child (we still hadn't decided on a name).

Contractions were becoming excruciating. In between each contraction I would try to relax my body, collect my thoughts, and brace for the next one. I remember thinking many times in between contractions “I got this, this is totally doable, pain with a purpose” but when the next wave came, it was so much more than I could have guessed. It completely took over my body and mind to the exclusion of any other thoughts and I was helpless to do anything but writhe and moan. I couldn’t focus on anything else. I don’t think I was coping very well, and felt on the verge of tears many times.

The midwife checked me again in a half hour and said I was still at an 8.5. We went ahead with the amniotomy (this happened at 2:24 am - Alex wrote this time down) even though Ellen said it would make the contractions more intense and that was definitely not what I wanted. But the alternative was no better. She was right. Even though it was not imaginable to me at that point, the contractions did get worse. It was sometime in here that I recalled something we had read in one of the books to prepare for labor that talked about pain vs. suffering: it was along the lines of when pain crosses into suffering, it is time to start thinking about ways to relieve the mother’s suffering through medication. I decided I was at that point. I was suffering and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I regretted not having an epidural two hours earlier. I didn’t question that I would survive, I knew deep down that I could do it if I had to, I just knew that I definitely didn’t want to.

Alex knew I wanted to have an unmedicated childbirth. But he was also in tears at this point at the pain I was going through. I ultimately decided to have an epidural and he supported me in that, although I knew he never would have pushed me to do it. I talked this through with the midwife who agreed that things might be a little stuck (I was not moving beyond an 8.5 as I recall) and said an epidural might be the thing I needed to get some rest and then continue. Even though I was suffering what I thought was an immense amount, the decision to have an epidural was a very difficult one and I went back and forth a dozen times (I am sure I drove Ellen crazy, but she was very patient with me).

A bracelet I made out of beads given to me by friends. I hooked this on the hospital bed throughout labor and the rest of our stay there.

She gave me the liter of fluids I needed prior to an epidural which took 35 minutes according to Alex. During this time were the worst contractions. I was lying on the bed and when a contraction came my whole body tensed up, I grabbed the bed railing with one hand and hung on for dear life. I kept my eyes closed for most of this, but I do remember Ellen sitting on the couch in front of me squeezing the fluid bag and Alex was behind me telling me I was doing great, which was exactly what I needed to hear.

The fluids were in, the nurse anesthetist was outside my door, and I had the choice to go forward with or back out of the epidural. I backed out for two reasons: 1) Ellen said I would have to sit still through three contractions, which was not possible at that point and 2) the next contraction I had I felt the urge to push. So I said no, realized I was going to get through this just the way I wanted to, and was a little relieved and very distressed at the same time.

We moved to the jacuzzi at this point. Ellen poured hot water over my belly which felt nice. The contractions weren’t any less intense in the water, but the warm water was soothing. Cecily came quickly at this point, perhaps 30 minutes and 10 contractions later. These contractions were perhaps a little easier because I could focus on pushing instead of how much they hurt. And push I did. I didn’t care about anything except getting the baby out and being done with labor. I gave it absolutely everything I had. There were lots of people in that little bathroom: Alex holding my hand, Ellen at the business end with her cow rectal exam gloves on she told me later, checking on baby’s progress and keeping us updated, and two nurses. There could have been an entire circus in the room and I wouldn’t have cared at that point.

Finally, finally, Cecily was born at 4:23 am on Friday. I cannot describe what it felt like to see my baby for the first time and to have her on my chest. She had purple lips, a smashed nose, dark eyes, and she was crying. I couldn’t see myself or Alex in her at first and I wondered who this little stranger was. But she was mine. Having her on my chest at the end of the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced (indeed, I would say I hadn’t experienced pain before that night) was the most incredible, emotional, joyful experience of my life. I couldn’t believe she was there. I think in the midst of the pain I had partially forgotten that a baby was the end goal so it was a little bit of a surprise too.

When the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, Alex cut the cord. We took some pictures. Finally we moved to the bed where the afterbirth was delivered and I was stitched up. Cecily was very healthy. She slept almost nonstop the 1.5 days we were in the hospital and lulled us into a false sense of security :) My mom came to visit us in the hospital. Those first few days Alex and I almost couldn’t comprehend the amazing miracle she is in our lives and still are amazed every time we stop and think about what an incredible journey we had with so many blessings along the way.

Saturday morning (the day we left the hospital), Alex had an obligation for school all morning. While he was gone, I decided on a name. My mom knew her name before Alex did. When he returned and just before we left the hospital, he gave me a gift: citrine earrings and a matching pendant that I had admired in Lincoln Square Mall while I was in early labor. (Apparently he had even talked the store into a “new mother discount”.) They, along with the turquoise earrings he gave me that day we found out that our first IUI had failed, are my favorite pieces of jewelry and in a way are bookends of the journey we have traveled together these past 3+ years. He also gave me and my mother a box of delicious chocolates. I have been eating one every day and today is the day I will eat the last chocolate. Does that mean the honeymoon period is over and now we get down to the real work of raising a child? Perhaps. I have already been through difficulty learning to nurse and sleepless nights (Alex helps out immensely with these taking Cecily when she is fussy) and postpartum PUPPs (I have a mild case but the itchiness still makes it hard to sleep sometimes). I know that there will be trials and joys of motherhood but I think I am ready. I know that I don’t have to do it alone. I have Alex and I have my faith that God will help me. I am so excited for every stage, to watch her grow, to see who she is, to teach her, to love her, to make mistakes and ask for forgiveness. I don’t think it will always be easy. I will be far from perfect. But I am so so grateful to have a little family and for my precious daughter.

Finally, a question I don’t know the answer to: would I do it again? I don’t think I will know that for a while. It was definitely the most amazing experience of my life. It was also incredibly difficult. I suspect that when the time comes I will, but I don’t know for sure yet.

Sleep, where have you gone? and other updates

First, my apologies to anyone who doesn't like babies. I have a feeling that our blog is going to become a baby blog for the next little while.

My precious baby girl is 9 days old today. Every day I think "this is the only day the rest of her life that she is going to be (fill in the blank) days old", and I have to say, it makes me sad that days go by so quickly. This time next year she will be a year old! In only one year! I try to cherish every moment with her. I take that back. I don't really cherish the times when she is fussy at night instead of letting us sleep. And there is definitely a steep learning curve to being a new mom. But in general, I am so grateful to have a sweet little daughter as part of our family and I am so grateful to be her mother. My mother-in-law made the observation that the day my daughter was born, all of a sudden my life and identity changed for the rest of eternity. In a way, I was born to a new life as a mother.

I want to share my birth story, but that will have to wait for another time. Honestly, I am still processing the whole thing myself.

Here are a few pictures of my sweet little girl. It is amazing how much she has changed already.

This is from day 3 I believe. Looking at this picture, I think she has already changed a lot since then. 

Please note the long fingers. One of the first things we noticed about her. 

She likes to snuggle.

In other news, Alex matched to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston! It was his first choice and we feel very blessed and a little overwhelmed at the changes that will be coming with selling our home and trying to find a place to live in Boston.

 Cely and I decided to come to match day. A one week old only lasts so long though, so we did leave a little early.

I am loving my Moby wrap to have Cely close to me and still have hands to do things with.

A couple other things I want to point out. Both the oven and the dryer were broken when we came home from the hospital. Alex figured out the problems with both and the oven is back online and the dryer part should get here any day. Alex is thinking of opening his own appliance repair shop on the side. 

Cecily Annabel Parent

It's official. We have a name. It's on the birth certificate (or at least will be). No going back now.

Cecily was chosen mostly because we simply like it and it fits our little girl. It also meets our basic name reqs: It's pretty, it's not very common, and it's not weird. Cecily (or Cecilia) is also the name of the patroness saint of music. We're not Catholic, but that's still pretty cool. 

Annabel is Katie's mom's middle name. She is a wonderful woman, and it's an honor to be able to name our daughter in part after her.

The happy family

First real clothing. Thanks, Sara and Gilly!

Little Annabel with her namesake

Katie likes the nickname Cely or Celi (pronounced Sehli). I think Ceci is also pretty cute. Shortening both names gives Cely Ann, which also has a nice ring to it. We'll see which one(s) stick!