Kira's Blessing

Kira was blessed on Sunday. Our church doesn't do infant baptisms, but we do have a blessing. Basically, the dad and other elders of the church hold the baby and give her a blessing. Each blessing is unique and is given through inspiration. Kira was blessed, among other things, to have compassion on others and to be able to understand their needs. That she would recognize the sacredness of being a woman. And that she would be blessed to recognize the divine nature of families and be blessed by her own loving family.

It was really nice. She is a special person and we are grateful to have her in our home.

My mom made her a blessing dress. It isn't required, of course, to have special clothes to be blessed in, but it sure is a beautiful dress. She looked so cute. Here are a couple of pictures of her in her dress.

Three Weeks

My goodness time flies.

Three weeks ago I was soaking in this brand new little person. Today I'm stressing over whether or not something I'm eating is causing her tummy troubles. Last night I just broke down into tears at the thought that something I'm doing is causing her trouble. Probably a bit irrational, but it's really, really hard to hear your little baby crying so hard.

Fortunately, she's mostly doing good. She is fairly calm most of the time. And she's just getting bigger and bigger.

And let's see if I can't find a really cute picture to post...

This is her at four days old. I like how she's looking up at Reid. What cuties. :)

Growing Baby/Shrinking Mommy/Worried Daddy

This is Kira waking up this morning... great way to greet the day, huh? :)

Kira weighed 9lb 9oz today at her two week appointment. She's huge! I told the kids yesterday that Kira would be going off to college next week. :) She was the picture of health to the doctor. And her gaining 21oz in two weeks impressed him. He said his record was 28oz. I'm shocked by the 21oz. The boys were typically around 14 - 16oz.

And I got on the scale while I was there. I'm within about a pound of my pre-pregnancy weight. I thought I'd post a final belly shot.


Which brings me to the Worried Daddy part of my title. Mike went to Sam's the other day and brought home frozen cheesecake bites, frozen mozzarella sticks (like at Applebee's or Chili's), and a gallon of whole milk. :) He's a bit concerned because I think I actually lost fat during the pregnancy. I had to stop nursing Reid when he was 10 months old because all of my fat was gone and my milk just stopped. I've assured Mike that I have 15 lbs on that 22 year old mother, but it's cute that he's concerned and taking care of me. He's a good husband and a good dad. And I'm fine. Really.

Two Weeks and a Day

I wanted to finish up Kira's birth story before posting much of anything else, so now that that is complete, I'm going to put up a few pictures. She has her two week check-up in about an hour, so I'll post again later with all of her baby stats.

This is Kira at one week old. She was sitting there staring into my eyes. It was quite precious.

Halloween. Jacob was "Dark Link" from Zelda, Cole was "Deku Scrub" from Zelda, Zach was a cloaked skeleton/evil dude, Reid was a cloaked figure, and Kira was a fussy pumpkin. :)

As a note, my mom made Jacob and Cole's costumes. They were quite proud of them. Jacob did make his own shield and Cole impressively made his own mask. Reid opted out of trick or treating and ended up scaring kids and spraying them with silly string at a person's haunted yard. He had lots of fun. And Zach was let loose in the old neighborhood and came home with about 15 lbs of candy. He had fun, too. :)

Just a sweet little picture. Kira loves to be naked and especially loves being free of her diaper.

Our little monkey with her good Daddy.

We continue to be completely in love with this little person. It's so nice to have her in our family: screaming and all. :)

Kira's Birth - Part 3

With that scare behind us, I tried to relax and get my body to get serious about labor. I was, unfortunately, unsuccessful. By noon (12 or 13 hours after my water broke), I was basically having no contractions. My doctor came by to check me and I was barely 5cm dilated. He felt a bulging sac and questioned whether my water had actually broken. It definitely had, but he broke the sac part that he felt and more fluid gushed. I hoped that that might get things rolling. He agreed to one more hour before starting me on pitocin. Their concern was the 18 hour mark after my water broke.

And then at some point during all of this non contraction time, the baby's heart rate went down to 64 and was staying there. The nurse got me to lay on my side to make sure the baby was okay and after a few minutes, her heart rate came back up. Now, you have to understand that a week or so before, I had a dream that I was having a cesarean. So during all of this drama with her heart rate and my body refusing to go into labor, I just kept praying that I would be able to have a vaginal delivery. I wanted the baby to be safe, of course, but I just wanted to avoid a cesarean if at all possible.

By 1pm my contractions had not started back up with any type of regularity, so they started the pitocin. It started working pretty much right away. First it just gave me stronger contractions, then they started getting more regular. The nurse turned the dose up around 1:20pm. At this point, I was in instant hard labor. With contractions that basically never stopped. When the nurse came in somewhere around 2pm and tried upping the dose, I told her no. I was actually concerned that my uterus might explode or something. I stayed at that for a while with Mike's constant attention to rubbing my back and trying to keep me comfortable. I finally asked for a shot of Nubane. The contractions were never stopping. I think I got the shot around 3pm. It was great for the first few seconds before the first contraction started. Then the contraction hit and I thought, "Okay, that literally took the very tippy top of the contraction off, and that's it." And within about three contractions, everything was back to the way it was, and more so, before I got the shot and I started to freak out. Fortunately, Mike did the "take charge" routine with me and got me to focus on the contractions instead of on my anger at the pitocin machine. I literally wanted to kick the **** out of that machine. :)

Now, at some point, the nurse came in again saying that they wanted to up the pitocin level (I still can't figure out why) and I told them that I wouldn't let them increase it unless I got an epidural first. There would have been no way for me to handle that pain. This was probably around 3:40 or so. In order to give the epidural, they apparently had to pump me full of fluid first, so she started the fluids and said it would take about an hour for them to get my hydrated enough for the epidural. Mike was super during this time. He talked me through each contractions and rubbed my legs, my back, and anything else I demanded. :)

I knew within about twenty minutes that I was getting close to being fully dilated. I didn't say anything to Mike or the nurse about it. I'm not sure why I didn't want to tell anyone, but I didn't.

Then I started feeling lots of pressure and I finally said something to the nurse. She checked and I was fully dilated. The pitocin got turned off because I was in one big huge contraction and they finally decided that "my body had taken over". At this point, they called for the doctor and were asking me not to push. The pain from the pitocin overshadowed the urge to push, so it wasn't terribly difficult not to push. But the doctor got there pretty quickly and after getting myself situated, I was able to deliver the sweet little baby. She was born 1 1/2 hours before the 18 hour mark that they were so worried about. I was so happy to have a healthy baby and to have the whole thing over.

And after her little "I refuse to breathe" moment, they weighed her and I was completely shocked to hear that she weighed 8lb 4oz. When Reid was born, the doctor asked where I was hiding that baby. This time I asked myself that question.

So that's Kira's story. Full of drama. Hopefully she got it all out of her system and we can expect an even keeled child from here on out. :)

Kira's Birth - Part 2

Over the next couple of hours, my contractions became a little stronger and little closer together. Mike and I timed them for a bit and they were 2 minutes apart, lasting 45 seconds. Normally, I would have stayed home since they weren't really strong, but by this point, I was gushing fluid during the contractions, so I decided we'd better go in.

Our friend, Anne, came over to the house, Mike and I got loaded up and headed to the hospital. We got checked in and set up in our room and I remember looking at the clock thinking that I should have a baby by around 7 or 8 am. (HA!)

I had some good, regular contractions for quite a while, but they slowed down at some point. Mike and I walked a lot, but it didn't seem to help. It seemed that I had the best contractions when I was sitting upright. I figure now that it had something to do with Kira's position, but who knows for sure.

Before the nurse shift change at 7am, my nurse, Cheryl, decided to check me. I was at 3 or 4. Boooo. I thought for sure that I was feeling a lot of progress. Oh well.

Around 8am, I got in the tub to see if it would help get the contractions going again. It just seemed to make them slow down, so after a bit, I got back out and when I got put back on the monitor, Kira's heart rate went up to around 190 and stayed there for several minutes. Concerned, our nurse Linda, wanted to talk to some of the other nurses and our doctor to make sure things were okay. This was a bit scary. But she came back and said it seemed to be a normal adjustment by the baby, and indeed, her heart rate went back down to normal a little while later. And Linda said that the tape from her high heart rate would probably be shown in a training type meeting as somewhat of an unusual normal event. Glad we could provide that service to the hospital!

(Fussy baby... more later)

Kira's Birth - Part 1

I went to my 40 week checkup at 9:30 on October 21st. I was still 2-3 cm dilated, 70% effaced, and the baby was still engaged. My cervix was tilted to the back, though. I didn't know that a forward facing cervix could turn back again... I was a bit on the fence about whether or not to ask the doctor to strip my membranes. But after the word "induction" came out of the doctor's mouth, I decided to go ahead and have him do it. Hindsight has me questioning this decision, but I think it wasn't a bad one, just not certain that it was the right thing.

So... I went home, took some castor oil that I had bought and figured we'd see what happened.

I'm not sure exactly what time contractions started. I know I was having them during our family home evening game of Cranium Family Fun, so that was around 8pm. Mike and I spent some time cleaning up and getting things ready in case we did end up going to the hospital. I tried laying down to get some sleep, but it didn't work. I got in the tub around 11pm and then in the shower. At some point during that time, my water broke. I wasn't completely sure at first, but it made itself pretty clear during the next hour or so.

(Kira's crying and needs a diaper change... more to follow.)