April 28, 2011 - One Month Old!!!

Where has the time gone?? One month old already and I feel like she is changing more and more every day! Her little newborn face is taking on more expressions and those eyes seem like they are really focused on the baby talk I constantly give her!! Really wishing time would just slow down a little!!!

Well, to recap this week........I had the BEST surprise ever!! As I was being lazy upstairs on Tuesday afternoon, I got a text message from "Mie-Mie" (Grandma) that there was a visitor that wanted to see the baby! When I got downstairs it wasn't just any visitor but one of my best friends from Chicago who had flown in to surprise me! She stayed until Friday and it was such a good time for me and Eve, I really wasn't ready for her to leave! Aunt Laura even helped mommy with a little bit of a photo shoot as well to celebrate the big "one month" milestone!!! We also visited the house site and made our first trip to the grocery store (an event in itself)!

In other happenings this week, our little Evelina's cord stump finally fell off. It definitely took four weeks instead of the normal two weeks or less to fall off, which means we have yet to try out her baby spa tub (haha)!! The tough part was that in the spot of that dried out stump wasn't the best looking healed over belly button. So, we made our ump-teenth trip to the Pediatrician to have it sealed over with some silver nitrate (which is looking much better now). Also at this visit, we thought since it had been almost 2 weeks since her last weight check we should her weighed as well. Haha, she is a whopping 11lb 3 oz now!! One solid girl!!!

Lastly, just to share a cute story from the week........so we had taken Aunt Laura to show her our house that was being built and wanted to grab dinner on the way home. Daddy agreed to wait in the car while we ordered and picked up the food. He had a bottle ready in case she was hungry but otherwise we left them sitting in the air-conditioned car (because it happened to be 87 degrees that day) since Evelina was sleeping. I came out to check on them about ten minutes later and Daddy had the most flustered expression. He then tells me, "me and Eve are not speaking to you". Haha, I looked down at the seat and see a pile of clothes that Eve had been dressed in when we went inside. Apparently, when Daddy lifted her out of the carseat he got to experience cleaning up after her first "blow-out" diaper. Poor guy!!

Thursday, April 21 - Eve is 3 weeks old!!!

Our little angel is only a week away from being a month old! It's so hard to believe that much time has already gone by! It doesn't feel like I was pregnant all that long ago. Although I cant say I miss those final weeks much haha, I kind of enjoy being able to see my feet now (which finally seem to be normal in size).

Over the last week she seems to be growing even more although fighting to stay awake sometimes because I don't think she wants to miss out on anything. I find myself now getting absolutely nothing accomplished throughout the day because I so love snuggling with her when she is asleep and then love even more to be able to cherish her awake times now!

I'm sure by the time our daughter can talk she will be telling me to "put away the camera" but until that day I will be one of those crazy moms snapping pictures at every moment. Aunt Minda had gotten the baby this cute medical scrub outfit and I thought it would make a good 3 week picture. So we did a sponge bath and got the little outfit all snapped on......seconds later after sitting her up for the picture......it is drenched in spit-up! Haha so we may have re-attempt this at a later date but this was the best shot!

Monday, April 18 (2 weeks old)

Well here we are a little over 2 weeks after our little girl was born. Reflecting back on leaving the hospital and the past two weeks, I was thinking about what one of the Pediatricians said to us on the day of our discharge. He said, "people never talk about the first 2 nights after you leave the hospital so I'm telling you now that they will be challenging". Well, now a little over 2 WEEKS later and I'm reflecting on those first 2 nights, I'd say we had it pretty easy. This girl slept perfectly through the night, we had to wake her to feed her! It seemed as if having Daddy around for the first week doing night shift with me wasn't as necessary as we originally thought!

Now fast forwarding to the "now"........this little angel doesn't sleep quite as soundly through the night waking when she is definitely hungry every 2-3 hours but we still feel like we escaped "the rough patch". This increase in hunger could also explain why she is back at her 10 lb birth weight (we had a Pediatrician appt this morning who was excited that she had climbed back up out of the 9 lb range - see below in how angry she was to be there).


So really, all in all, she has been such a good baby. The only problem is that she already has so many people wrapped around her finger that we have a hard time putting her down for naps once she falls asleep during the day. I would rather hold her and snuggle her until she wakes up. Her dad is even worse, he loves having her lying on his chest or walking around talking to her.

Lately those big eyes seem to be more open every day and she is becoming more alert. Its so amazing to see her changing so quickly in just a few short days/weeks. I don't know if I'm ready for her to leave this newborn stage so fast!

March 31, 2011 - the long awaited BIRTHday!!

I know I'm back tracking on posts but I figured that I had left out a very important day to blog about. The BIRTHday of our daughter, Evelina.

In preparation for that day we had our HUGE black duffel bag ready by the door, some pillows, snacks and both of our laptops (we figured it would be a good day to be productive.........NOT). Mike and I both settled into bed at a decent hour and both of us slept horribly, haha I mean horribly! That 4am wake-up call could not come soon enough to herald our departure to the hospital.

So 4am came........I showered, curled my hair, put on makeup, shaved my legs.......all the benefits to knowing you were being induced instead of the normal surprise jetting to the hospital when contractions start at home. We got everything loaded into the car and arrived just before 5am. When they got us into our room it seemed very surreal that we were going to have our daughter that day at any time! They got me hooked up to the monitors, into my gown and started giving me Pitocin just before 6am to get the ball rolling.

Some of these pictures arent super attractive but I guess that's what comes with delivery day! Both of these were taken well into the afternoon!

Our Ob, Dr Zargarian, stopped by around 7:45 to break my water and gave orders to continue turning up the pitocin every 15-30 minutes. By 9am, we had three of our support team members settled onto the couch in the birthing room (see pic below)........Grandma Mie-Mie, Aunt Minda & Aunt Kim (my friend from PA school).


So now we were just waiting for news that I was getting close.........hours crawled by and my OB stopped in again but things weren't really progressing very quickly. She asked why I hadn't gotten an epidural yet and I was just waiting for things to get a little more unbearable. Well, about 15 minutes after she left (and cranked up the meds) I was ready for the epidural, not from pain but just starting to get uncomfortable. By 4pm when she stopped by again we were very close at about 7-8 cm dilated and then she came back at 5:30pm saying that she would like me to start pushing.

After this point, I feel like things happened in a blur. Mike was in my ear counting for me to push and the next thing I knew the nurse had put the most beautiful baby girl onto my stomach and was wiping her down with a blanket. Even today reminiscing about that moment I was (and still am) in utter shock and amazement....THIS was OUR daughter, the one I had been daydreaming about and feeling kick around for the past 9 months. All I could do was cry and stroke her tiny little hand! Wow, she was just so beautiful and so perfect.......and oh-my-gosh those cheeks!!!