life as the 3 of us

we have adapted well to becoming a family of 3 and we are liking it quite a bit.

here are random (quite random) highlights from our life in the last few weeks..

at jillie's 2 week appointment, she weighed 6 lbs 14 oz, and was 20 1/2 inches long. she's gained almost a pound since we left the hospital!

she is still eating every 3 hours, almost on the dot!

when we first brought her home, we had a hard time getting her to nap during the day. well, she has switched that up. she now naps great during the day time, but puts up a fight to sleep at night.

we've just started trying the whole "crying it out" thing, and that is not fun for anyone involved!

once jillie is asleep (usually about midnight), then she eats every 3 hours and then is ready to get up about 8 am when kyle is leaving for work. so we're really not losing too much sleep..can't complain!

the doctor thought she might have colic, due to some of her symptoms (screaming at the exact same time each evening/night), but we've kind of adapted a few things, and she seems to be doing better. one of those things being zero caffeine for mom (ouch) and jillie getting mylicon at each feeding. she still fusses at those times, but has taken the screaming down a few notches. which we appreciate!

just about every evening we take a walk. the girl loves loves loves to be outside! she just looks around and is so content. so we head outside when we can tell the fussiness is coming!

she loves her baby bjorn! it's her favorite mode of transportation!

she doesn't love being in the car. and when i say doesn't love, she lasts about 5 minutes before she decides she would "rather be somewhere else".

jillie has really taken to her swing. she didn't love it at first, but they have become good friends. she's actually in it right now. it buys a lot of time for mom to get stuff done.

i have learned it takes a lot of strategy to get things done during the day!

after all the randomness of our life, here are some pictures of our sweet girl..

jillian grace

she's here!

we've had her for 11 days now and time is already passing too fast!

i quickly learned that you fore go certain "luxuries" when your life turns into 3 hour increments and blogging was one of those!

her "birth story"..

--on april 5th, we got to the hospital at 4:30 am to start the induction process. (we tried everything to get her here naturally, but she wouldn't have it). when we got to the hospital my blood pressure was sky high! like..wow..HIGH! my blood pressure has not been high my entire pregnancy, but apparently my body didn't like being in labor. so immediately we were on "blood pressure precautions" and having to lay a certain way, keep the lights out, no visitors, just chill.

--the pitocin started at about 5 am and within minutes we were ticking off some pretty intense contractions every 1-2 minutes. it was a good sign i was responding so easily to the pitocin, but we were contracting a little too much, we had to back off the pitocin just a tad. and my blood pressure was coming down..things were looking good.

--jillian decides she doesn't want to tolerate the labor and dropped her heart rate to the 80's-90's. (should be 120-160). and my blood pressure was back up. doctor broke my water at this time. of course my fluid was meconium stained, just to make matters worse! the plan for now was to try to deliver as soon as possible to solve blood pressure and heart rate issues.

--at about 3pm we decided to get an epidural to see if it would help me and baby chillax. well, it did and everything was going great! i was dilating and our strips were looking great, so i was very relieved!

--well, she decided to be stubborn a few more times and drop her heart rate for several minutes at a time, which scares the poo out of all the docs and nurses. we kinda discussed a c-section if it keeps happening, but nothing to seriously.

--at 8 pm i was dilated to an 8, but our strips weren't looking great. the doctor decided to call a c-section at this time. they wanted to get it done before it became an emergency situation for baby's heart rate. insert 15 minutes here for me to completely break down because things weren't going as we had "planned".

-- we got ready for the c-section and headed to the O.R. well, apparently there happened to be an emergency situation, so they went to the O.R. first and we waited.

--during the time we waited, jillian's heart rate dropped to the 70's and wouldn't come back up. now it turned into a stat c-section and all craziness broke loose. all the staff was great and they got her out so quick!

--she started crying immediately, all i could see was kyle's eyes because of all his O.R. gear, and they were all squinty from smiling so big.

--she was so perfect and healthy, despite all the issues of the day!


here we are waiting to go into the O.R.


meeting jillian for the first time!


kyle carried jillie from the O.R. to the nursery.


my first time to see jillian after leaving the O.R.









she is the most precious thing ever! the first night with her was so surreal, i just kept looking at her, and couldn't believe she was ours!

i don't know if motherhood is what i "expected" or not. it's not any harder or easier than i thought. i literally love every minute of it! i actually love feeding her at night. i'm always a little sad when we have to put her to bed each night because we want her to stay up with us!

we're still getting into the routine with everything. she does not like sleeping during the day, so that is our only struggle right now. she is sleeping great at night though, so i'm ok with that trade off!

we are absolutely loving life as a family of 3!

we'll catch up on the rest of her life at a later date..someone is ready to eat!