Strong girl

As I've said before, Hannah is SO strong! She holds her head up like a champ. She's holding her head up so well that we decided to try out her Bumbo. I intended to only have her in it for 5 minutes since it was her first time, but she did so well and we were having so much fun that she stayed in for about 15 minutes before she started fussing. She held her head up on her own the whole time and was looking around and watching her rattle. It was so much fun!

She also has amazingly strong legs. She can hold her self up completely on her own for minutes at a time with us only providing balance. It is incredible. She's going to be crawling and walking in record time. She loves exercising her little body and exploring the world and she's so much fun to watch. 

random cuteness

Strange child...

One day about a week ago, Hannah was crying and Dan threw a blanket over her head. We both sat there waiting for her to start screaming, but instead she stopped crying and the next thing we knew she was asleep. But it wasn't just a one time thing. Now almost every time we put a blanket over her head, she falls asleep. Strange child....

One year; one month

One year ago, I married the love of my life in the most beautiful place I know- the LDS temple in Washington DC. It was an amazing day. Everything went exactly how I dreamed. This last year has been the absolute best, happiest, most awesome year of my life. So much has happened and changed, but Dan and I are still very much in love and excited to be married to each other, and ready to take on a new year together.

 

Obviously, the biggest change that happened this year was the birth of our beautiful daughter. She is 4 weeks old today, and she is just gorgeous. She is a huge blessing and we love her so much. The dynamic in our house has definitely changed, but in a good way I think. She makes us so happy!

She's changed a ton, but she still loves her frog, as you can see. Haha! This is what we found when we got home from church this morning. What a little goof. She is always making us laugh and impressing us with how strong she is. She loves to try to stand up, and she can hold her head up really well. She's constantly moving and trying to figure out her little body. She's going to be crawling before we know it at the rate she's going. She's also getting pretty good at putting the pacifier back in when she spits it out. She still loses it a lot, but it's nice that I don't always have to help her anymore. She's sleeping really well- Well, this week anyway. Hopefully the trend will continue. She sleeps from 11-3, and then 3:30-6:30 or 7. It's awesome. I can't believe that she's a month old already, and that we've been married a whole year. Life is so crazy sometimes. But I am so blessed, and so grateful for my amazing little family!

The princess and the frog

 

My aunt sent me this pacifier, which for those of you who are wondering is called a "WubbaNub." It is a hospital grade pacifier attached to a stuffed animal. Hannah LOVES it! We weren't really supposed to give her a pacifier, but with all of the issues we were having with her feeding, we used it out of sheer desperation. Let me tell you, it was a life saver. It helped keep both of us calmer, and really helped her after her surgery, as I said in the last post. I've since tried to get her to use a normal pacifier, and she'll kind of take it, but only when I make her. She really only wants her froggie... all the time. He's her best friend and she loves him!

Cat got your tongue?

Have you ever heard of being tongue tied? Did you think it was just a figure of speech? Well unfortunately it's not. It's a very real issue, and so is a lip tie, and sadly Hannah was born with both. I thought about posting pictures of what they look like, but they're pretty yucky so I won't. Tongue ties are actually pretty common, and are one of the most common undiagnosed reasons that women in America don't breastfeed longer than 3 months. They inhibit a baby's movement of the tongue, making breastfeeding difficult, and in some cases near impossible. Hannah definitely had one of the more severe cases. My midwife figured out she was tongue tied after only a couple minutes of watching her try to eat. The poor thing just couldn't do it. She tried and tried as hard as she could, but she just couldn't get her little tongue to do what it needed to do. So pretty quickly Donellyn took a look inside her mouth and gave me the bad news. But the bad news didn't stop there. Hannah was also born with a very severe lip tie. It was grade 4, the most severe. You know that little flap that attaches your top lip to your gum? Well, Hannah's comes all the way down and wraps around her gum, basically splitting it in two. This also causes some trouble with breast feeding, since she was unable to get her lip up and over to make a good seal. But this can also cause trouble down the road when her teeth come in. It can cause tooth erosion by trapping milk, and can also cause her to have a very large gap in her two front teeth. Thankfully there is a dentist here in town that specializes in lip and tongue ties, and who studied with the doctor who invented the procedure that she needed. When she was just 3 days old, we took her to his office for a consultation. He told us he that he would do the procedure, but he was booked right now and couldn't get us in until the next Friday. Well, I started to cry. I just couldn't help it. The last three days had been absolutely miserable. The pain for me was excruciating, to the point where I would cry every time I had to feed her. And on top of that, she would get very frustrated every time because she just couldn't get it to work. We even had a lactation consultant come and help us, but that only helped to a point. We NEEDED this procedure, and we needed it NOW. Well, thankfully, one of their patients for the next day cancelled their appointment and so we were able to go and get it done. It took all of 15 minutes, and she immediately began eating better. The rest of that day was still pretty difficult, though, as she was completely freaked out by how much her tongue was moving. That thing would stick straight up and she couldn't figure out how to get it down. Thankfully we had a hospital grade pacifier that we were able to use to help her learn how to put her tongue down to suck. Since then, she has gotten better and better at eating and her mouth is almost completely healed. A couple of days after her surgery, we were taking pictures of her and got this shot kind of by accident, but it's the best picture we have of the scar under her tongue.

Tummy time!

Hannah is so strong! She's been holding her head up since she was about an hour old! She loves tummy time and will not only hold her head up and twist it around, but she will also push up on her feet and bring her knees forward. She's almost rolled herself over a couple of times. She's our little crossfit beast! She's gonna be crawling before we know it!

Hannah's first bath

I had Dan get her into the tub for me. This is what I found.

                                            Once we actually got her in the bath, she totally loved it.

My crazy birth story

                                                           Chillin in the herbal bath

                                                           Bonding time with Daddy

                             Donnelyn on the left and Sue on the right, doing Hannah's first check up

                                                checking out the world

                                                              8 lbs 4 oz, 21 1/2 inches long

It all started Sunday morning, July 24th. I woke up at 4:00 to go to the bathroom and couldn't get back to sleep. At about 4:15 I started having false labor contractions. They were random and not very strong, but enough to keep me awake the rest of the morning. As the day went on and we went to church, they got even farther apart and finally went away. After church I was so tired that I went to bed and slept for almost 4 hours, and it's a good thing I did. The funny thing is, the afternoon was almost an exact copy of the morning. I woke up at 4 and started having contractions around 4:15. The difference was, these were definitely the real thing. So I texted Donnelyn, my midwife and went about having a nice quiet night with Dan while waiting for them to get closer together. At about 7 we went to his parents house so that I could use his mom's big, jetted tub to take a bath. By this point my contractions were about 8 minutes apart and lasting about 30 seconds. Around 9:00 I was talking to my dad on the phone and all of a sudden my contractions started coming really close together. I had 3 in the 10 minutes I was on the phone. After 15 more minutes of this, I got back in the tub and Dan timed the contractions. They were coming around 3 minutes apart and lasting around 30 seconds. We called Donnelyn and she basically said that contractions like that usually mean it's going to be a really long labor because they don't dilate you as effectively as longer contractions. So I took some Benedryl and we went home and went to bed. Dan gave me a back rub which helped to slow down the contractions somewhat; enough anyway that he was able to fall asleep and I was able to doze a little in between. However, around 1:00-ish, they really started to come close together. They were coming about a minute apart, but still only lasting for 30 seconds. After 10 or 15 minutes of that, my water broke although I wasn't sure that's what had happened at first since hardly any water came out. It felt like somebody body slammed me in the pelvis. It was terrible. Especially since it threw me straight into a 2 minute long, horribly painful contraction! Poor Dan. Talk about being rudely awoken. Everything's peaceful and quiet and all of a sudden your wife is yelling in pain. After that contraction, I got up to go to the bathroom, and then got stuck on the toilet for about 15 minutes because the contractions were so long and terrible I couldn't move. Dan called the midwife she had him time me again for a few minutes. When she called back, and heard the combination of me yelling in the background and how long my contractions were, she told us to get in the car NOW. If I hadn't been in so much pain, I might have laughed at Dan running around getting ready to go. It's at that point, as I rolled off the couch, that I was sure my water had broken. So off we went to drive the 20 minutes it takes to get to the birthing center. I don't remember much of the drive besides trying to give Dan directions during contractions and him telling me to "breathe and relax" over and over and over. We got there about a minute before the midwife did, and then she got a wheel chair and wheeled me in, since it would have been a long walk, and I was having a contraction, and the baby was definitely coming at that point. We got inside and they made me get up on the bed so they could see how far along I was. Well, lets just say I was farther than they thought I would be or probably hoped I would be at that point, so at that point Donnelyn and her awesome apprentice Sue, who helped out with almost all of my prenatal appointments and taught the birth class we took, got be up and into the tub. Sidebar- For those of you who are wondering, no, I did not originally plan on having a water birth. Coming into this process I thought I definitely would NOT have a water birth. Then as I learned more about it I decided that I would think about it and decide how I felt once I was actually in labor. Fast forward to actually being IN labor, and let me tell you,when they told me they were taking me to the tub, nothing in this world sounded more heavenly than getting into the warm tub. So I got in, and immediately started needing to push. It was kind of funny because they're running around trying to get everything ready, but my body just wouldn't wait. I remember hearing Donnelyn saying in a slightly panicked voice, "Oh! She's pushing!" and me saying "I'm sorry! I can't help it!" Hahaha. At this point, Dan was sitting on the side of the tub with his feet inside, and they had me get in between his legs and use them to hold myself up while I pushed. It then only took 3 or 4 pushes for the head and 2 or 3 for the rest of her to come out. It was nuts. We got to the birth center at about 2:55 and she was born at 3:12. They kept telling me to slow down and not push so hard, but I just couldn't. When she was born, she floated up into my hands, so I was the first person to hold her, and we just sat in the water together for a while as they cut the cord and all of that good stuff. Then they had to stitch me up, get Hannah to nurse, take our vitals, and do a newborn exam. Hannah and I also got to get back in the tub for a few minutes for an herbal bath which was really nice and felt awesome. Then they got us some breakfast and let us take a nap. After our nap, we got all of our stuff together and got to go home!

Midwife?

A lot of people have wondered why I chose to have my baby with a midwife instead of in a hospital. There are many factors that went into this decision. First of all, MONEY. If you are having a baby and are strapped for cash, find a midwife! All together, with everything included, it costs under $5,000 to have a baby with a midwife, whereas having a baby in the hospital can cost you upwards of $10,000. When I went to an OB/GYN, I felt like just a number. One more pregnant lady. When I went to the midwife, she was more excited about me being pregnant than I was! She explained in detail everything she was doing, why she was doing it, and what she found. With the doctor I was poked and prodded in almost complete silence with no explanation of anything unless asked specifically. I could go on all day about the differences between the two, but suffice it to say, I felt much more comfortable and included in the process with the midwife. The third great thing about a midwife is that you can go home as soon as 2 hours after the baby's born if you choose. Hannah was born at 3:12 am, and we left at about 10 am after having breakfast and taking a nap. It is seriously priceless to be able to go straight home and into your own bed after something like that. I could go on all day about how great my experience was, but I won't. Suffice it to say, I loved my midwife, I had an awesome experience, and I would totally recommend it!