Sunday, October 31, 2021

Onederful Month Old Isla

 Well, Isla is 4 weeks old today. Tomorrow starts my first day "alone" with the kids although Eric will be working from home so I won't really be all by myself. It's intimidating but has to happen eventually. And Isla is finally sleeping a bit more at night so that helps! For the first three and a half weeks she wouldn't go longer than 2.5 hours between feeds even in the night time which got exhausting pretty fast, especially since she's pretty refluxy so we hold her upright for 15-20 minutes after eating. BUT the last two nights she suddenly started sleeping longer! Night before last I feed her at 8 and then she slept until 1 am! And then she slept again till 5! It was awesome. Last night she did another long earlier evening stretch (9-1) but then ate every 3ish hours after that. But the biggest struggle for my sleep honestly isn't even how often she is eating but rather how grunty she is! She makes so much noise at night! She grunts and squirms and coughs sometimes and gags and just is generally noisy even though she is asleep. I think its partially the reflux and partially that she is just generally very gassy despite my diligent attempts to burp her and she holds her poop so she'll go a full day or more with no poop and then squirm and fuss a lot and then have a blow out. I'm hoping she learns how to poop and fart more easily soon! Until then, Eric advocates for putting her in the closet to sleep but I just feel anxious about having her not right by us at night even with the owlet sock on. I do think the owlet sock is helping me sleep better and not feel as anxious but I still feel uncomfortable putting her farther away from us. So, Eric has been taking her out and sleeping on the couch with her about once a night for an hour or two when she's being especially noisy and keeping me up. He sleeps through it much better than I do and he's very patient and good with her when she is actually awake and can usually get her back to sleep well. 

Sleepy baby smiles

We spend a lot of time together with her on my knees making faces at each other! 

I feel ya sister!

More sleepy baby smiles

Ugh life is just too much to open my eyes! 

Anyway, with the lack of sleep, these past several weeks have passed in that zombie-like blur of the newborn period. Sometimes I am amazed at how little I get done and how much I feel like all I do is feed the baby even with my Mom and Eric to help out. My Mom was here until last Sunday and was a HUGE help, especially with Emery who got so much love and attention from Grandma. Emery has been struggling a little bit with not being in school. She says she doesn't miss school and she likes being home but I can tell she is missing the structure of school and the socialization. She is constantly asking to go to Maren's house or Silva's house and she is always asking "what we going to do after this?" and when I tell her she says "and after that? and after that?" She likes to know the plan! Which is challenging when there really isn't much of a plan! Haha. And I do feel bad because Maren and Silva are both in preschool now, Silva from 9-3:30 every day so they don't have much time for play dates! And I have been very cautious about germs around Isla what with RSV being so high here right now and it being flu season. So I've not wanted to take Emery to indoor play dates or places like the children's museum where I just feel like there's so many germs. So while my mom was here she mostly took Emery to the park to play or to the outdoor story time at the library. This week I did let Emery go over to the Ennis's house for a play date because I know they are super germ conscious and safe too so I feel comfortable with them. She had a blast playing with other kids her age! She's been missing nursery but we've just been watching church at home. Eric and I have talked about it and decided to go back for Sacrament meeting only starting next week. I would be fine with us staying for 2nd hour except for the whole nursery thing. I feel like Emery regularly catches bugs from nursery because there are people in our ward who will send their kids sick to nursery and none of the teacher or anything wear masks and I don't think the toys get cleaned much or anything. Soooo, I feel bad that Emery is missing her favorite part of church but also I just don't feel comfortable. She will age up to Sunbeams in January and I am seriously considering just keeping her out of second hour of church until then. Eric feels like we should maybe let her go to nursery again before that but I'm not sold on it yet. We'll see how we feel in December but that's such a germy month here in TX with people traveling and everything that I doubt I will want her to go. It's a bummer but I just really don't want Isla to end up with RSV. 

Anyway, so to try to help Emery out with a little more structure, Eric was an awesome dad this week and came up with a little preschool at home schedule. He planned out 2 hours of each day broken into 15 minute work segments for her to do. She does 1 hour with him and one hour with me and she has been responding really well to it. I feel like she's been happier this week having that bit of focused time and attention. He tried to do things that draw from the Montessori works she's used to but also introduced some new things. So she's been doing work books, pin poking, number puzzles, letter tracing, lacing cards, etc. He tried to make many of things stuff she can do mostly independently once she's set up with it so that's good. I feel better with her doing these things so I don't feel like she's forgetting everything she learned at her Montessori school. She's a very smart girl and already knows many of her letters and the numbers 1-10 (like can match a group of 5 objects to the written number 5). I want to make sure we continue to intellectually stimulate her. 

So excited about the rubber band board Daddy got her as one of her works. 

Also, my Emery girl LOVES clothes. Here she's showing off a new dress I had gotten her for family pictures (although she ended up wearing something else for the pictures anyway). I took her shopping with me this past week for some winter clothes for all three kids and she is all about it! She loves holding up options and deciding and couldn't wait to get home and show Daddy what she picked out. It is so fun having a little girly girl to shop with!! 

Speaking of intellectual stimulation, we had Levi tested for the gifted and talented program this week. I gave him a heads up that they would be pulling him from class to do puzzles. He told me he had a lot of fun with the puzzles and that they were easy for him. We should hear by the beginning of December whether or not they are putting him in the program. I think it would be good for him because he is definitely gifted with numbers but we'll see. Thankfully, he seems to really like school even though all the math work in his class is way too easy for him. He has become very good friends with Kyler Thompson (from our ward) and talks about him a lot. We went to the ward trunk or treat on Friday night and Levi and Kyler quickly ran off to trick or treat together and were inseparable the whole night. It's incredibly cute. And Matthew, Valerie and Silva came to our trunk or treat too so Emery had fun being with Silva. Matthew, at Eric's invitation, had arranged the Pokemon theme song in a minor key for us to play since we had a Pokemon themed trunk! The trunk was Levi's idea. He had a very distinct vision of how he wanted it to look. He came home from school one day and was like, "I need some cardboard and I need to measure the trunk!" He traced a wooden circle I gave him and with Eric and Emery's help made a whole bunch of Pokeballs to decorate the trunk with. Then Eric got some Pokemon cards and white balloons from Walmart and they taped the cards to the balloons and colored a sensory ball to make a Pokeball and had kids throw the ball and whichever balloon they hit, they got to keep that Pokemon card. According to Eric who manned the trunk while Valerie and I took the girls trunk or treating, the trunk was a HUGE hit and all the kids really loved it. 

Ward trunk or treat. Silva looks much more photogenic in this picture than my darling offspring haha

Levi with his best buddies: Teddy, Kyler and Willy. We love having Willy, Levi, and Teddy on the same soccer team! 

Anyway, so despite having a newborn, we have been able to do some fun Halloween things with the kids. We did the trunk or treat like I said, and last Saturday we did a trick-or-treat around the lake which was put on by the city of McKinney and included some bounce houses which the kids liked. And then yesterday we took the kids up to Gunter to the Preston Trail Farms pumpkin patch. Honestly, it wasn't the best pumpkin patch I've been to but they did have a hay maze, a hay ride, feed for the farm animals, a little train ride and a small selection of pumpkins to choose from. The kids really liked the train ride and had fun feeding/petting the goats and cows. Emery picked out a little white pumpkin and has been asking ever since when she can paint it and Levi picked out a funky gourd he said looks like a fire. Eric and I decided to skip pumpkin carving this year and I can't say I'm sad about it at all haha. 

Trick or Treat around the lake. It was super windy so both the kids ditched their hats pretty quickly. 

Levi said it tickled when the goats would like the food from his hand but Emery refused to try it. She pet one of the goats but mostly watched as I fed them her feed haha. 

Hay ride as a family! I wore Isla the whole outing and she was happy as a clam and just slept the whole time except when she got hungry and I took a break to feed her. Thank goodness that just like Emery, she loves to be worn and sleeps pretty much every time I put her in the wrap. 

So yeah, that's how things have been going lately. I spend a lot of time on the couch or in our room feeding Isla but I am excited for when she starts to go longer between feeds during the day too and I am physically healed enough to start exercising again. I feel like this week will be a chance for me and Emery and Isla to start settling into our new routine for the next couple months. Fingers crossed it goes well and I don't go completely crazy haha. 

Our little soccer girl! She is way the youngest on her team and often rarely touches the ball during the game but somehow still always has fun. Full disclosure: I think her favorite part of the game is the treats at the end haha. 

The day before Isla was born the kids had fun playing in the sprinklers. 


I was ginormous! About ready to pop! 


Willy showing Emery his loose tooth during one of Levi's soccer games

My heart! I love these sisters so much!!




Sleeping on Grandma's chest while the family watches church is a great place to be! 

My little creators. My kids love to play with games unconventionally. Levi likes to take the pieces of Tiny Towns and make patterns or designs with them instead. Emery plays along too. 

Best Daddy ever!


Can't wait to see how their relationship progresses as they both get older. 



Welcome Isla Sage

Two weeks ago today my precious second baby daughter was born! Here is her birth story:

So before Isla was born, I had mentioned casually to a few people how cool it would be to have all three of my babies born on a Sunday. I guess God heard me and decided to honor my whim because that's what happened! Two Sundays ago it was conference weekend. I had finished my last day of work the Wednesday before and my mom had been here for about a week. We had been much slower getting everything ready for baby than we were with Levi or Emery but we had finally gotten a new car seat, washed all the baby clothes and blankets and burp cloths and towels and stuff, set up the pack n play and got some diapers. And I was soooo done being pregnant. I was so much more uncomfortable this time around. I think partially because I wasn't walking or doing the prenatal yoga but I had finally reached the full-on waddle stage of pregnancy. My pubic symphysis was killing me and I just felt huge, awkward and just uncomfortable! So I was ready to have my baby, but I was only having a couple of contractions a day so I was feeling a little disheartened. 

On Wednesday (my due date 9/29), I had a non-stress test and ultrasound of baby Isla. She was looking great and rocked the non-stress test so that was reassuring. But I was still only 3 cm dilated which is what I had been for the last 2 weeks or so so that was discouraging. That whole week any time I went anywhere, people kept looking at me slightly concerned like "oh my gosh are you going to have that baby right here?!" It was getting old. 

Anyway, that weekend was General Conference weekend. Levi and Emery actually were really good and mostly just played together upstairs and let us actually watch conference which was nice! Sunday morning I had a couple contractions but things didn't really start happening until the Sunday afternoon session when finally, finally, the contractions started coming semi-regularly and I started timing them. About halfway through the Sunday afternoon session I asked Eric if he had his hospital bag packed (he didn't haha) so I told him I thought baby was probably coming today and he went and packed it. 

I was nervous because Emery's birth progressed so quickly so I didn't want to wait too long to go to the hospital. So as soon as we finished dinner my contractions were between 3 and 7 minutes apart and we decided to go. The drive to the hospital was sooo much more pleasant than it had been with either Levi or Emery! I actually felt a little worried they would send me away or something because my contractions weren't really painful yet and they were about 7 minutes apart on the drive. But looking back, I am so glad we went when we did. 

We checked into the hospital and were able to get settled into the L&D room and I was still relatively comfortable. They did the fetal monitoring and tracked my contractions and I was able to talk and answer my own medical history questions haha. We just paused for contractions as needed. Anyway, the nurse checked my cervix and I was dilated to 5-6 cm she said so Eric and I thought, "ok well maybe we'll be here for a while before things get interesting." Nope! After we had been there for I don't know, an hour and 15 minutes or so, I went to the bathroom and my water broke! And after that, things got real, really fast. My contractions picked up speed and intensity exponentially. I walked around the room a little bit and swayed with Eric and sat on the birthing ball and swayed through the contractions. I feel like a did a pretty good job managing my breathing and staying calm but man, I hated it haha. After not very long (maybe 20 minutes or so), I had Eric call the nurse in because I was like "screw this I think I'll get an epidural." By that time I was sweating and my contractions felt right on top of each other. But when the nurse checked me I was fully dilated! So she quick called in some people for the delivery. The OB on call from my OB's office (Dr. Robert - who happens to be my least favorite of the lot) wasn't there yet so the nurse was like, "This is the hospitalist just in case you can't wait for your OB." and I was like "I'm not waiting for anyone!" And then I pushed out my baby. Haha. Three pushes and sweet Isla Sage was here at 8:57 pm! She came face up just like her sister. And holy cow it was intense but kind of awesome to do it totally natural again! They had to suction out her mouth a couple times but then she started yelling and turned all nice and pink and they put her on my chest. I had a little tear again that needed stitches and I was shaking like crazy again from all the adrenaline but thankfully this time I didn't bleed too much! I was a huge baby about the stitches again and totally almost had a panic attack about letting the hospitalist stitch me up. The poor hospitalist seemed annoyed with me, but Eric did a good job of trying to get me to just focus on him and Isla and the nurse kept trying to reassure me and we made it through. I swear the stitching is the worst part of the birth experience every time! When that was over, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and was finally able to relax and just be with Eric and Isla. Isla was rooting all over my chest and latched right on when I guided her to the breast and then proceeded to want to nurse for the next three hours straight! 

 So yeah, that's how Isla Sage came into the world. She is so beautiful and I am just soooo happy to not be pregnant anymore. I love being able to snuggle her and be able to hand her to Daddy or Grandma too! Levi and Emery LOVE Isla and Emery especially is constantly wanting to hold her or help her with her binkie. Isla has been struggling kind of a lot with gas pain and reflux. She doesn't actually spit up much because she swallows it back down but she does a ton of squirming, grunting, gagging, coughing, etc. She gets the hiccups multiple times a day and just seems genuinely uncomfortable when she lays on her back, especially at night which has been a BIG challenge. I have gotten pretty sleep deprived and have had a few days when I feel completely like a zombie. Thank goodness my mom is here because she has been a HUGE help with Emery and taking care of things around the house. I feel like I've done nothing but nurse Isla and try to burp her (a challenge). I know this stage won't last forever, but I wish there was more I knew to do to help poor little miss out. She is actually a pretty good sleeper and good-natured when she's not uncomfortable. We've been giving her probiotics and simethicone and I've tried to limit dairy but nothing has been super helpful yet. I think her digestive system just needs to mature a bit. Fingers crossed it happens soon!






Both of us just soo tired!


Emery meeting baby Isla! So excited to be a big sister!


Levi meeting baby Isla! I love how tender his face is in this picture!