Like I said above my daughter sleeps ridiculously well. We’re talking 12-13 hours every night and two naps during the day that last anywhere from 1-3 hours a piece. Thank god for that because my business has been SO backed up with orders lately that I really need that time to write back customers and work on their orders. Don’t get me wrong..I’m SO thankful business is good and I also get to stay at home with my baby girl. I know it’s because I work from home that we were able to splurge and get a pool and privacy fence this year on top of going to the ocean again for a week in August so it’s totally worth it. I do sometimes have to toss around the idea of hiring someone either to help me with my orders or watch Lelia a little bit while I get some work done but we will see. Right now I’ve been lucky enough to have my mom come on Wednesday for the past couple of weeks so that totally helps. Especially since we are planning on hosting Lelia’s blessing at our house in less than a month and need to get the house in order as well.

On a completely different note I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 a ton for designing things for my biz and came across a really annoying issue where I would send an item to print and it would print the wrong amount of copies. Let’s say I’d send job 1 to print with 4 copies, job 2 to print with 1 copy and job 3 to print with 2 copies..well job 1 would print whatever my last job’s copy request was..job 2 would print 4 copies..job 3 would print 1 copy and so on. Basically the printer is always one job’s # of copies behind..completely screwing up my print outs! I tried to check out the adobe forums but the adobe technicians are a waste of energy. Apparently this is a common problem for Photoshop CS5 with many brands and builds of printers and has been for over a year now but the techs blame it on printer drivers despite it happening with many different printers and only one application (CS5). I  found it crazy that not only is the problem still lingering this long but the one tech (ahemChrisCoxahem) had the nerve to be a douche-canoe to a customer looking for help. Fix your shiz!! For those of you who came across my blog because of this problem I did find a workaround that works for me in the meantime and may work for you as well. When you go to print make sure you click “print settings” and change the number of copies in that dialog box instead of changing the copies in the initial adobe print box. (I have to click the advanced tab within this settings box but your printer settings may be different.) I’ve found when I do this and then send to print the jobs print as they should. I don’t know why..but it works for me! So give it a try so you don’t waste a ton of expensive paper on copies you didn’t intend to print!

That ends my whirlwind of a blog post for now because the hubby just came in with hot dogs from the grill (and baby Leel’s is fast asleep!) Dinner time!

Lilly’s Homemade Frappucino Copy Cat Recipe (Iced Coffee)

Ingredients –

2 tablespoons of flavored coffee OR a flavored K-Cup (I put 2 tbsp of Wegmans White Chocolate truffle into a reusable K-Cup filter)
4 tbsp heavy cream
2 heaping spoonfuls of Splenda
2 tbsp caramel syrup (I used Gloria Jean’s vanilla caramel syrup, purchased at their store in the mall!)
Just over 1 cup of ice

Instructions –

1. Brew your coffee on the iced coffee setting. (If your brewer doesn’t have this setting just brew it strong (5-6oz cup). If you don’t have a keurig you could probably just brew 2 tbsp of coffee with 5-6oz of water). Basically you want a strong coffee base!

2. Put ice in blender.

3. Add 4 tbsp of heavy whipping cream to your coffee. Stir and then pour over the ice in your blender.

4. Add 2 heaping spoons of splenda (or sugar if you aren’t watching your weight or hate artificial sweeteners).

5. Add 2 tbsp of caramel syrup.

6. Blend until smooth and frothy.

7. If you want to get a little crazy you can add some whipped cream on top now..I didn’t but I’m sure it would taste fantabulous. I just figured my thighs wouldn’t agree!

That’s it! Mine turned out so yummy.

I am going to play with the recipe a bit and see how it turns out with some skim milk swapped in for the heavy cream to save some calories. I think the total calories for mine was 290 calories which isn’t too bad. Sometimes that’s all I have time for in the morning with a 6 month old so it ends up being my breakfast plus energy boost with the caffeine!

If you have any ideas or tweaks feel free to share them in the comments!

Baby Einstein is actually what is giving me a free minute to blog right now! She got her four month shots yesterday and is a little grumplestiltskin. I tried her play mat, her jumperoo, her changing pad (she usually marches on it to ocean songs) and even walking around with her..but all she wanted was baby einstein. She is now cooing away happily at all the puppets and animals on the screen! She should be back to normal in a few days…hopefully. I miss her smiley face!

I finally threw in the towel when it comes to nursing yesterday. I struggled with a low supply since she was born despite her having a fantastic latch from the get go. She barely gained anything her first month and I was forced to start supplementing with formula since she was “failing to thrive”. I tried fenugreek, mothers milk tea, oatmeal, keeping my calories around 2000-2500, drinking tons and tons of water (like 100oz a day!), power pumping, and even the prescription Reglan. Nothing worked to increase the supply though. (The reglan only made my small bout of post partum depression worse. The ppd cleared up almost completely once I stopped taking it!)

She was no longer interested in nursing since she would pop off and stare at her waiting bottle to “sad talk” so I was pumping and storing. I was only pumping about 2 oz a night and then that dropped to 1oz a night so I decided it was time I just came to terms with the fact that breastfeeding for a year as planned just wasn’t going to happen. I am proud of myself for withstanding the first 6-7 weeks of horrid nipple pain to give my daughter mommy milk..even if it only ended up lasting till she was 4 months and 1 week old. She is now thriving and couldn’t be healthier..weighing in at 14.5 pounds and measuring 25 inches at her appointment on Monday. She’s my healthy little chunkasaurus! I felt (and still feel) guilty for giving up on the pumping but in the grand scheme of things her getting 1-2 oz of mommy milk a day along with about 30oz of formula wasn’t going to make a big enough difference to keep up the struggle. I have a bunch of frozen milk I can thaw and still give to her for the next month or so too. I did my best and that’s all one can do right? (I am extrmely jealous of all the mommies who have no issues breast feeding…I reallllly wanted to exclusively breastfeed the first 6 months..but oh well.)

Now that I am no longer nursing I can at least start eating and drinking more normally without worrying about restrictions! I had my first cup of caffeinated coffee this morning and I was wired with energy. It was nice to feel nice and awake for a change! Hahaha. I am also going to make my mom’s recipe for chili tomorrow in the crockpot which I am super excited about. I have had to avoid all red sauce/tomato sauce items when nursing her cause it would make her spitting up worse. Now that I am no longer nursing I can make that chili! I even grabbed some sirloin beef chunks from Sam’s Club yesterday that I am going to brown up and add to the chili to do a little something different. I bet it will be yum! (And then I can make taco salads with leftovers..even more yum!!) I am hoping to make spaghetti next week as well since I have been craving homemade spaghetti and meat balls (loaded with parmesan!) for months now.

Well Baby Einstein is wrapping up so I better get back to work on some orders before she gets pissed again. I just wanted to check in! New post soon about fitness and weight loss goals now that my punkin is out of my belly (and I have about 10-15 more pounds to lose to be back to pre-pregnancy weight!)

I hope my story helps some of you expectant moms out there..especially those hoping to go natural. Believe me if I can do it you can. You just have to be determined and prepare beforehand!

Thanksgiving was just days away and I spent the week leading up to it in serious nesting mode. I waddled around the house cleaning -everything- I could get my swollen hands on! I was scrubbing baseboards and lamps and walls like it was nobodies business. I have since read a crazy onset of nesting can mean labor is around the corner and for me..that was true! A couple days before Thanksgiving I had a weird gut feeling that I was going to be having the baby soon and I told Ryan. He was like “Ya you are” ( as in Ya I know..it’s almost your due date)..I told him I meant sooner than that..That I had a weird gut feeling it was going to be in days. That night I dreamt of my grandpa Joe who passed in 2004. He told me in the dream that I was going to be having my baby soon and not to worry because he was gonna be there with me.

I spent Thanksgiving week cleaning and preparing for Turkey Day dinner since we were hosting (My mom, dad, brother and mom’s new husband were coming!). I didn’t feel comfortable traveling to Buffalo or Binghamton being 37 weeks pregnant on Thanksgiving so we took on dinner ourselves. (We being me and the hubby!) I prepared stuffing myself, and we worked together making rolls from scratch, a butter/herb/bacon turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and of course desserts (I had to make my pumpkin and banana cream pie as well!). I ate the delicious dinner and then dessert…and then I was completely exhausted. The week’s activities finally caught up to me – I was so beat!

I went to pee in between dinner and dessert and when I wiped there was a bunch of tinged pink mucousy discharge. I was spotting blood for the first time the entire pregnancy so my guard went up. Had I pushed myself too hard this week? Was this it?? Yikes! I went upstairs and whispered to my mom about the spotting and she told me to sit down and I needed to rest. I wanted to serve dessert though so I called Ryan out to our sun room where we had our pies and cheesecake waiting and told him about the spotting. I think my (almost)exact words were “I think this might be it..I think I might be in labor soon!” through a smile and some nervous tears. I had wondered how it would be when I went into labor the entire pregnancy so the thought it may be happening soon was so exciting..and yet scary too! I wasn’t experiencing any pain yet though. Just extreme exhaustion at this point from pushing myself so hard all week long. We nommed down our yummy desserts and I retired to the futon for the night. (This was hard for me though..I wanted to be up helping!) The pain started shortly thereafter. Basically like period/menstrual pain on the worst day that would last thirty seconds to a few minutes and then go away. They were anywhere from 5-15 minutes apart and all over the place. Was this labor or just pain from pushing myself so hard all week? I had no idea. I ended up going to bed and the pains continued on and off throughout the night until morning where they tapered off.

The next day (Friday) I had my scheduled 37 week doctor visit so I went in and told her about the pain. She didn’t seem concerned. She checked and I was 80% effaced but still tightly closed up so no baby yet! I went home slightly discouraged..I was hoping so badly those pains had been me starting to dilate but nope. Looking back now it was probably my cervix effacing (or thinning out!). The whole day I had constant pink, red and brown discharge with mucously like discharge. This had to be my bloody show? The pains occured on and off all day but they really started up again around 7pm or 8pm and were slightly worse than the night before. I had a rough night sleeping since it was hard to sleep when I was waking up with what I know now were minor contractions every 10 minutes for the first 5-6 hours of sleep. They tapered off by morning once again though so no leaving for the hospital yet!

I spent that Saturday as I usually would..running errands with the hubby! We went all over the place – Sam’s Club, Baby’s R Us..etc. I waddled around and occasionally stopped to breathe through a small contraction here and there. Still nothing bad (I wasn’t even sure if they were contractions at this point!). They only happened every 30 minutes to a few hours until nightfall came again and they picked up their intensity for the third night..happening once again every 5-10 minutes. During the day I only had spotting during my first morning wipe. The rest of the day it was a lot of clear/yellow discharge..almost like right after ovulation. Not constant spotting like the day before. Then that night I think I lost my mucus plug because I passed a dime/penny sized blood clot. I once again barely got any sleep. They tapered off and spread further apart once again by morning. Each night the pain was getting progressively worse. I researched a bit online and learned I was in what seemed to be prodromal labor which is basically early labor which can sometimes last weeks before active labor. I was pretty discouraged to hear this!

By Sunday I was extremely exhausted since I spent the previous week cleaning and cooking like a mad woman and barely got any sleep since Wednesday night with the nighttime contractions. I called the doctor’s office that morning to ask her about the pain and she confirmed that it sounded like prodromal labor. She told me to keep timing the contractions and as soon as they became regular and closer together to call them again. She told me to try and relax and get some sleep because I would need it. I managed to find a couple hours that I wasn’t having contractions that afternoon and used them to nap since I was so tired. Looking back I am so thankful I did! We had dinner as usual (I ate a big plate of Turkey Day leftovers) and then Ryan and I played some Everquest 2 for a couple hours. Nightfall came during our playing of EQ2 so the contractions started up again that night with even more intensity and pain. At this point they were painful enough that I would have to stop playing the game, close my eyes and breathe through the contraction and then return to playing. I know it is seriously SO dorky I was technically in labor, having contractions..and still playing EQ2. Like I said earlier though I had NO idea if I was going to be dealing with this for weeks so I wasn’t interested in just curling up in bed and waiting it out. I tried to go about doing my normal things! That day was mostly clear discharge again. Not bleeding like before.

That night the pain became really bad. We tried to go to bed around midnight. Ryan had work the next day so he needed to sleep. I began to cry a bit at this point..from both the pain, my exhaustion and the frustration that I didn’t know how long this was going to go on. Was every  night going to be like this..worse and worse..for weeks still? I couldn’t fathom doing this for night after night after night..as tired as I was. Eventually at around 2am I went downstairs by myself to the fireplace room to hum/moan through contractions on a birthing ball while leaning forward onto the love seat. I didn’t want to keep Ryan awake with my moaning through contractions. I remember watching the clock, timing the contractions. They were pretty painful at this point so I would try to bounce on the ball, rock on the ball..reading through hypnobabies birthing materials. After about an hour I was timing them to be anywhere from 3-10 minutes apart. I was hurting and so tired at this point that I went upstairs to bed and woke Ry..sobbing. I told him I couldn’t keep doing this every night if it was going to happen for night after night after night and I wasn’t getting any sleep to recharge. (I really wish I had been trying to use my hypnobabies at this point but I was in denial that it was real labor so I hadn’t tried.) He started timing me on a contraction timer app on his phone and a lot of them were coming 2-3 minutes apart with the occasional one at 5 minutes. I told Ryan to call my doctor’s office for me to get me into the hospital at this point (3am now) because I figured at this point the worse thing that could happen was they would send me home. He did and they said a doctor would call us back shortly. I was so tired and the contractions were so close together at this point I wanted to be checked again. My mom had planned to be there with me to help me and witness the birth so I called her in Buffalo and told her we were gonna go into the hospital to be checked and that I may be in labor so she should be ready in case.

In my area you can’t just go to the hospital..you need to talk to your doctor first and then they tell you to go in. Well I waited an hour after calling my doctor and never heard anything back. I was crying and moaning through contractions (scaring the crap out of my dog) while continuing to finish packing my hospital bags. Ryan ended up calling the hospital a bit annoyed asking if he can just bring me in since we hadn’t heard back from the doctor. (Saying he didn’t want to be delivering a baby on our futon.) The nurse told him to call our doctor’s office again and he was pretty pissed about this but did. They told him the same thing once again..that a doctor would call us shortly. Luckily at this point (about 4:30am now) we were called back by one of the PA’s and I told her what was going on. She agreed it was a good idea for me to come in and get checked but she didn’t seem too sure if I was in labor. I was SO happy to finally have the ok to go in. Ryan had packed our Soul while waiting for the doctor to call us so we put the dog away and we were off!

The hospital is luckily only 5 minutes away or so, so the trip was quick! Being around 5am noone was on the road. I breathed and moaned/hummed through each contraction on the way and when we got there I was wheeled into triage where I undressed and they hooked up the monitors. I told the nurse how I was planning to go ntural but that I wasn’t so confident in it at this point sinc ei was so tired from not sleeping for days. She was a sweetheart and assured me I could do it and was totally on board with my plans for no meds. Eventually the PA I had spoken to on the phone came in to check me and I was at 4cm! I naively at that point asked if that meant I was in active labor or if I faced possibly being sent home and she laughed and said I was in labor and wasn’t leaving without a baby. I teared up and looked at Ryan and he looked at me in disbelief and excitement. This was it! We weren’t going home until he/she was born. Scary..and so exciting too! I called my mom to tell her to start driving since I was being admitted and also called my dad to tell him his grandbaby was on the way!

They took us to our room and since I was found positive for the strep b test I had to go on an antibiotic drip for 20 minutes before being allowed to walk around freely. They hooked me up to the antibiotic and monitors and I sat up in bed indian style. This is where I started listening to my hypnobabies and I am SO glad I did (and regretted not doing it sooner). The hypnobabies tracks reminded me to go limp and relax during each contraction and remind myself that my body knew what to do and would do it more easily if I allowed myself to relax. Everyone was told to please stay quiet for me when they would see me close my eyes and go limp to allow me to go into hypnosis for each contraction. The contractions definitely hurt..but they were manageable. I would feel a contraction coming on and the pain would intensify to a peak while my entire stomach would go rock hard in a big slow wave. I would tell myself to relax, deeper and deeper..and the more I relaxed the sooner I would see my baby. I birthed sitting up in bed and then sat in the jacuzzi tub for a bit. I then moved back to sitting up in bed before trying the birthing ball (the birthing ball was totally not for me. I found myself focusing on keeping myself balanced or upright too much that I wasn’t able to focus enough on letting my body go limp so I could relax through the contraction.) At one point while I was on the birthing ball my mom commented (who like everyone else in the room was watching the monitor show the contraction peaks and lengths) “That was a bad one!”. Having just gone through it and being tired and in pain I grumpily gave her an “I KNOW!” as in “Duh..I know..I just went through it!” lol I ended up moving back to sitting upright in bed.

I progressed quickly..at about 6 or 7cm by 8:30 or so and 9 cm by 10:30am or so. I remember telling my nurse that what I was scared of was transition since that is supposed to be the worst (and when it is almost time for baby to arrive!).  At 9cm she told me “See you are doing great! You were scared of transition and you are already there!” My water hadn’t broke yet so the doctor asked me if I would like them to break it for me. I thought about it and since everything was progressing so well so far and I only had 1cm to go I might as well let them break it (hoping this would make the last centimeter a little faster.) I regret this now looking back on it because at this point progress halted majorly and the pain got a lot worse. At this point I only had one centimeter left to go before pushing but the pain was so incredibly intense I could no longer relax and go limp during the contractions. I was in so much pain I wanted to just flail my arms about and scream..ANYTHING to take my mind away from the intensely painful contractions. They kept coming in to check my progress every 20-30 minutes and it was always “almost but not quite..there’s still a little bit to go”. They recommended I sit backwards on the toilet to be nice and upright so I went and did that with Ryan at my side but I hated it. Once again I didn’t feel like I had anywhere to lean so I could attempt to go limp so I moaned loudly through the contractions, wiggling my legs about. I feel bad for any women touring the birthing center at this point because if they heard me I probably scared the bejesus out of them. I think this was the only time I got slightly pissy with Ryan as well. I wanted him to hold his hands up so I could lean back against them to go limp but he was pushing me forward so I got frustrated. I gave up on the whole toilet position after a few awful contractions and returned to bed to be checked again. Still not enough. I kept struggling through the contractions, waiting to feel the urge to push. Eventually I started feeling something that might’ve been the urge to push so I asked to be checked again and finally I was at 10cm. They set me up for delivery and it was time to get him/her out!

My mom held one leg and a nurse held the other and I began to push. They explained I would push while they counted to 10 three times each contraction and to close my mouth and bear down to push..not making any noise. (I read about mother directed pushing where the mother pushes in between contractions in my hypnobabies workbook but my nurse and doctor were not on board with this idea and I was too exhausted and ready to get the baby out to argue.) I hated pushing. I would get through the three rounds of pushing to a count of 10..just barely making it through the last count of 10 being so exhausted…and then they would ask me for a fourth one and I just didn’t have the strength. It was also so painful that like the entire labor one of the ways I got through contractions was moaning and she kept scolding me to be quiet and push and believe me if the pain was manageable enough for me to be completely quiet I would have been. I would shut my mouth though and attempt to push quietly (not always succeeding). Looking back I wonder if maybe I just wasn’t ready to push since I never really felt a blatant urge that I needed to do it. I was just at 10cm and ready to get the baby out at this point. I pushed for about an hour..the nurses constantly telling me they could see hair and it was so close…I kept thinking he or she was about to come out..but contraction after contraction I pushed and she wasn’t coming out. I was so exhausted, in pain and extremely hot. I pulled my gown completely off and Ryan kept running to the bathroom to get a cold washcloth. He told me after that I was so hot the washcloth would warm up almost immediately after putting it on my forehead.

Pushing hurt like hell and adding that to the pain I was still experiencing from contractions I was hurting pretty bad. My original nurse had gone home by now and another nurse was helping me..and she was really bothering me with the heart rate monitor for the baby. I realize she was doing what needed to be done but I hated her pressing it against my abdomen when I was trying to push. I found it painful and distracting. Then one of my worst fears..the baby’s heart rate started dropping. I remember hearing the blips slowing down and the doctor talking to the nurse briefly looking nervous. It was here I got one last burst of strength to push on through the pain. I had to get my baby out! I wasn’t going to come this far and lose my baby in the canal. I was so scared! Ryan said he’ll never forget the look on my face. He said I looked so determined/angry/scared and in pain all at once. I pushed and pushed and eventually I told them just get him or her out..by any means! They ended up giving me an episiotomy (cutting me to make the opening larger) and finally she came out at 12:47pm. I screamed so loudly when she popped out from the pain. My brother commented afterwards that a nurse had been going by and she said that it was a good scream..that it probably meant the baby was coming out. (Sure enough he heard her cry shortly afterwards! He also said he would never forget the sound of my scream because of how pained it sounded.) She looked a bit blue and the cord was around her neck. I was so out of it at this point from not gettin sleep for days, the pain of the contractions and pushing for over an hour.  Ryan announced it’s a girl! (My gut was right all along!) and we cried. They whisked her to a table nearby and cleared her airways and I remember hearing her first cry. Relief. Ryan took a peek at his new daughter than returned to my side where they were stitching me up from my epi while I sat there in a bit of a daze. The doctors were commenting I was losing a lot of blood..(probably because I was on blood thinners my entire pregnancy) and it worried him. They sewed me up and I was fine.

They weighed her and took her measurements..7 pounds and 11 ounces..21 inches. Not bad for more than 2 weeks early! They wrapped her up and brought her over to me to hold..and I got to meet my baby girl for the first time. My beautiful Lelia. I nursed her and she latched on strongly right away and fed. I was in awe that this little person had come from inside me and was finally here. I loved her more than life itself! Labor was painful but surprisingly tolerable (thanks to hypnobabies!) up until 9cm. I was so determined and set in having a natural birth that I never even thought to ask for pain meds. It was all worth it when I held her in my arms. She was finally here..and I was in love with the beautiful little life Ryan and I created.

Looking back I would do it all over again. I would have another baby in the hospital naturally without pain meds. I just hope my nurse would be as on board with it as the one I had this time was!

There were some thing I would do differently next time though if I am lucky enough to be blessed with another pregnancy in a couple of years.

• I won’t let them break my water for me. I wonder now if that is why progress halted so abruptly and the pain became so unmanageable at 9cm. For my next one I want to let nature take its course in hopes I have an easier time relaxing through contractions with hypnobabies throughout dilating. I wonder if that last centimeter would have been faster if I had been able to continue going limp or if it would have been the same either way.
• I pushed almost on my back since I couldn’t find any other place I was comfortable. I KNOW this is the worst way to push since this is against gravity so I am hoping to find some other way to position myself that will allow me to push and work with gravity instead. I am hoping now that I know what labor contractions feel like (and that I was in fact in labor at home) I can use that time to practice positions and relaxation before transition time.
• Lastly I hope to wait to push until I feel an actual unquestionable urge to push. I wonder now if I was at 10cm but my body wasn’t ready to push yet since I never really felt that urge..so I was forcing it when I began to push. I wonder if I felt the urge and then pushed if it would have been less painful and more enjoyable like I tend to read in so many other birth stories.

And that is my birth story…I don’t know if Lelia planned on making her escape early all along or if it was my constant business nesting and cooking that prompted her exit..I guess we will never know!

Some of you may not have read my previous post so you may be wondering why I wanted to go natural in the first place. “Why didn’t I get the epi?!?”..Well here is a little excerpt so you understand why..

“You may be wondering why I wanted to go med-free in the first place. I had a few reasons! One being the fact I was on blood thinners so it is a little more risky to get an epidural. The combination is supposed to make the chance of paralysis increase. I donâ€t know about you but I decided Iâ€d much rather go through a day or two of mind numbing pain than risk spending the rest of my life in a wheel chair. Plus I have heard a lot of stories where the epidurals didnâ€t work anyways. Which leads me to another reason. Research shows the more intervention you allow in labor the more likely it is to lead to even more medical interventions. This means women who are induced are more likely to need of an epidural and a c-section or women who get an epidural are more likely to get a c-section than those who chose to let nature just take itâ€s course. So the less intervention for me..the better! Especially when I really wanted to avoid the c-section. Lastly and most importantly I wanted to go med free because it is just healthier for mom and baby. All pain killers cross over to baby when in labor and I wanted my baby to come out unmedicated. Period. Itâ€s the least I could do for her and Iâ€m so glad I did. She was completely alert and took right to breastfeeding like a little champ! (It was mommy who had some issues with alertness after the last hour and a half to two hours of labor!)”

I am so proud of myself for doing it the way that I did and I feel it has made me a stronger person now as well. Whenever something makes me anxious now I remind myself I made it through childbirth un-medicated and if I can do that..I can do anything. It gave me a confidence in myself that I never had before..I wouldn’t trade that for anything!

(I will have a detailed birth story very soon in an upcoming blog post but you will need to click the “Read More…” link at the bottom of it. Beware though..I will be going into gory detail so if you get squeamish hearing about the entire birthing process don’t click! I wanted to share in detail since I really appreciated reading other women’s blogs about their natural med-free births when I was pregnant and preparing myself. Stay tuned! I am going to try and type it up and post it within the next week or two.)

Anyways, my gut was right and it ended up being a girl! For some reason as soon as I saw that barely there pink line (tilt in every direction squinting in the sunlight coming in the bedroom window, not too positive if it is there but I think it is, a line is a line, faint barely there line) the day before Easter last year I just knew in my heart it was a little girl. Then when I finally pushed her out on November 29th and heard Ryan announce “It’s a girl” my gut feeling was confirmed. She is so beautiful too. I know..I am so very biased and I know it. But she melts my heart completely. She has me completely worn down with exhaustion and the pain of breast feeding but when I look at her little face…Let’s just say she is very lucky she is so cute or there have been a few times in the past 6 weeks where she might’ve ended up outside in the snow (not really).

Like I said before I accomplished what I consider the biggest accomplishment of my life when I managed to go med free when I had Lelia. I planned for over 10 weeks using the Hypnobabies Home Study Course which is a book and stack of CD’s that basically teach you how to completely relax so your body can accomplish what it was created to do. It really helped me lose the fear of giving birth and learn that it is completely natural for a woman to have a baby and you just need to allow your body to do what it was built to do! Every night (well..MOSTLY) I would lay down in bed and listen to one of the Hypnobabies tracks and learn how to put myself into a state of hypnosis (relaxation) and practice scripts and sayings that I would say to myself when actually in labor to help with the pain. Relaxation is supposed to help since if you tense up from the pain and fear the body takes a lot longer to do what it needs to do (which equals more contractions) than if you can make yourself relax and let the body do what it is supposed to.

In the end I was so glad I did it because I made it to 9 centimeters before the pain became really hard to deal with. Each contraction I would just close my eyes, finger drop myself into hypnosis to go limp and repeat to myself to “relax, deeper and deeper with every breath I take” while focusing on my uterus pushing the baby down and my cervix dialating. It really sped up the birthing process because I was 4 cm when I got to the hospital at around 5am. (Thanks to the woman answering the phones at my gynos office at 3:30am on November 29th. You can’t just go to the hospital around here..You need your gyno’s office to give the ok first. We called at 3am and were told they would call right back but they didn’t call back at all! An hour later my husband was on the phone (pretty irritated at this point as one can imagine) while his pregnant wife was moaning loudly through contractions that were 2-5 minutes apart practically begging the hospital to let me come in so he didn’t have to deliver the baby on our futon. They made us call our gyno office again and finally got a call back and the ok to go in like 20 minutes later.) I was 9 centimeters at about 10:30-11am and then we stalled out a bit.

I have to say that I was in pain but it was tolerable up until 9 cm. When I hit transition I could no longer relax or focus through the contractions anymore. They were just so intense I had to just moan it out… In so much pain sometimes that I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I had the urge to just flail every limb about and scream bloody murder through some of those final contractions. Luckily the only scream I ended up letting out was when Lelia emerged in which my scream sounded so pained my brother who was waiting outside said that scream will forever be engraved in his mind. I still wouldn’t change a thing though. I expected it to be painful and it was more painful than words could describe. I was pleasantly surprised though that the first 9 centimeters were definitely more tolerable with my hypnobabies than I’d have thought they’d have been. I let them break my water at 9 centimeters so that may have been what contributing to the increased pain during that last centimeter as well (Something I may not allow them to do if I have another child.) I would definitely go med-free all over again though (with hypnobabies of course!).

You may be wondering why I wanted to go med-free in the first place. I had a few reasons! One being the fact I was on blood thinners so it is a little more risky to get an epidural. The combination is supposed to make the chance of paralysis increase. I don’t know about you but I decided I’d much rather go through a day or two of mind numbing pain than risk spending the rest of my life in a wheel chair. Plus I have heard a lot of stories where the epidurals didn’t work anyways. Which leads me to another reason. Research shows the more intervention you allow in labor the more likely it is to lead to even more medical interventions. This means women who are induced are more likely to need of an epidural and a c-section or women who get an epidural are more likely to get a c-section than those who chose to let nature just take it’s course. So the less intervention for me..the better! Especially when I really wanted to avoid the c-section. Lastly and most importantly I wanted to go med free because it is just healthier for mom and baby. All pain killers cross over to baby when in labor and I wanted my baby to come out unmedicated. Period. It’s the least I could do for her and I’m so glad I did. She was completely alert and took right to breastfeeding like a little champ! (It was mommy who had some issues with alertness after the last hour and a half to two hours of labor!)

Now she is here and we feel completely blessed. Our world has been turned completely upside down though. When people say having a baby changes your life..they couldn’t be more right. When people say the first three months you will be tired…THAT is an understatement. I never imagined I could be so very exhausted and still need to function (Half of the time I am so tired I am slurring my words!). I don’t know how something so tiny could be so exhausting but she is! Sometimes I question what is harder: the med-free labor and delivery (physical pain) or the past 6 weeks of exhaustion and some post-partum depression (mental pain). It doesn’t help I pretty much get 2-4 hours of sleep a day right now and am also dealing with breastfeeding issues (low-supply). My day consists of breastfeeding her every 2-3 hours, then offering her a bottle, then pumping to try and get some milk to give her and stimulate more of a milk supply. By the time all that is done she is ready to get her diaper changed and breast feed again. I barely have a minute to scarf down oatmeal and get a nap let alone have any kind of time to myself. It is craziness..but I keep telling myself it will get better once we get past these early months. It has to!

Well I think I reached the limit of what someone is willing to read in one blog post awhile ago so I will stop here for now. Stay tuned as I plan on posting my detailed birth story and blogging about everything else I have been going through with breastfeeding, etc. very soon! I am transitioning my site away from the whole cam site and really want to focus on having a place to talk about my daily life as a wife, new mommy and home business owner… With everything ahead of me I am going to need somewhere I can voice my opinion, vent about current life things and just have someplace to put it all down “on paper”. It is relaxing for me. My only problem as it stands right now is finding the time! (The little goob is swinging peacefully asleep in her Little Lamb Swing right now which allowed mommy to finally sit and relax for a few minutes.)

PS – I am uber excited because we just booked our return trip to Topsail Beach NC about an hour ago for the end of August. Returning to the Oceanfront home we stayed in for our first anniversary trip in July 2010. SO psyched to return! I will have to blog in the future about our July trip with some photos. I was in absolute heaven there..and got to see my wild dolphins as well!

Hubby and I are expecting our first little one in mid-December (12/15 or 12/16)! I’m in my 4th month now (14 weeks tomorrow) and so far everything is going really smoothly. We’ve seen or little bean on ultrasound twice now and he/she (my gut says it’s a she) has been strong as can be and growing ahead of schedule. Heartbeat at the first ultrasound was 183bpm at 8w6d and 165bpm at 11w6d. Whenever we pick it up on doppler it’s still going strong at around 160-165. I’m not showing a whole lot yet (mostly just bloat at night) so it doesn’t feel quite real yet. I’m not sure it it will feel real when I’m feeling it move or if I will have to wait til he/she is in my arms this December. Now you know why I’ve been silent. I just couldn’t blog without including this huge news so I wanted to wait till I was closer to or in the 2nd trimester before I let the cat out of the bag. Crossing my fingers for a happy, healthy, full term December baby!

I’m completely ecstatic to be expecting but so far I am not enjoying the whole being pregnant. Because of my blood clot last summer on my honeymoon my doctors upped me to a high risk pregnancy and have me on nightly lovenox (blood thinner) shots to ensure I don’t clot and clots don’t harm the baby. I’ve been on the shots for just over 2 months now and I’m soooo over being stuck every night. My tummy and thighs are all bruised! I just look at my ultrasound pics and remind myself that’s why I am taking them and that it’s worth it cause I get my own little present at the end. I’m stuck on the lovenox till mid November and then they are switching me to Heparin twice a day till the baby is born and then back on lovenox for another 6 weeks..so I’ll be on shots basically till January or March. Yucky yuck. As for the other usual pregnancy stuff that is at least lessening now that I’m at the 2nd Tri mark. I had some pretty bad constant nausea and sleepiness for awhile there. I was basically living on all carbs because it was all I could stomach. Let me tell you that does not help with weight gain :/ Ah well. Just more to lose when the baby is out!

On a different note we are already coming up on our first wedding anniversary on July 4th! We booked a vacation down the east coast to celebrate and I can’t wait to go! We leave June 30th and make 3-4 hour drives with stops at hotels (Binghamton, Maryland and Virginia) along the way until we reach the beach house we rented for a week on Topsail Island in NC.  Then it’s back up the coast again with stops in Virginia, Delaware & Binghamton (I think?!). Can’t wait! A couple weeks of time together with hopefully some nice weather is much needed before the craziness begins at the end of the year. I can’t wait to see the ocean again ( and maybe I’ll be lucky enough to see some dolphins!). Woohoo!

Nothing else really beyond the usual day to day stuff. Running my biz and just recently my nesting instinct has been kicking in so I’m cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! Busy, busy bee!

I’m now off of Coumadin/Warfarin (since the beginning of October) and I am SO glad I don’t have to take that poison anymore. I know…technically it helped me by keeping my blood thin enough for my body to break down the DVT (deep vein thrombosis or blood clot in my calf)..but it made me feel sooo sick. I was feeling nauseous on and off throughout the day and was losing a ton of hair. (Luckily I have pretty thick hair to begin with so it wasn’t visibly noticeable..despite literally combing out a handful or two every day.) I got my hair cut and colored a week or two after going off coumadin and my stylist could not believe the amount of hair she was combing off my head. It was crazy (and a little embarrassing..lol), but I explained it was from the meds I had been on and she understood. Now the only thing I take every day is my supplements (Prenatal multi, B6 & triple strength fish oil!). No, I’m not pregnant..but hope to be maybe sometime this year so the prenatals are just a preparation thing!

I’m trying to get back into working out on and off now but I’m trying not to be psychotic about it. I have a problem with almost becoming obsessed when I get into some kind kind of workout regiment and I am trying to avoid allowing myself to be that way. It becomes a chore and I hate how I start to think when I’m in that mode. The only way I can try to explain it is almost as if I was thinking like an anorexic but still eating. I’d make sure I ate between 1200-1800 calories on weekdays (and then eat what I want on weekends..fast food..ice cream, so yep NOT anorexic!) BUT when it came to exercise I’d NEED to make sure I did it at least Mon, Wed and Friday. That’s not a big deal I guess but I would have this voice in my head saying I had to do more than the last time, better than the last time…and if I missed a workout I’d really beat myself up over it. My workouts would end up lasting longer and longer (to the point where it probably wasn’t making a difference) but my mind insisted I still had to beat the last workout. Then I dread each workout and eventually feel so overwhelmed in my head that I stop working out altogether. (Ya…I’m slightly nutty. It’s my insecurity.. I never look in the mirror and feel happy about myself. There’s always something I can fix..always something that’s too big..Something that’s crooked..ACK!) I think that’s why I get that way..and my tendency to be a perfectionist about everything. (I’m a big list maker..It calms me..hehe!) When I was on coumadin I wasn’t even allowed to workout because the doctor made it sound like she was worried the clot that was there might break loose..so my working out since October hasn’t been as regular as it probably should be. Now I’m trying to just ease back into it. I’m doing whatever cardio sounds like it would be fun at the moment and I limit myself to only doing it for 35-45 minutes and then I switch to my strength training. I’m hoping if I keep up with making sure I don’t get into the obsessive mindset I’ll keep with it and enjoy it more. I really hope it works!

My business has continued to do very well for me so I am very happy with that. It slowed down a little bit when all the brides to be were focusing on the holidays but since January first it has been picking up like crazy and keeping me very busy. Between that and our tax return we were able to pay off my hospital bills from this summer, some of our credit cards and almost half of the new bedroom set/mattress we got in December. We got a new carpet for the master bedroom too..and pretty blue paint (Cosmos from Sherwin Williams..used in the living room of HGTV’s 2009 dream home!) I’ll share some pics in another post.. This one is already a bit winded!

Lastly I had a hard couple of weeks because I have been so busy and I’ve had to deal with the death of two my my little furbabies less than a week apart. My holland lop rabbit Tutter passed away on Tuesday, January 26th..completely unexpectedly at the age of 4 (he would have been 5 on Feb 28th). The Thursday before that we noticed he hadn’t ate all day when we were heading to bed so we rushed him to the Emergency Vet at midnight worried he possibly had gastric stasis which commonly leads to death. The woman there didn’t really know rabbits so she didn’t really know what she was doing. She guessed it might be stasis as well and put him on a med that was supposed to help get his digestive tract moving again. We couldn’t get an appointment with our regular vet until Tuesday so from Thursday on we focused on giving him tummy rubs, meds, syringing him water and tempting him with hay, carrots and banana. By Monday night he seemed to be improving..We were so excited because he had started munching on his hay here and there and was picking up his water drinking a lot. We brought him into the vet Tuesday morning and she worried it was an illness but said it could also be his teeth or stasis (blockage). She said in order to diagnosis him they would need to put him under and get xrays of everything and then do blood work. We signed him over and left..only to get the sad phone call a few hours later that he went into cardiac arrest after being put under anesthesia.  She came to the conclusion that she thinks he had cancer and that’s why he stopped eating. Soo..we lost our little blue lop way too early. He broke our hearts when he left us and will always have a piece of it. Our hamster Crinkles followed him 6 days later on Monday from cancer as well (he had a tumor and was too tiny to operate on). Another little cutie that will always have a piece of our hearts. Now it’s just Ryan, me, a maltese, a turkish van and a fishie. Hopefully they won’t be leaving us anytime soon! <3

(Oh..and my wordpress was hacked. I spent all afternoon/night Saturday reinstalling and fixing it. Lesson learned? Always keep wordpress up to date. Theend.)

So what has been consuming most of my time? My business! It has been kind of snowballing in growth since it’s official start in February and seems to be consuming more and more of my time every week. I am actually starting to throw around the idea of needing to hire a family member or friend to come over once in awhile and help me get out orders when I get backed up if it keeps growing like it has been. So yes…very busy! But good busy.. The more busy I am the more money I have to pay down our debt. The more debt we pay off the better off we will be. Once I’m off coumadin if the money situation is looking up we may be able to start tossing the idea of having kids around at the end of the year! Woohoo! Plus Ry has been uber successful at his job and recently got a raise..(with another possibly around the corner!) So proud!

Since I started typing this blog..3 new orders. Ugh..see? I can’t even blog without a slew of new orders coming into my inbox! Craziness. I’ll have to cut this shorter than I wanted to!

Anywho..married life isn’t much different than life before we got married. We still live together..We are still uber happy and in love..Pretty much just legally tied now! It feels nice to call him my husband though. All the single ladies were jealous of him looking all pimp in his suit at my cousin April’s wedding Friday night. Sorry ladies..he’s off the market now!

Healthwise I am doing better! I am still on the coumadin pills every night but I’m almost 2 months in now. I am hoping I’ve got a month left to go and then I can be done. I’m still getting the occasional nausea and dizziness but it has subsided a ton since getting off the lovenox shots. I still haven’t been given the ok to work out though…I’m hoping when I talk to the nurse tomorrow after bloodwork she may give me the thumbs up for that. Although I don’t know if I’ll be able to find time to do it anyways right now. *sniffsniff..ugh. I love when my dog farts on me..grimace*

We made our first trip to Bed Bath and Beyond this weekend to buy some goodies with gift cards we got for the wedding and ended up grabbing ourselves a Keurig platinum. It makes single serve cups of coffee, tea and cocoa..I AM IN LOVE WITH IT.

I have my pro wedding pics now as well….I’ll post them soon! foof.

I guess since the wedding worked out so perfectly that it just wasn’t in our cards for our honeymoon would be as well. As a whole it ended up going alright since it was about 10-11 days away but the beginning of it..not so much. As most of you know already the plan was head to DC for a few days before heading to our ultimate destination which was a beach house rented for a week in the southern outer banks of NC..followed by a stop in MD on the way back up to break up the drive. Wellll..due to me being on the pill for about 8 years and being in the car for 7 hours+ driving down from NY to DC I ended up getting a blood clot in my right calf. We even stopped about 3 times through the drive to use the restrooms and let Zoe walk a bit and empty out. Still got a clot though :(. I didn’t realize it until the next day either! See, we got into DC probably round 7:30pm-8pm and my legs and butt both hurt and ached but I figured it was normal since I had been in the car most of the day and shrugged it off. The Sheraton Suites of Old Town sent up a  delicious cheese and fruit platter free for being on honeymoon so we munched on that and some local calzones for dinner before heading to bed with hopes of seeing DC the next day. That, however, didn’t happen. I woke up basically unable to walk on my right leg because whenever I would stand up sharp pains would shoot up through my calf and it felt like heat and blood was rushing to my calf. The last thng was thinking was that it was a blood clot so when Ryan ran to grab so groceries I told him to grab some muscle rub and a bandage to wrap my leg to attempt to still enjoy the trip. While he was at the store I called my cousin who is a registered nurse and she insisted I go to the ER because what I was describing to her sounded like a blood clot. Went to the ER round noon and was stuck in there till that Saturday diagnosed with a blood clot in my right calf. We were supposed to make second half of the drive down to NC that Saturday but instead got another night at the hotel to recoup. The hospital allowed me to make the trip Sunday as long as I stopped every hour to walk (more like limp!) around and stretch..and take nightly blood thinner injections to prevent the clot from moving to my lungs and killing me. (Fun huh!)

We got to NC safely and by the end of the week when it was almost time to leave I was starting to walk normal again and got to see and walk in the ocean, see the wild horses on shackleford banks and collect some neat seashells before heading back to MD and home.

Needless to say I enjoyed being away from Rainchester and experience summer for about a week but could have done without spending the first third of the honeymoon in a hospital bed on an iv with blood draws that were happening almost constantly. I still enjoyed NC though..(Well, mostly. I can do without the prehistoric sized bugs that are there since they don’t really (if ever?) get snow.)

I’m now trying to get back to normal with my business and taking care of the house but I’m struggling a little because I’m on so much medication from the clot that I feel like ass all day. My primary doc still has me on nightly injections of lovenox which is an instant blood thinner into my stomach (given by my doting husband <3) and coumadin pills which are a gradual blood thinner with almost daily morning blood draws to check my blood thinness. Stillt rying to get the blood thin enough to be in what they call a therapeutic level which is between 2 and 3. On Wednesday it was at 1.88 and I had a draw this morning..I’m hopinh when I get a call (any minute now) it’ll be above 2 so I can stop the nightly shots. (They burn like hell!)

It really sucks because even with insurance the medical bills are adding up to cost more than our whole honeymoon even did. We have to stick to a tight budget now just to make sure we can cover my doctor bills. Ugh. Suckage. Oh well. We will pull through on top in the end..We always do. It’s just the in between struggle that sucks!

Here are some honeymoon shots…

We are leaving now for our honeymoon (DC for a few days and then a beach house in NC Outerbanks for a week!) so I will have a better update when we return. In the mean time watch my flicker for honeymoon updates!!

<3 <3