One Month

My sweet baby girl, I can’t believe that you are already one month old. It seems unreal that time can move that fast. I want everything to slow down so that you can stay little forever, but I know that the best is yet to come. Here are some of the most amazing things about you during your first month…

You smiled for the first time. This very well could have been gas (and most probably was) but we were lucky enough to catch it on camera. This is our favorite picture of you so far and Mommy had it blown up and put onto a canvas so that we can look at it every day.

At birth you weighed 7 pounds and 13 ounces. You gained weight quickly (only losing one ounce after birth!) and at your one month check-up you were a whopping 10 pounds and 15 ounces. That puts you in the 95% percentile! You are right on track for height; measuring in at 20 inches at birth and 21 1/4 at your one month check-up.

You were in newborn diapers and clothes all the way up until about 3 weeks. The last week you transitioned into size 1 diapers and size 0-3 month clothes. We officially packed up all your newborn clothes, which was bittersweet for me. I saved one newborn onsie, your ‘going home’ outfit, and a newborn diaper to put into a shadow box for you so that someday you can see just how tiny you use to be.

You have a lot of nicknames. We like to call you Monkey, Little Lady, Pumpkin, Honey, and Baby girl. Your dad is sitting here and wants me to let you know that sometimes I call you Bubba…this is because I call Hudson, Bubba and sometimes it just slips out! Your dad is always quick to correct me though and remind me that you are the little lady. J

You don’t really have a schedule yet. We just pay attention to your cues and let you run the show. For the most part, you spend the day sleeping and are most awake at night (which makes me one tired Mommy during the day). You eat about every 2 hours and boy, do you love to eat. This is why you have been able to plump up so fast! We’ve only tried bottle feeding you a few times, which didn’t go so well…it turns out you like your milk nice and warm. We bought a bottle warmer for you, which made things go more smoothly, but you still prefer your milk from Mommy…Mommy prefers this too. J

In your first two weeks you loved to be swaddled…we would often double swaddle you, which always seemed to the do the trick and calm you right to sleep. However, in the last two weeks, you have seemed to fight the swaddle. You really love having your arms out so we swaddle you without them tucked in. However, you are still in the stage where your arms will flail around and scare you awake…so you sometimes get a little fussy and upset when you are woken up by your arms. You will start to be more aware of your arms in the next couple months though, so that will get better.

You’ve had quite a few milestones this month! You smiled for the first time and you gave a small laugh for the first time. It wasn’t a deep belly laugh, but it was enough to make us laugh with you. You have amazing neck strength and have impressed your pediatricians with being able to hold your head up like a 2 month old baby! You’ve been very good about making eye contact this past week and I love being able to look into your beautiful blue eyes. Your umbilical cord fell off in your third week and we were very happy parents because it was starting to get a little smelly.

You aren’t playing with toys yet…however, you love your wubbanubs. We make sure we have at least one of these wherever we go, because they can usually calm you right down. You love holding onto the little animal at the end, but this sometimes causes you to pull the pacifier out of your mouth…which makes you a little upset. You also seem to like your swing. We can’t tell if you love it, but you seem to sit very contently in it and watch Mommy get ready for the day. You also love looking at the patterns on your little book that you got from the hospital in New York, and on the back of Jacques the Peacock. These only hold your attention for a minute or two though. More than anything, right now you seem to just love looking around. If you start getting a little fussy, Mommy and Daddy will just walk you around the room and show you different things. Sometimes you just like to lie on your changing table and look out the window. You are a very curious baby so far.

We have introduced you to Hudson, but you both don’t seem to have any interest in each other yet. You just like looking around you and have a hard time focusing on the speedy little fur-ball; while Hudson is only interested in treats and Daddy (he really loves Dad). We’ll try again in a few weeks and see how you two adjust to each other.

You’ve been in great health so far. You had a case of milia when you were born…we like to call them ‘pearls’…apparently these little pearls will be with you for a few months. You sneeze a lot, but the doctors assured us that this is normal for infants, since you are still trying to get fluid out of your nose from when you were inside my tummy.

We did have one scary incident with you when you were almost 3 weeks old. We had to take you to New York because your great-grandma was very sick. When we got to New York, you stopped breathing and gave me and your Grammy a heart attack! We rushed you to the hospital, where they transferred you by ambulance to another hospital and admitted you into the NICU. It was heart breaking for me to see your tiny little body on the stretcher in the ambulance, and to see you in pain when they had to draw blood. You spent 48 hours in the NICU hooked up to monitors while Mommy never left your side. Even though you were only 2 weeks old and had no idea what was going on, I couldn’t bear the thought of you being upset and I wanted to make sure you knew you weren’t alone. Your nurses were very nice and let me sleep in a rocking chair next to you; they even brought me all my meals so that I didn’t ever have to leave you. All the nurses in the NICU absolutely loved you. They always came over and wanted to play with you and hold you. Everything turned out okay…nothing came up on the monitors, so we think you just had a choking episode. You seemed to love your stay at the NICU though…the nurses all joked that we’d have to go home and buy you an incubator because you seemed to enjoy just basking in the heat lamp. J

You’ve had a lot of firsts this month (pretty much everything!) but some significant ones are: your first overnight hospital stay, first airplane ride (you did amazing and slept through all our flights), first car trip, first outing with just Mommy, first visit to another state, first bath (you did not love these at first, but have since warmed up to them), first walk in the stroller, and first tummy time (which you only tolerate for at most 5 minutes at a time).

 First Bath

 Second Bath

We’ve had a lot of great times with you so far, but I think my favorite has been seeing you meet your great-grandma. She fell in love with you the minute she saw you and kept talking about you for the rest of our visit. We could only bring you in for a few minutes, because I was worried about you getting sick from hospital germs…but we got a picture of you meeting her and a picture of four generations of us. I know this will be a picture we frame and put up around the house.

Those are all our updates for your first month. Like I said, I can’t believe you are already one month old! Watching you observe and take in the things around you is absolutely amazing and makes my job as your Mom that much more rewarding. I loved you the second I found out that you were growing in my tummy and the moment I saw you, my love grew times a million. Each day I think that there is no way I could love you more than I already do, but each day I continue to love you more and more. You are truly the missing piece to our lives and I can’t imagine not having you here. It feels like you have always been a part of our little family. I love you so much little monkey and I can’t wait to see what month 2 has in store for us!

Love,

Mommy

The Birth Story of Hannah Belle Cavanah

*Note: This is a loooong post :) And some parts might be a little TMI, but I want to remember everything, so I decided to include it all.

It was Friday night, May 25th and Noah and I were having what is a pretty average night for us. I had been pretty nauseous all day long, so I was resting in bed playing on Pinterest and Noah was playing a video game on his computer. Around 11pm I decided to call it a night, but not before I randomly mentioned to Noah how strange of a thought it was that I could technically go into labor at any moment. We talked about how weird that we could be thinking that we were about to have a normal weekend, but in actuality we never know when our baby is going to decide to make her debut! My due date wasn't until Monday, May 28th, and I was pretty sure that Hannah was going to be late (just based on the fact that most first time mom's deliver about a week late)...so I laughed at how funny that thought is, and passed out.

I woke up during the night at my usual times for bathroom breaks...never suspecting anything. At 6:30 am I woke up from a strange feeling...kind of like I was very slowly leaking. However, the feeling passed and I fell back asleep. I woke up about 30 minutes later to the feeling again, I shifted slightly in bed and then I felt a huge gush. At this point, I was pretty positive that my water had broken. I called out to Noah to tell him that I thought my water was breaking, he sat right up and asked "are you sure?" I stood up and pulled the blanket back. The sheets were soaking, and I was literally dripping fluid. Noah shot out of bed and began making phone calls to the hospital and his family. I ran down the hall to let my mom know and then a weird calm-panicky feeling came over me and the last thing in the world that I wanted to do was go to the hospital. So I showered. And I took my time. 

By this point, everyone in the house was awake and running around, trying to get me to rush and finish showering. Somehow Noah was able to persuade me to get out of shower and a few short minutes later we were in the car and on our way. I was pretty nervous, but also excited...and more than anything, I was uncomfortable. I wasn't in any pain, but I was still gushing fluid (for future Mama's, if you ever have a fear that you won't be able to tell when your water breaks...let me erase your worries by letting you know now, that there is no way you will NOT know. I would continue to leak fluid for the whole 20 hours that I was in labor, which is apparently normal...but surprising to me). Anyways, we arrived to the hospital around 8am. They took me into triage where they usually do an exam to determine if you are ready to be checked into the hospital, however, they saw how much fluid I was leaking and were able to confirm that my bag of waters had completely broken. So we were whisked behind the double doors of the maternity ward and checked into our labor and delivery room. 

By 9am, I was in my hospital gown, hooked up to my IV and sitting comfortably in my bed, with Noah and my family around me. After your water breaks, they don't like to do too many cervical checks so as not to introduce germs to the baby, but I was not having any contractions, so they wanted to get a feel as to where I was, so they did a quick check and found out that I was only 1cm dilated. I was told that we were going to have to start pitocin to try and activate labor and get things moving along. The labor and delivery unit was packed  that day, so I didn't actually start getting pitocin until noon. At that point I had started having very small and irregular contractions. The pitocin takes about an hour to kick in and by 1pm, I was feeling them, however they were still very manageable. 

Over the next few hours my contractions got closer together and were getting stronger. By that time, Noah's family had arrived and everyone was doing a really good job of helping me manage my pain. I spent most of my time on the big labor bouncy ball thing...for whatever reason, it worked best in helping me to manage the pain. Eventually my contractions started coming in really strange intervals...I would get two contractions back to back...and then I would have a 5 minute break....I also started having really bad back labor, these things combined means that the baby has turned into a breech position. I wasn't in the mood to deliver a breech baby, so I spent the next hour on my feet trying to flip the baby back into a good position (which she eventually did flip back into).

By 7pm my contractions were so bad that I was literally crying through them and could barely breathe...they were also still incredibly close together, so I wasn't getting much of a break. A nurse came in to perform a cervical exam and I was barely 3cm. I was disappointed and did not want to get the epidural at only a 3, so the nurses gave me the greatest thing on Earth. Nubain. It is a pain/anxiety medicine that they inject into the IV. It makes you incredibly dizzy and out of it, so I had to be confined to the bed, but honestly at that point, I did not care...and after the Nubain, I had no cares in the world. It was amazing. I was able to relax and sleep for a few hours and let my body work itself through labor. 

Around 9:30pm, the Nubain started to wear off slightly and the nurses decided to do another cervical check. Still only a 3. At this point, they gave me my options. I could continue to labor on my own and see if I progressed, or I could get the epidural and see if that sped things up a bit. They informed me that they will only let a patient go 24 hours after their water breaks, before the baby needs to come out...meaning a C-section was in my future if my cervix didn't start getting into gear. I opted for the epidural. 

The epidural was a breeze. I didn't feel the numbing injection, and I didn't feel the catheter going in. I could, however, feel the catheter in my back as it was getting placed, but it didn't hurt at all. The epidural kicked in pretty quickly...I felt the full effects of it after about 30 minutes. However, I was slightly disappointed in it. I couldn't feel my legs at all and I couldn't feel my contractions...but I was feeling ENORMOUS pressure in my lower region. I had assumed that I wouldn't be able to feel anything...but this pressure hurt just as bad as my contractions had been hurting. I had Noah get the nurse because I was in so much pain...they did a check and discovered that I was at 7cm! I had progressed from a 3 to a 7 in about an hour. The nurse was surprised to find that the baby was so low that she could feel her head...which was why I was feeling so much pressure. She decided to give me another hour. 

I tried my hardest to relax over the next hour, but the pressure was crazy. I was trying my hardest not to hold back, but also not to push. It was definitely an uncomfortable feeling. I also had started to shake uncontrollably....apparently this is totally normal and due to hormones going crazy, but it was an insane feeling. On top of all that I had started getting a fever and I was incredibly nauseous. So I was getting ready for all of this to come to an end.

At midnight the nurse came back in and did another check...I was 9.5-10cm and almost ready to push. They decided to let me labor down for awhile on my own in an upright position to let the baby move down naturally. During this time, my family wished Noah and I good luck and left the room to wait out the rest of the labor in the lobby. I remember feeling really calm, despite the crazy pressure, and I remember telling the nurse that it was past midnight so my baby was going to be a May 27th baby. 

The nurse came back in and it was time to start pushing. All of the sudden I became SO thirsty...I think it was from nerves, because I had been getting fluids all day and would have no reason to be that thirsty. I had one tiny sip of water and immediately threw it up, so I was not allowed to have any more water. 

We began pushing at 1am. Noah was amazing and by my side the whole time. My nurse was incredibly motivating and enthusiastic...in fact, she was so enthusiastic, that I started questioning whether or not what she was saying was true (she kept telling me that she could see the head and that the baby was moving down)...so I eventually asked for a mirror so I could see for myself. I pushed two more times and it was amazing to be able to see for myself how far Hannah moved down with each push. At 1:45am, my temperature was up pretty high, so I was given ibuprofen despite the fact that the nurse was sure I would throw it up. Sure enough, it came back up. But then everything was a blur...one minute I am so sick and then next there are nurses everywhere running around like crazy and telling me to stop pushing (I wasn't aware that I was pushing...I was just busy not feeling well).  

Finally, at 1:54am the doctor gave me the okay to push. I gave one big push and Hannah came into the world. The cord was wrapped around her neck so the doctor had to cut it, but she gave a piece for Noah to cut anyways. 

It was the most amazing experience. They put Hannah on my chest right away, and I was making the strangest noise from half crying, half laughing. She was so beautiful and I couldn't believe that MY baby was laying on my chest. I couldn't believe that I was touching MY baby's little arm. Noah was so happy and proud and ran out to let our families know that Hannah had arrived. 

She was born on Sunday, May 27th, 2012 at 1:54am. She was 7 pounds 13 ounces and 20 inches. She had a great APGAR score of 8 and 9. And she was adorable. 

The next few days were an emotional blur. I couldn't believe that I had given birth to such an amazing and beautiful girl, and I was so afraid that I was going to do something wrong. I barely slept the first couple weeks because I felt like I needed to be watching her at all times. I felt like, if Noah was sleeping, and I was sleeping...who was going to be awake to make sure that Hannah was breathing?

The day Hannah came into this world was the most amazing day in the world. I get so emotional just remembering it. It is the day that changed our lives forever and I couldn't be a happier or more proud Mama. :) 

Checked in and hanging out

Noah, ordering lunch (I got to enjoy some lovely jello and ice chips)

Just walking it out with my portable IV

Opening presents from Uncle Levi and Aunt Molly

About to start the Pitocin

Tracking my contractions as well as Hannah's heartbeat

More information

Nap time for us, after I received the Nubain

Passed out

Our view of Bellevue

Hanging out before pushing time! 

Texting with Amy :)

Pushing time!

Holding my angel for the first time

Noah holding Hannah for the first time

Our new family! 

Birth stats

Getting weighed 

Going through all the tests

This picture makes me laugh...I'm so happy to be drinking water that I look drunk

Getting a bath

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July, from our family to yours.