It cracks me up.
And no, she is not crying....just making a mildly discontented face. Her legitimately sad face is much less funny and much more heartbreaking.
I love this face
It cracks me up.
And no, she is not crying....just making a mildly discontented face. Her legitimately sad face is much less funny and much more heartbreaking.
Funny Faces
It may not happen for another couple weeks, but I am anxiously awaiting Papillon's first real smile. She doesn't often do "fake smiles" (or "non-social smiles" or whatever they are called at this stage). Some times a yawn will look like a smile. And sometimes she "smiles" in her sleep. But other than that, she mostly makes odd non-smiling faces, like these:
A happy talking face. Almost a smile I suppose.
A contented thoughtful face.
And, quite possibly, her most often used face...the face of concern and/or bewilderment.
Papillon can furrow her eyebrows like none other. I will be sure to post a picture of a serious furrow if it ever stops eluding the camera
2 Weeks
Yesterday marked 2 weeks old for little Papillon.
She is still a champion sleeper.
She is still a champion sleeper.
Though she is also a champion crier now too. When she is awake and not eating, she mostly fusses. That's what babies do I suppose. A typical day looks like this:
6am - 10/11am: 2 or 3 breakfasts with moderately fussy awake time inbetween.
11am - 2:30pm: Totally zonked. Waking her at 2:30pm is a chore.
2:30pm - 10:00pm. Awake, and largely fussy unless eating or being held by daddy. (If I hold her, she fusses cause she figures she is so close, she may as well be eating.)
10pm - 6am: Asleep, with 1 midnight sleep-eating session.
Its still a pretty good "schedule" (I use the term in the loosely since things are still too fluid to really be a schedule), and with 2 weeks gone by already, I have been reminding myself to enjoy even the fussy times, cause they won't last forever, and one day in retrospect I am sure I will miss these beautiful times.
In other news, I have been amaze how quickly my body has gone back to "normal". At 2 weeks post-partum, I have lost 27 lbs. A mere 15lbs to before I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Obviously the last 15 are going to be harder than the first 27, but I am quite pleased with the progress so far. Its actually almost odd; I had gotten so used to being pregnant, its almost feels weird to be "skinny" again.
Mon Amour goes back to work tomorrow. Its been awesome to have him around though it will be good to work on establishing a new routine. I feel totally capable of handling Papillon on my own while he is at work, the hard part is going to be wrapping my mind around the fact that Papillon is my job now. I think in my mind with Mon Amour returning to work that I should return to some kind of non-baby work. That my productivity will return to "normal" and that I will be able to get ridiculous amounts of stuff done in a day.
But that is not going to happen, and I suspect for a while I will feel like I do nothing all day long - cause cuddling a fussy baby doesn't feel productive, nursing doesn't feel productive, napping when baby naps doesn't feel productive. And its going to be a hard mental shift for me to count those things as legitimate productivity. People do not lie when they say mothering is a full time job. I just need to wrap my mind around the fact that my to do list no longer involves writing contracts and calling vendors. At the top of my priority list every day now I now put "nurse x8(ish)". And on a day when I do that, get a nap, eat enough to not feel faint, and make dinner, I need to remind myself that that was a productive day.
Cute Videos
As a shower gift, my mom and Aunt got us a Flip Video Camera. Which we have been using rather frequently, though Papillon has a tendency to stop doing whatever cute thing she was doing as soon as the camera turns on. So we have lots of video of her just staring blankly at the camera. Not terribly interesting stuff. But here are a few of her actually doing something.
And many apologies for the fact that they are not embedded. I couldn't for the life of me get them to work properly, so I gave up and used YouTube links. Not super-fancy, but it gets the job done.
Sneezing.
Morning Play Time
Hiccups
Stretching (from way back when we were still in the hospital)
Enjoy.
And many apologies for the fact that they are not embedded. I couldn't for the life of me get them to work properly, so I gave up and used YouTube links. Not super-fancy, but it gets the job done.
Sneezing.
Morning Play Time
Hiccups
Stretching (from way back when we were still in the hospital)
Enjoy.
Waking up is hard work
Let me preface this post with the statement that I am NOT complaining. I love that Papillon is an excellent sleeper. Mon Amour and I have been blessed with a very easy baby so far, and I have a huge amount of respect for parents with more difficult children, because even though I can call Papillon nothing but "remarkably easy going", caring for her is still a ton of work. So, many kudos to all the parents out there whose babies don't sleep like this.
Anyway. Forgive the poor lighting in these pictures. The following is a little glimpse of what Papillon does every night when I try and get her to wake up to eat.
A grimace at first nudge.
Anyway. Forgive the poor lighting in these pictures. The following is a little glimpse of what Papillon does every night when I try and get her to wake up to eat.
A grimace at first nudge.
I proceed to tell her its time to get up and attempt to wake her by kissing her sweet cheeks.
All is futile and with a little lip smack and a sigh as she returns soundly to Lala Land.
I then move on from my sweet attempts to wake her to something more determined.
Time to take off the swaddle and make things a bit chilly.
That elicits a response. One face of disgust from Papillon.
But she is quickly over it, and decides that sleeping sprawled out is just as fun as sleeping swaddled.
No such luck waking her up. But Papillon needs to eat...for my sake mostly!
Eventually she obliges, but it typically takes a good 20 minutes, and a little cold water to get her eyes to open. These nighttime feedings would take a lot less time if she wasn't such an awesome sleeper.
Papillon's Birth Story: Part 3: The Delivery
By the time Mon Amour returned to the room things were obviously moving rapidly. The nurse checked my progress again (couldn't have been more than 30 minutes since the last check), and I was 8cms. That would explain why things were so much worse, we had entered the transition phase, and I had started to wonder if I could really do this. But at 8cms, its a little late to look back.
The speed of delivery was clearly a little too much for Papillon's taste, because her heart rate suddenly dropped.Thus began the most unpleasant process of constantly changing positions in order to try and get her heart rate back up. The doctor was back in the room promptly and kept telling me to move. I told him I couldn't (contractions were right on top of each other), he told me it wasn't for me, I needed to move for Papillon's sake. That got me to move.
They assured me they would move the blankets with me so that I would still be covered up; how nice of them to be concerned with modesty at a time like this. If there had been time between contractions I would have probably yelled at them not to even think about covering me up, I was burning up with hot flashes. Fortunately, Mon Amour could tell what I needed and kept bringing me cool wash clothes for my neck. I didn't know that a cool wash cloth could feel so good!
At one point nurse asked me if I was feeling anything different. Right on cue, a contraction hit and along with it the urge to push. And by urge, I mean uncontrollable instinctual pushing. With that, things sped up even more. After maybe 2 or 3 practice pushes with me not working at them at all, the doctor said very firmly "Ma'am, you need to get this baby out now. Push with everything that you have and don't wait for the contractions".
About 4 ridiculously intense pushes later I screamed that I couldn't do it any more. Mon Amour looked over at me at said "You don't have to, she's here." My first thought was "nice try, but I am so beyond being encouraged by placating sentiments" thinking he meant that she was starting to crown and would be here soon. But no, I realized I half second later he meant she was actually here.
8:21pm, all 9lbs 3 oz of her was here.
And she was crying.
She got a 9 on her apgar, despite the low heart rate scare.
They whisked her away to get cleaned up so that they could focus on me. In the words of the doctor, "She is a big baby and made a grand entrance, so this is going to take a while".
I don't remember a whole lot about the next 40 minutes, for which I am very grateful. I do remember certain things - the doctor saying "I can't even see where that tear ends" and "I am going to need a bigger syringe, the biggest you've got". I also remember the nurse giving me a shot in my leg without telling me what it was - it was remarkably painful and I kicked her without meaning to. More of the medicine got on her than in me. The next day that nurse visited and apologized for the shot; she said she got the same shot after giving birth to her child, and she remembers the pain of that shot more than the pain of delivery. How nice of her to warn me about that...
They gave me a pain killer that they said might make the room spin...they were right. I remember Mon Amour staying with me, and telling me what Papillon was doing (she was hanging out in the warming bed totally un-phased by the chaos.) And I remember just wanting everyone to leave. There were about 8 nurses in the room (it was shift change time), and all I wanted was to be alone with my family.
About 40 minutes later they did leave, most of them at least. And I got to hold Papillon for the first time.
It was then that a nurse asked me if I would do it again (meaning without drugs and what not). Less than an hour after birth it seemed like a crazy question.But the answer would be yes. I would definitely do it again.
They say that you forget the pain as soon as you hold your baby. Its mostly true, in that moment I don't remember feeling any pain, but the memory of it was still there. Now, a week later, the memory of it is very much faded. I remember it hurt, a lot, and all over. I meant it when I said I couldn't do it any more. But now, I don't really remember the pain itself. Its like a dream that you wake up from, and you know it was a bad dream, a terrifying nightmare in fact, but you can't recall any of the specifics, and so with time, the fear fades. And you think to yourself, that wasn't so bad.
Papillon's Birth Story: Part 2: The Drive
Continued from Part 1.
I insisted on walking around the block before we left, even though it was raining. Walking made them consistently 2 minutes apart, still 45 seconds long. So we got in the car.
Getting in the car for some reason slowed things down a bit. I went 6 minutes without a contraction which in my mind (still in denial) meant things were slowing to a stop; so I made Mon Amour pull over into a shopping center so we could walk some more and see if this was really happening. We walked around the dollar store, and then around the whole shopping center, and we were back to just 2-3 minute breaks. I was supposed to be using the words "on" and "off" to indicate to Mon Amour when to time the contractions, and somewhere in the middle of the dollar store, I think I started using "on" as a swear word, repeating it viciously through the peak of the contraction. So Mon Amour told me there would be no more stopping, we were going to the hospital.
The ride was painful, but I still had breaks in between so I thought I was doing pretty well and we talked about whether Papillon would arrive on the 10th or 11th, and whether or not she would have hair, and that kind of thing. I, being in denial, also talked about where we should go out to dinner after we got turned away from the hospital (still not believing that this was the real thing or that I was actually making any progress).
Then, about 10 minutes from the hospital, a contraction hit, and my water broke. Like yikes. Despite all of our careful preparation, we didn't think to bring anything for this kind of situation. When my water broke, my denial of the whole situation officially and abruptly ended. It hit me like a ton of bricks that it was really happening, and I started sobbing. I apologized for ruining the car, and then just cried some more. Mon Amour was a great coach at this point, and eventually I regained most of my composure.
We arrived at the hospital and made it to the registration desk. That's when things really started picking up for me, and everyone else seemed to start moving really slowly. The registration girl was nice, and obviously was trying her best to rush me through. She offered me a seat, but I told her my water had broken and she probably didn't want me to sit on anything at this moment. She agreed. Then another contraction hit and I leaned on the desk and closed my eyes. Just as I did, she handed me some papers to sign but then saw that I would not be signing anything at that moment and promptly handed them to Mon Amour and said it was ok for him to sign them.
The nurse who was going to take us to a labor and delivery room was nice, but moved super slowly (in my opinion). She made us stand by her desk while she "finished up just one thing" on her computer. That took a good 3 contractions.
By about 6:30pm we were in a room.
The nurse felt my stomach and concluded that this would be a small baby - 7 lbs maybe. "Unless she is hiding it" the nurse said. The nurse than proceeded to ask a long string of ridiculous questions and started punching answers into her computer. I tried to answer politely. The most memorable question was when she asked me about my allergy - sulfa drugs.
"What happens when you have sulfa drugs?"
"I don't know"
"You don't know"
"No, I haven't had them since i was probably 2"
"So you don't know what happens. Rash? Vomitting? Anything?"
"No clue"
We kept going back and forth like that for a while, until finally she concluded "Well, I guess we will just play it safe and not give you any sulfa drugs". So....if my allergic reaction had been something like "just a rash", would they have given me that drug anyway? Note to self -in the future, just tell them that sulfa drugs send me in cardiac arrest or something. That should simplify things.
Soon the doctor came in to check my progress. He was a very nice doctor; I didn't notice at the time, but Mon Amour informed me later that the doctor called me "ma'am" the whole time. He seemed to take a long time checking to see how dilated I was. I tried to be patient, assuming it was the pain making things seem so slow. But no, after a little while the nurse piped up and said "The suspense is killing us all!" And finally the doctor informed us that I was 5cms.
5 was good, but in my mind (as well as the nurses, I think) 5 still meant that there was a long ways to go. Time to fill up that tub and settle in. Mon Amour went to get our things from the car (exercise ball, etc etc).
Little Papillon Rouge, however, had other plans.
To Be Continued.
I insisted on walking around the block before we left, even though it was raining. Walking made them consistently 2 minutes apart, still 45 seconds long. So we got in the car.
Getting in the car for some reason slowed things down a bit. I went 6 minutes without a contraction which in my mind (still in denial) meant things were slowing to a stop; so I made Mon Amour pull over into a shopping center so we could walk some more and see if this was really happening. We walked around the dollar store, and then around the whole shopping center, and we were back to just 2-3 minute breaks. I was supposed to be using the words "on" and "off" to indicate to Mon Amour when to time the contractions, and somewhere in the middle of the dollar store, I think I started using "on" as a swear word, repeating it viciously through the peak of the contraction. So Mon Amour told me there would be no more stopping, we were going to the hospital.
The ride was painful, but I still had breaks in between so I thought I was doing pretty well and we talked about whether Papillon would arrive on the 10th or 11th, and whether or not she would have hair, and that kind of thing. I, being in denial, also talked about where we should go out to dinner after we got turned away from the hospital (still not believing that this was the real thing or that I was actually making any progress).
Then, about 10 minutes from the hospital, a contraction hit, and my water broke. Like yikes. Despite all of our careful preparation, we didn't think to bring anything for this kind of situation. When my water broke, my denial of the whole situation officially and abruptly ended. It hit me like a ton of bricks that it was really happening, and I started sobbing. I apologized for ruining the car, and then just cried some more. Mon Amour was a great coach at this point, and eventually I regained most of my composure.
We arrived at the hospital and made it to the registration desk. That's when things really started picking up for me, and everyone else seemed to start moving really slowly. The registration girl was nice, and obviously was trying her best to rush me through. She offered me a seat, but I told her my water had broken and she probably didn't want me to sit on anything at this moment. She agreed. Then another contraction hit and I leaned on the desk and closed my eyes. Just as I did, she handed me some papers to sign but then saw that I would not be signing anything at that moment and promptly handed them to Mon Amour and said it was ok for him to sign them.
The nurse who was going to take us to a labor and delivery room was nice, but moved super slowly (in my opinion). She made us stand by her desk while she "finished up just one thing" on her computer. That took a good 3 contractions.
By about 6:30pm we were in a room.
The nurse felt my stomach and concluded that this would be a small baby - 7 lbs maybe. "Unless she is hiding it" the nurse said. The nurse than proceeded to ask a long string of ridiculous questions and started punching answers into her computer. I tried to answer politely. The most memorable question was when she asked me about my allergy - sulfa drugs.
"What happens when you have sulfa drugs?"
"I don't know"
"You don't know"
"No, I haven't had them since i was probably 2"
"So you don't know what happens. Rash? Vomitting? Anything?"
"No clue"
We kept going back and forth like that for a while, until finally she concluded "Well, I guess we will just play it safe and not give you any sulfa drugs". So....if my allergic reaction had been something like "just a rash", would they have given me that drug anyway? Note to self -in the future, just tell them that sulfa drugs send me in cardiac arrest or something. That should simplify things.
Soon the doctor came in to check my progress. He was a very nice doctor; I didn't notice at the time, but Mon Amour informed me later that the doctor called me "ma'am" the whole time. He seemed to take a long time checking to see how dilated I was. I tried to be patient, assuming it was the pain making things seem so slow. But no, after a little while the nurse piped up and said "The suspense is killing us all!" And finally the doctor informed us that I was 5cms.
5 was good, but in my mind (as well as the nurses, I think) 5 still meant that there was a long ways to go. Time to fill up that tub and settle in. Mon Amour went to get our things from the car (exercise ball, etc etc).
Little Papillon Rouge, however, had other plans.
To Be Continued.
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