Ahhh...Blog, Sweet Blog.

Wow…I’ve been itching to get back to you blog. There have been so many times during the past three weeks when I have said, boy, I wish I just had a few minutes to get on and write about what has been going on here. Where have I been for three weeks, you ask?

Well, exactly three weeks ago I was gearing up for our newest arrival. Let me introduce her formally: Little Miss Chloe Susan, born May 27, 2010 at 8:12 pm. Weighing in at a whopping 9 lbs. even and measuring 20.5 inches. Here she is fresh out of the womb, chubby as can be:

Now that labor and delivery is behind us, I am trying to hold on to the memories of what will most likely be my last pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I love to be pregnant and I love being a mother, more so than I ever thought I would as I was growing up. I really enjoyed this last pregnancy with no complications except for the nagging foot in the rib that plagued me continually throughout the last month or so. I gained 42 lbs. this time. Better than the 55 lbs that I gained with Olivia—who was my smallest baby at 7 lbs. 15 oz coincidentally. I was induced and my water was broken and pitocin started at 3:30 pm. I did opt for an epidural which worked like a charm and by 8:05 I was ready to push. I pushed through 2 contractions and she was here! Easy peasy! Don’t be jealous, that’s just how I do it! :)

The biggest question when she arrived—besides, is it really another girl?—was whether or not she had a cleft palate. Upon an initial inspection the pediatrician was not quite sure, but we have since confirmed that Chloe does indeed have one. It is a different type than the ones her sisters Ava and Olivia have. They call it a sub mucous cleft palate. Basically she has skin on the roof of her mouth covering the hole that is her cleft. The bone and muscle is not properly formed, but she has a good suck—which neither Ava nor Olivia had.

I thought I would be able to nurse successfully and was overjoyed. They don’t surgically repair these types of clefts unless there is a significant speech issue…which of course we won’t know about until this little one starts to talk. If her speech is very nasal then they will do a correction much like the one that her sisters had. I’m praying that she won’t need the surgery. It is quite a bear and frankly, I don’t want to go through it again, let alone put another little one through it. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So on to the nursing thing…why is this such a big deal you may wonder? Well, besides the fact that it’s free food for the baby, it’s convenient, and it’s the healthiest option…I just really missed out on the experience with Ava and Olivia. If I hadn’t had a successful experience with Jordan, I suppose it wouldn’t be such a big deal but I did and it is. It IS a big deal when providing the most basic thing that a newborn needs becomes so difficult. Ava had a complete oral aversion. She didn’t like anything coming at her mouth, food or otherwise. Feeding her took so long and was so difficult. I wasn’t able to nurse, however I did manage to pump for the first 6 months. I had a large quantity of milk to give, but she just wouldn’t take it. She came home with a Nasal Gastronomy Tube and later we put in a more stable Gastronomy Tube called a Mickey. With Olivia it wasn’t as bad: she wasn’t able to nurse but she at least wanted to eat. I pumped for 6 months with her too. Feedings did take a little longer and it took her a long time to plump up but she is my chubby little cutie now.

So this time…I nursed for the first week. I thought everything was going fine, but I had a little suspicion after my milk came in that something might not be right. After I talked to the clinical coordinator at our Children’s Hospital my suspicions were confirmed. Even though it seems like Chloe might have a strong suck, she still might not be able to get all the milk she needs from nursing because the muscles just aren’t properly formed…Well, after hearing that I jumped into survival mode. I made Jim run out and buy a pump that very day. I had a little bit of a breakdown after my first session produced one measly ounce of milk. My supply was dwindling because she wasn’t able to build it. We ran out and bought a can of formula. I also must express my dissatisfaction with Magee’s Lactation department. I put a call into them on a Friday and didn’t hear back until the following Tuesday—yeah, thank God it wasn’t an emergency right?? By day three my supply came back, I’m happy to report. And now I’m able to exclusively feed her breast milk. I’m very happy about that. She can suck down a bottle like a champ, so no worries that she isn’t getting enough this time and even though pumping IS a little more time consuming, it isn’t nearly taking as much time as it did with the other two. I’m happy and grateful for the first week of nursing, even if it was only a case of ignorant bliss. We’ll see how long I can keep up with the pumping. I hope I can make it to a year….only 49 more weeks to go! :)

This is it…my first blog back…there’s so much more to say, but I’ll stick to topic here and just give you a sneak peak of some other subjects I may touch on later…if I can ever find the time again!

Future blog topics:

Jordan and Ava’s first dance recital
The CSA Share
More mommy stuff
Briefings on the house sale and house hunt
Anything else that strikes my fancy!

Spring will bring...

The past few days (weather wise) have been blissful. I have the blinds open this morning to blue skies and, before the girls began blaring a Taylor Swift song on their CD player, I could hear what seemed like a thousand different birds chirping outside the window. If I strain, I can still hear a few tweets make their way through and if I close my eyes I can wish away those ugly brown speckled snow mounds....they are slowly disappearing and that makes me very happy!

It means that spring is on the way and we've got a lot planned for this spring. First things first, and that's getting our house ready for the market. I'm not a spring cleaner, I'm a company's coming cleaner...but I kind of want to spring clean. It could be the nesting instinct kicking in. We have some big projects to tackle before we are ready to go. We need to finish our hardwood project that we started before the holidays--we need a nice solid weekend of mild weather and nothing else to do, to get it done (I mean that's what my husband needs...I'll be packing up the kids and dog and heading somewhere else for a couple of days!)

We also need to fix our front steps...scratch that, tear OUT the front steps and replace them. We've been "fixing them" for the last 3 years and the fix never lasts through the winter. We also need to paint the girls' room and the playroom a pleasing, buyer friendly neutral. Clean up the basement a little. I also need to organize...get rid of junk drawers and go through closets etc.

It's going to be a lot of work but hopefully this time the timing is right and we can move on from this home that was supposed to be our starter. We had a five year plan when we moved in ...it's going on 7. I'm fine with that. I like my house, but there's a few things that I will look for in the next house that we don't have now.

The end of spring will also bring our new baby. I feel like she is already here...of course I'm still getting a full night's sleep so I know that isn't the truth. Her movements are so much stronger now. I'm beginning to actually distinguish hands and feet wiggling around in there. I'm better able to predict periods of restfulness and awake time. The girls are constantly feeling my belly, "giving the baby kisses" and we all refer to her by her name, pray for her before bed and at meal times and just talk about her an awful lot...I guess that's why it seems like she is here! I'm getting into my uncomfortable 3rd trimester, more doctor's appointments and more preparations for her arrival. It's exciting! We are all placing bets on what she will look like! My guess is she will look like my oldest daughter and husband. I'm hoping for it actually...

The younger two have more of my facial features and they are cute as buttons if I do say so...but they both were born with cleft palates (I had one too!) and it makes the new born stage very worrisome. Now it is no big deal, but at birth Ava had some troubles and had to be in the NICU for the first 2 1/2 months. She had a bunch of procedures and it was very tiresome and awful to be away from her as much as we were. Livi's cleft palate issues weren't as severe, we could bring her home right away, but with both girls I couldn't nurse (I pumped like crazy) and it took Olivia a long while to plump up the way a baby should. They both were on monitors at night--Ava had a feeding tube, and I remember at times feeling less like a mom and more like a doctor or nurse fiddling with gadgets. Plus there was the corrective surgery for both of them around 1-1 1/2 years that was not fun AT ALL! We made it through though.

Selfishly, I'm hoping that this baby won't have a cleft. The sonograms look promising (but they all did, so that doesn't mean anything). I just want to be able to nurse my baby and not worry if she is getting enough to eat, or going to choke, or wrap herself up in monitor wires at night. I don't want her to have to have surgery. It would be absolutely wonderful to just have a normal mommy/newborn experience this last time around.

I wouldn't change anything--I bet Ava wouldn't be the spitfire that she is if she didn't go through that, and Olivia's easy going take it as it comes attitude would be different too. That new born experience helped to shape them into the sweet little things they are now...but this time around...well there's no telling what spring will bring, but we can hope!