Motherhood thus far...

So far, this whole motherhood thing is pretty cool. Aside from my occasional "GROSS" freakouts (like milk shooting out and squirting poor Olivia's cheek, or milk gushing out when being pumped out... I guess most of my "gross" moments are milk-related), things are going great and well!!

I feel like I'm falling-in-love with Olivia more each day...AND I just feel more bonded (and protective) of her as time passes.

When she was first born, it was kind of like, "Okay, I just had a baby. Here's my checklist of what's coming up next..." But now, it's like, "OLIVIA!!! She's our baby! She's so beautiful!"

And before she was born, I had different ideas about being strict about this or that, and "not giving in", yada yada yada... but now I feel like one of "those" "typical" "hormonal moms"... hahaha... It's hard to see her cry. I made Tim take her in to get her heel prick because the thought of seeing/hearing her cry almost made ME cry! (I had seen one of my nieces get her heel pricked several years ago, and it was no big deal... )

Anywho... I'm excited to see this little girl grow and change... I already feel like I'm going to have a hard time parting from her for too long... I LOVE being around her and taking care of her... at least right now, I can't imagine getting bored of her or needing to be away from her. She's JUST SO CUTE!!!! I love her!

Olivia Update

So I may start another (private) blog so I can give more details (and cute pix) of Olivia... until then...

She's slowly been gaining some weight on her tiny bones. Took her in for her two week checkup, and she's doing fantabulous! Hurray!

Her bili. levels are at a normal "high" level, but is slowly dropping--I guess it's at a normal "breastmilk" level right now.

After getting blood drawn for a PKU test this past week, she's really started to use her lungs to cry. Before that, she would fuss a little and make some cute squeeks. We'll see how long she'll be "traumatized" by the heel prick... :( Poor Olivia...

Health update

I need to give a health update. On myself. Yes yes, Olivia is doing GReAT!

And myself...

My stitches from my tear are slowly-but-surely healing. The week after returning home from the hospital, I noticed that one day, things would feel just fine and dandy, and then the next day it'd feel itchy and slightly uncomfortable. Then the next day fine, then the following day itchy again. I noticed that the stitches "disappeared" sometime in that first week home... maybe around the fourth or fifth day?

Today, I'm still sore, and still have occasional "itchy" days (or just hours). Some days are better than others, but I no longer need the occasional Ibuprofan (sp? ... I took one about every other day, or one every couple of days... just when things felt more unfortable than "normal").

Also during my first week home, the second row of joints in my hands were sore!!! Ugh. Not fun. Now that I think back, I think the were a little sore during the last few weeks of pregnancy (which made it hard for me to squeeze my ring onto my ring finger). Except during the week, my joints were VERY sore. In fact, I'd wake up in the morning, and my left hand would be SO stiff...I'd have to clench and release a fist a few to times to "wake it up"... it felt like what I would imagine arthritis to feel like. :P

Let's see... what else... bleeding is tapering off. Nice. I need to remember to drink more water during my waking hours...otherwise my pee is quite amber-0range. Yuck.

The first few days home, it took me a while to adjust my posture since I'm no longer carrying a huge load in my belly. Still need to work on my HORRIBLE posture AND "turtle neck". haha... my back has been getting a bit sore the past couple of days...posture posture posture...

Fitting back into most of my pre-pregancy clothes now. Sweet! Lululemon pants are looking good!

My belly is slowly shrinking down. Interesting to see... I wish I had taken a side picture of myself when I first got home...it was kinda a cute belly. And now it's shrunk.

My feet were swollen for the first few days home...now they're back to normal.

I believe I weighed in at 120 lbs this morning... I'll check again tomorrow.

BIG SIGH...

I am WAY behind in blogging!!! My sis has been doing a SUPERB job of updating her own blog on recent events here in babyland... so I'd better catch up...

1 Week Old Photoshoot!

After some encouragment from my sis., I finally pulled out a strobe and my camera and shot some pics of the babe. :)



My sister was very helpful in setting up some of the shots, and even acting AS a prop in some of the pics. Thanks, dot!!



These are some that I've edited...

Poor child... won't stand a chance in avoiding my camera in the future. hahaha...

SHE's HERE! Part 4 - Recovery

Once we were settled, we had a slew of nurses come in to introduce themselves. The "mom nurses" came in and showed me/us the things in our room, the restroom, and how I needed to rinse down-there, etc. And how to make (what I like to call) my Pizza-Pad. I was going to take a pic of it, but decided against it. :) hahaha... basicallly, I had a pair of soft crochet-like granny-pants that I wore with a HUGE pretty-much-a-diaper-Pad, with: a small ice-pack placed inside; two witch-hazel Tuck-like-sheets on top of the ice pack; on the sheets, I needed to add two small dollops of prescription cream AND two small sprays of anti-itch-whatever. Phew! Tim had to help me out a couple of times... until I found a simpler combination for myself to use.



Also met the Nursery Nurse that would help us with olivia that night, and the technician...or whatever.



After a nice dinner (which i already posted pics of), some relaxing, and some time with Olivia, we had some friends stop by.



Let's see...I don't think i'll necessarily do a day-by-day recap...



But we had some more friends stop by the next day.



And some photos shot by Our369.com. Tim bought the 8 pics on a disk.

Here's a pic of my point-of-view of our room. It was nice!

Here's Olivia and our doctor the day after birth.

Hmmm... anything else that was eventful during my recovery? Not that I can really remember... The second night, I had Tim sleep with me in my hospital bed b/c his poor back was all out-of-wack after sleeping on the small cot. We kept Olivia in the room with us until late in the evening, then had the nurse take her to the nursery.

The lactation nurse came in a couple of times to work with me on the breastfeeding bit. Too bad I hadn't read-up more on breastfeeding BEFOREHAND b/c after Olivia was born, I tried having her latch on. She didn't latch right. And NO ONE TOLD ME YOU HAD TO PRY THEM OFF WITH A FINGER FIRST!!! Hahahaha... So I think the most damage to my boobs were done THEN instead of later. Sigh... oh well. Asked for (and received) some nipple covers...we had called them something else, and it took the nurse a little bit to realize that we were talking about two different nipple-things.

Olivia's pediatrician stopped in to say "hi" and to give her her first checkup.

Tim got me an AMAZING 30-min massage...it was only $30 bucks or so... it felt SO NICE!! And it turned out that the lady giving me my massage was also LDS. We had a nice convo with her about immunizations and waiver forms.

Doh! See, now I've waited TOO long to finish up this post, and I don't remember what else I've been wanting to post about.

On the last day of my hospital stay, our friend Lilian helped us pick up my fam from the airport. They came to hospital to "pick me up", and we carpooled back home. It was cute to see my niece interact with Olivia...she was a bit nervous and didn't really know what to do about her.

Pictures

Me after delivery... in our room... with my dinner. Yum! i was Hungry!

Tim and Olivia. This is still in the delivery room.

Me and olivia. Still in the delivery room.

Olivia. In her bed-table thing while they monitored her temp and stuff. We had them wait a bit to put the eye-cream on her so we could see her beautiful eyes.