Lifestyles of the Lactating and Exhausted

(note: that title pretty much guarantees my dad won't want to read this post. Don't worry, dad, I don't really talk about lactating. In fact I won't even use the word 'lactating' anymore. I promise.)



(lactating!)



(sorry... couldn't help it. I'm done. Now for the post...)



For having a 3 week old and a 20-month-old, I gotta say that Tim and I are surprisingly coherent. Really, ew toootlally r cohairent…I reaalie meen GJVGTBNJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHJJJJJJJJJJJJHHHHHHH

Oops. My head just hit the keyboard. It's alright, I'm cool. It's all a normal and natural part of motherhood.

Don't let this F6 embedded in my forehead fool you, I'm really feeling pretty great. Yes, Ava is still nursing (day and night) every other hour – but I don’t feel as tired as such a schedule would lead you to believe. I’m either completely insane and I don’t realize how crazy and out-of-it I am… or I have some of that postpartum adrenaline keeping me all hopped up.

Although anatomical realities have spared Tim from knowing the world of newborn night duty, he has his own reasons for being exhausted. He is our official Bub wrangler…and wild bubs can’t be broken. Alexander continues to be totally enthusiastic about the arrival of his baby sister, “Aba”. Endearingly and dangerously enthusiastic.


Alexander’s latest jokes often involve wearing other people’s shoes, or putting non-footwear items on his feet (boxes, hats, etc.) Here he is walking around the house in Grandma’s shoes:




And here he is putting a bucket on his feet and testing material for his groundbreaking 2028 Comedy Central special:


Being both hilarious and a big brother is exhausting. At the end of the day, Bub likes to chill out in his Fortress of Solitude and watch Elmo.








This weekend we had a visit from my grandma (Bub and Ava’s Great Grandma or “GG”). It was so wonderful to have GG here, and even though she just left twenty minutes ago I already miss her.

I think both Ava and Alexander sufficiently yarred out GG. Ava showed how soundly she could sleep…



And Alexander just batted his insanely long eyelashes.



So that’s our life right now. I’m spending most of my days with my shirt half-off and trying to give sufficient attention to both my wee offspring. Bub’s super excited about his little sister and Tim’s trying to keep Bub from injuring said little sister with aforementioned excitement.


Won’t someone please think of the kitties?

Seriously. Has anyone seen Cow and Bear?

Introducing Ava June!!

The tiniest member of our family has arrived!

Ava was born via c-section on the afternoon of April 3rd. She was 7 lbs 14 oz and yarry as all get out. She was 37 weeks old, so she was a bit early but she is still considered "full term". On Saturday April 3rd I noticed she wasn’t moving around much. This led to a two hour NST test which led to a biophysical which led to the discovery that she only had 3 cm of amniotic fluid and needed to be delivered immediately. Here she is, just minutes old.



Alexander came to visit her at the hospital:



He said “Baby!” when he saw her. He now calls her “Aba” (although every now and then he gets the “v” right and it comes out “Ava”... so he can officially say his sister's name before he can say his own name.) When he sees her, he often blows her kisses – completely unprompted. The kisses were a completely spontaneous reaction on the part of Bub. YAR!!



Our beautiful girl began to develop a Simpson-esque yellow glow on about day two. It turns out she was developing jaundice. We left the hospital with instructions to get her bilirubin checked at the doctor’s office the next day. The next day, we found her weight had dropped to 6 lbs 14 oz, and her bilirubin levels were quite high. So we had to go back to the hospital, this time to the pediatrics unit. Ava spent a day and night getting a tan under the “bili-lights”. She loved the warm lights, but hated the eye protection she had to wear which made her look like she was impersonating a raccoon or planning to rob a bank (or impersonating a raccoon planning to rob a bank). We wondered if we could have gotten the same treatment if we had simply taken her to the neighborhood Tantastic – but we decided to follow doctor’s orders and stay at the hospital and use their medically approved uv lights.

She was released to go home and we had to use a bili-blanket. Don’t let the name fool you. It isn’t a soft and comfortable blanket. It's a narrow plastic panel attached to a gigantic hose. She had to be on the “blanket” for 23 hours a day, which meant I had to keep her on it even when breastfeeding. It did offer some cool sci-fi effects, but it was otherwise annoying.


While her weight is still down at around 6 lbs 14 oz, her bilirubin levels are not crazy-high anymore. Yeaa! We need to try to get her weight up and keep an eye on the bilirubin levels to makes sure the continue to go down. As a result of all of this, we have to make frequent trips to the doctor. Here she is getting read to go out for one of those trips:


Oh, and in case you wonder, I am doing fan-freakin-tastic!!! This was the easiest delivery on earth, I swear. I had a cold, so the cough was a bit painful, but other than that recovery was a breeze. That’s not just the pain meds talking, either, I swear. This was super-dooper easy. (OK... the pain meds help a little.) I realize the enthusiasm of the above statements may sound like sarcasm, but I'm not being at all sarcastic. This. Was. EASY.

Sorry it took a while to post the announcement here. We’ve been a bit busy. I promise I will try to post updates from Yar-central as often as possible, but dramatic pauses are sort of inevitable.

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes. If you see my mom, give her a high five because she has been a super-hero grandma in helping Tim, Alexander, and I welcome our new family member. Thanks, mom!

We can’t believe our DNA managed to make another super cute kid.

Why do the pretty girls always keep you waiting?

OK, you can end the drumroll. Maybe even throw in an anticlimactic horn going "waht-waaaaah".

It’s been a week now, and I’m happy to report that I’m still pregnant! We are continuing to take things one day at a time, and even a light breeze could blow us into the hospital… but for now Ava is still in her womb and I’m still waddling along.

The mini-crisis of last week has simmered down, mostly because Ava has been acing her tests in the doctor’s office. Amniotic fluid is still a concern. It was 6.1 as of yesterday, and evidently 6.0 is the cut-off to deliver. Oh, my babies just LOVE drama in pregnancy. It’s like “As the Womb Turns” in there.



I know “they’ say you should never compare your kids… but in this instance I can’t resist. I was looking back at my data from Alexander’s pregnancy and comparing it to this one. (Whoa… nerd alert. Who keeps pregnancy data??) Alexander had a biophysical at 36 weeks 2 days, Ava had one at 36 weeks 3 days. Let’s compare and contrast…



It should be noted that the vertical axis is scaled for hyperbole, but the data is still real. There’s a big difference between 8 lbs 3 oz (Alexander) and 6 lbs 8 oz (Ava). Ava is going to seem so tiny to us. Since my muscles has been set to “Gigantor Baby” for the last 19 months, my biggest fear is that I’ll fail to recalibrate my arms before picking Ava up. I’ll go to lift her out of the crib and she’ll end up airborne.

Alright. Back to gestating. We’ll keep you posted on Ava’s ETA. For now, all we can say is that it will be sometime between today and mid April.

Virtual Prozac

As we anxiously await the arrival of his little sister, please enjoy the following hastily assembled montage...

Go ahead and start the roll drumroll…

Ava may be making her grand entrance earlier than expected! I did develop very very super duper extra-mild pre-eclampsia, but that’s hardly worth mentioning. (Which is why I mentioned it. Hey, it’s not called “Our Succinct Blog’, people.) OK, I'll try. The short version of the story is that Ava’s amniotic fluid is pretty low (less than 3 AFI for any of you health data nerds out there).

The doctors debated for quite some time about whether they should deliver me today or wait. That’s an interesting conversation to listen to as you are strapped down to a table and half naked in the doctor's office. Of course, I’m not quite full term at 36 weeks and 2 days, so they weren’t sure if they should deliver immediately or let Ava cook a few more days. In the end, they sent me home with instructions to drink lots of water, do regular kick counts, and (they need a rubber stamp for this one and they can just thunk me on the forehead with it at every visit) to “take it easy”.

There will be more tests tomorrow, and every day until delivery, and probably lots more vague advice. All of this means I’ll definitely be having a repeat c-section – which I sort of expected anyway- sometime probably in the next seven days or so. Ava seems especially determined to come into this world via c-section because she is still breech. She must not want to mess up her hair on the way out or something.

More news as it happens…

Bub and the Professional Yartographer

Alexander's 18-month pictures turned out yartacular! These were taken by Kim Youra who specializes in yar. She does such an awesome job of capturing Bub's personality, and has the patience and energy required of her profession (and then some). If you look at her site, you might spot a six-month old picture of Alexander (and a large monkey) in the infant gallery and a one-year-old Alexander and smashed up birthday cake in the toddler gallery. Here is our guy at 1 1/2 years (or 18 months... or 78 weeks... or 547.5 days) old!














And here is Bub and Ava in their first photo shoot together. (sort of)

Get your motor running…

Now that the weather has gotten better, we splurged and got Alexander a tricycle! He was a big help in putting it together.



… eventually, he just took over entirely…



… and he loves riding it (with help) around the driveway.



He’s still a bit little for it but he has fun trying and he’ll probably be ready to really “open her up” this summer. Vroom-vroom!! (OK, more like “err-eet , err-eet, err-eet” - but to a kid that’s just a year and a half old, that’s just as exciting as vroom-vroom. )

Another Pregnant Pause (that joke never gets old)

Long time, no update. What can I say? I’ve been busy growing a human being… what have you been up to?

OK, truthfully, I’m just lazy. Here are some Cliff Notes on the latest news from each of us…

Alexander: Continues to be insanely cute, insanely smart, and a little bit insane. Enjoying his mornings in pre-pre-pre school. Surprised the teachers who didn’t know he knew his letters when he read a little wooden letter “b”, then turned it upside down and said “p”. His spoken vocabulary is growing every day, so before you know it he’ll actually be able to question our parenting skills with some well-reasoned arguments. He has a crush on his cute swim teacher. Current favorite hobby: “Art! Art! Art!”

Tim: Trying to get some projects done before Ava’s ETA… but his pregnant (and often demanding) wife isn’t affording him much studio time. Current favorite hobby: Making Alexander laugh so hard he goes into fits of ‘silent laughter’. Also, learning creative ways to make wife pipe-down.

Ava: ETA is in about 3 1/2 weeks. Hoping to enter the world this old fashioned way… but needs to turn herself around (or “de-breechify”) first. Also, mom needs to not get pre-eclampsia and a few other things. Grandparents are already doting as they painted her entire nursery without Ava having to lift a finger. Current favorite hobby: Perfecting the backstroke in amniotic fluid just as she runs out of room to backstroke…. but kicking mom’s bladder is fun too.

Steph: Pregnant (and often demanding). Swollen like a puffer fish. Still officially declaring this “The Best Pregnancy Ever in the History of Steph… EVER”. Current favorite hobby: Collecting pee (ok, not so much a favorite hobby but a doctor mandated one).

Cow and Bear: Continue to be both lovers and bitter rivals. Current Favorite Hobby: Shenanigans.

A Rare and Remarkable Event

Shh.... read this post very quietly.

Bubby actually took a nap the other day!

OK, most parents of 18-month-olds wouldn't exactly be impressed by this as most 18-month-olds nap every single day. Given the chance, wouldn't YOU nap every day? Yeah, me too.

Alexander, however, has almost given up on naps all together. In fact, it had been almost three weeks since his last real nap. Eh... kids these days with their exuberance and wakefulness.

So this rare and exciting occurrence had to be photographed. Enjoy the sleepy yar.

Hair Club for Infants Welcomes Newest Member

I had an ultrasound yesterday that showed Ava already has hair! It looked like short blades of grass spiking up all the way around the top of her head. (I knew I shouldn’t have been watching The Simpsons… fetuses are so impressionable.)

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a picture of her spikey ‘do. But please enjoy this shot of her foot:



(Don’t see a foot? Well, ultrasounds are sort of a rorschach test… so consult your local psychiatrist for an interpretation of your test results and possible medication.)

I’m just over 32 weeks and things are looking good. I’ve had more swelling and a bit of an increase in blood pressure. Not big deal, really, but it is enough to land me a day of peeing into a jug just to make sure I’m not headed for drama. We’ll also have more frequent testing from here until delivery with weekly non-stress tests and more ultrasounds. So far, though, this is the BEST PREGNANCY EVAH!