Friday, October 30

3 Weeks Postpartum

I’m reeling over the fact that Livvy is 3 weeks old. WE HAVE SURVIVED THREE FULL WEEKS AS PARENTS OF TWO UNDER TWO. Applause and accolades are welcome ;)

Livvy's recovery and health: Livvy has recovered really well. She was born 7lbs, 1 oz., dropped to 6 lbs., 12 oz. until my milk came in, and is now 8 lbs., 8 oz. That’s a pound and a half gained since birth! She’s wearing newborn clothes mostly but has moved into some 0-3 month items now too. She’s really filling out nicely (read: she LOVES to eat!) and has the double chins to prove it. We started a bit of sleep training this week and she slept through the night three times! From midnight – 8 am! We’re just doing the same thing we did with Milo and it seems to be working for her as well, thankfully. My mantra is that a sane mom makes for a happy family and I need sleep to be sane haha. Livvy is getting more and more alert; with her eyes being open more often we’re thinking that they’ll be brown, or at least pretty dark. Her features are getting more and more defined as well. I can’t tell if I’m biased because I know her gender, but it seems like she truly does have really feminine features.

My recovery: I honestly thought my recovery would take longer with each subsequent kid, but I was up and walking/shopping at Gap Factory with mom the day after I had Livvy. We had $100 in GapCash and clearly had our priorities in order ;) I was much less sore in every way after this birth. I imagine bench-pressing a 30lb baby for 9 months helped with that ;) Not tearing or having any stitches makes a huge difference too! I was a lot crampier for a lot longer this time around, and the bleeding has taken longer to subside but it’s not been anything unbearable.

Postpartum body: Nursing has sucked everything off of me again. It’s alarming to drop weight so quickly; I’m now cold all. the. time. Milo thinks my stretch marks are hilarious for whatever reason, so that’s cool. I’m surprised I can still stand cuz I have no abs to speak of, but hey, we’re working with what we’ve got!

Milo: Milo’s first reaction to Livvy was a huge hug and that’s basically held true since. The first week was a little rough for him since we had people in and out and he was kinda thrown off his normal schedule. While mom was here she watched both kids so Kyle and I could sneak in a date. I set her up with a bottle for Livvy, and Milo started throwing a fit because he wasn’t getting a bottle (he usually takes one before bed). I’m not sure if that was jealousy, or simply the fact that he wanted a bottle…. But that’s been the only real reaction. He loves to “give Livvy hugs” by resting his head on hers, and is quickly learning to say “baby”. When Livvy starts crying, he whips his head in her direction and will go on tiptoe to try and see her. Since Milo’s basically a 15-month Godzilla, doesn’t know what “soft” means, and hasn’t fully developed his spatial awareness, we don’t really leave the two of them in close proximity together. He’ll get really excited around her sometimes and end up smacking her unintentionally. I suppose that’s the downside of having kids so close in age. Milo’s been learning to identify facial features, and I think he’s using that to identify Livvy as a human. He’ll constantly touch her nose, then reach for mine, then touch his, saying “nose!” It’s cute, but also has me worried he’ll poke her eye out!

Nursing: Of all the differences in my experiences with Milo and Livvy, this is the biggest. Nursing has gone a thousand times better than it did with Milo. For one, I now know that no amount of sleep is worth getting mastitis over; and two, I’m aware I make a TON of milk. There’s currently over 3 gallons of pumped, frozen milk in our freezer. For the first two weeks I was nursing for 2 hours a day, then pumping at least 40 more ounces out. This week, with the sleep training, I’ve gotten much more regular. I think having Livvy latch on minutes after I had her helped a lot too. Things were still sore and uh, cracked, but I had my arsenal of nursing items prepped and ready to go this time, even before I’d packed my bag for the birth center.

Kyle: Do you know what it’s like being a full-time student, a full-time employee, working on a couple of life-changing career decisions, helping a somewhat crazed, hormonal wife (that's me, btw) AND becoming a father of two? It’s stressful. 100% stressful and Kyle’s handled things like the champ that he is. I don’t know how he's functioning but I do know that I couldn't do what he does, day in and day out. I’m just thankful for him. It’s been wonderful to watch him interact with his daughter.

Emotions and hormones: Looking back on my first month with Milo, I feel like I was swimming in water, just trying not to drown in the newness of it all. My hormones were all over the place, nursing was so, so painful, sleep was non-existent, and I didn’t think things would ever get better. I’ve definitely had my hormone battles this time too and I’ve taken steps to help alleviate them. I try and get out of the house at least once a day, and get out of the house WITHOUT kids once or twice a week. Even if it’s just a 20 minute errand, I’ve noticed that it helps my psyche a lot more than I thought it would. I’ve got some hormone pills that I’ve taken that have really helped too. In many ways I feel like I’ve “bonded” with Livvy sooner and better than I did with Milo (I’m not sure if “bonded” is the right word, but it’s the only word I can really think of to describe it). Maybe it’s just cuz I feel less like I’m out on a total limb this time, who knows. There are still times when I feel pure frustration at myself and with her, don’t get me wrong. But overall I think I’ve done better in reminding myself that this newborn stage is so fleeting and that the hard times WILL pass.

Being a mom of two: I can’t say my experience with two kids is everyone’s experience. The age difference has a lot of benefits and a few cons. I had literally no way to prepare Milo for his sister’s arrival; how do you explain the arrival of a sibling when they don’t even use a spoon? Milo doesn’t have cause and effect figured out, and he’s so big and heavy, with no spatial awareness, that he still falls of couches, let alone understands that he can hurt the baby. The plus side is that this life is his normal. He’ll probably never remember what his life was like as an only child. Jealousy isn’t really an emotion he’s dealt with before, and he rarely takes Livvy’s things because he wants them.

What's been the hardest has just been juggling schedules. If I get a shower before noon, it’s a productive day. It’s gotten better this week as Livvy’s eating schedule has played itself out. I’ve figured out that the newborn is the easy one to take care of; it’s the toddler that’s a bit tricky. I’d forgotten that the newborn will just sleep in the car seat. I can’t even remember the last time Milo did that. I’m still trying to figure out how to do a Target run when there’s no room in the cart between a car seat in it, and a toddler in the seat… but we’ll see how that goes.

This week I had my official “mom of two” moment. Being the efficient person that I am, I figured that it’d be really convenient to have Milo’s 15 month shots and Livvy’s two weeks shots done at the same appointment. Kyle originally couldn’t make it to the appointment, so I’d been gearing myself up for a week in preparation for this, but then his schedule cleared the day of, so I let my guard down. He met us at the doctor’s office and helped with Milo. We didn’t think of how much longer an appointment for two kids would be, rather than one. Both kids were weighed, measured, and examined, but then Kyle had to leave BEFORE the shots were administered! I’m sitting in the room, with two half naked kids, Livvy’s screaming cuz she’s hungry, Milo’s pulling everything in sight out of its proper place. The nurse opens the door and Milo takes off running down the hallway, laughing his head off. I run out to grab him while trying to keep Livvy’s pacifier in her mouth and hold her with one arm. Milo chooses to have a full on two-year-old fall-on-the-floor-flail-my-limbs-tantrum when I finally get him. I heave him up onto my hip and finally get back into the room. The nurse puts him up onto the table and tells me to grab his hands to soothe him. He gets three shots in the leg and brings the entire office roof down with his screams. He freaks the heck out of Livvy (who I’m still holding, trying to keep the pacifier in her mouth, with one arm). I get him down off the table, he flops down on the floor, and rolls around screaming. I hand Livvy to the nurse and try to comfort Milo. Suddenly Livvy’s screaming from her shot, which freaks Milo out even more. The nurse hands Livvy to me and then is out the door (super helpful). I’ve got two screaming, half-naked babies who are now starving too at this point. I get Milo calmed down with some crackers, put Livvy on the table as I get him re-dressed. I go to grab Livvy and guess what: homegurl has poop up to her EYEBALLS. It was hands down the biggest blowout I’ve ever dealt with. I’m not even sure the diaper did anything other than direct the poop OUT.

We miraculously made it home. I got Milo fed, Livvy bathed and fed, and both down for naps. I then sat on the couch for a solid hour and determined that I will NEVER be doing that again.

So yeah, that was my moment this week. I bow down to all you moms of multiple kids cuz that was just insane. I feel like I earned the title of “Mom” or something. Maybe I should go crazy and get the stick figure family decal on my car now ;) As crazy as it is, life as a family of four has just felt so, so right. We can’t imagine our lives without both kids and we’re so thankful to have them in our home.


Her hands got SO cold, so quickly!




Tuesday, October 13

Olivia Ann Tuft

October 9th, 2015

2:30 AM – “Ouchhhh!” My eyes flew open. “That didn’t feel great”, I thought as I rolled over. You get used to various aches and pains when pregnant. I’d been having contractions for nearly four days, so I didn’t think twice before falling back asleep.

3:00 AM – “K, ready to be not be pregnant…” I groaned as another one hit and I rolled over again.

3:30 AM – “…. Wait, is this the real deal?” Then I recalled the previous week:

Sunday evening, when I officially hit full-term, we thought my water may have broken. We went to the birth center to confirm the leak and the test came out positive for a water break, but I’d previously had two, false positive tests so this wasn’t surprising news. Since there wasn’t much liquid the risk of an infection was very, very low. We decided to wait and see if contractions picked up at all or if more liquid came, which didn’t happen, so we went about our lives.

Wednesday evening I was very actively trying not to count the passing of time by watching Curious George with Milo while bouncing on my yoga ball. I got up, felt a little “ping!”, and more liquid came down. “This was it!” we thought. I called my mom to let her know. She couldn’t leave until Friday so she was sad she was most likely going to miss the birth. Pam picked up Milo, we packed up and headed to the birth center at 8 PM. With Milo the outer membrane of the amniotic sack had ruptured, so we chose to do a membrane sweep to get things going and seven hours later we had ourselves a baby. Expecting the same thing here, we again did a membrane sweep (which is about as comfortable as it sounds, ps). During the sweep my midwife said that Livvy had flipped completely posterior and told me that I should stay leaning forward, on hands and knees, to get her turned to the best position which would also avoid a lot of back pain during labor. My contractions picked up good and hard after the sweep. For four hours we stayed at the birth center working through them, but they never stayed consistent. This labor was not following the same script we thought it would. By 1 AM both Kyle and I were exhausted. We talked over our options; 1: break the water completely and have a baby, or 2: go home and get some rest. As quickly as we both like to accomplish things, we just didn’t feel right about rushing through this. We’d both been up all night the previous night (him – with a teething Milo; me - with contractions). We didn’t want to run the labor marathon on an empty tank of gas, so we decided to head home. My midwives gave me a magnesium tablet to help relax the muscles and two Tylenol PM’s. We zonked and I had the best night's sleep I'd had in months.

On Thursday we went about life as normal. Contractions were intense but very irregular. I stayed on my feet, got a mani/pedi, and went to the chiropractor to get my back adjusted (all the better to labor with, my dear!). By the evening my contractions had settled down and I hadn't had any more leaks; it seemed like this little girl wanted to bake a bit longer. We picked Milo back up from Pam’s and then we got a surprise text from my mom saying she was en route here a day earlier than planned, driving like a madman with her dad. They arrived around 9 PM. Mom and I discussed tactics for our “Walk Baby Out” project to commence the next day and then we all went to bed around 11 PM.

Yeah, see Jess? This can’t be the real deal. You've had too many false alarms already. Just try walking her out tomorrow”, and I flipped my pillows over and fell asleep.

4:00 AM “Ok, SOMETHING is happening here!” I jolted up as another contraction hit me. This one was different. Trying not to get excited I thought, “If this is the real deal, I need to rest as much as possible”. So I tried again to fall back asleep.

4:30 AM – “Well, this is pointless”, I muttered as I got up. I decided to take a hot shower to help alleviate some of the intensity from the contractions. My back was getting a bit uncomfortable so I thought it may help with that too.

5:30 AM – “Now I’m a shriveled prune AND my back hurts”. I got out of my tub/shower and back into bed. These contractions were annoyingly inconsistent and my back HURT.

6:00 AM – “Wait. BACK PAIN. BABY IS IN THE WRONG POSITION”. Suddenly the light bulb went off in my head. Of course my back hurts if she’s posterior! I got up and flipped over to my hands and knees on our bed to try to get her turned.

6:25 AM – “Andddd she’s flipped!” I grinned in satisfaction.

6:30 AM – “BIRTH CENTER. NOW.” No longer grinning, I immediately felt the difference in contractions. Nothing was irregular. Coming in three minutes apart and lasting a minute and a half, I was worried we wouldn’t even make it to the birthing center. We called the birth center hotline to let them know we were coming. We got up and packed the last few things. Mom made us eggs, and I breathed through my contractions again using the HypnoBabies techniques I’d learned last time. Kyle alerted his mom – she and my mom would work out getting Milo taken care of.

7:30 AM – We arrived at the birth center and I got checked. 6 cm dilated; 80% effaced. Last time I had done most of the laboring in the birthing tub. It sounded good again so I jumped in. 10 minutes later I was out and walking around. Reclining back at all just didn’t feel right. I leaned over and hugged a huge stack of pillows at the foot of the birthing bed instead and swayed my hips through each contraction.

8:30 AM – 8 cm dilated, 100% effaced. More of the same. More leaning over and swaying through the contractions.

9:30 AM – 9.5 cm dilated; 100% effaced. I was starting to feel a bit pushy, and I was really anxious not to tear. I jumped back in the birthing tub in preparation to push remembering that the water helped relax my muscles so much the last time.

9:45 AM – I got out of the tub. My contractions weren’t as intense and felt less effective EVERY time I was in that darn tub! While it felt nice to get a break, I was on the Highway to Push and needed more motivation, and there’s nothing more motivating than contractions.

10:30 AM – I was feeling even more pushy, but not quite as pushy as I had been with Milo. My midwife suggested sitting on the birthing stool to intensify the pushes. Let it be known that squatting down while in labor definitely adds to that pushy feeling!! I still felt like my contractions weren’t very effective, and since my body was totally ready, I asked for them to break my water.

11:00 AM – I jumped into the tub. Looking back I think my brain kept chanting “tub”, while my body was saying “squat”. Brains get in the way of labor. Follow your body.

11:15 AM – Livvy’s heart rate was starting to drop a bit more during contractions than my midwives liked to see, making time a more crucial factor. They checked me and found that I had a small lip of cervix in the way, which was making me feel pushy only at the peak of contractions, rather than through the whole thing, which in turn made my pushes less effective. While in the tub, they attempted to push the lip back over her head. The tub was so relaxing to me that I couldn’t get a good feel of when to push and when not too. I reflexively jumped out of the tub and onto the birthing stool again, my brain screaming, “But it’ll hurt more on the stool!” which is when I was sure that’s where I needed to be. It was gonna hurt like hell before it got better and there was no point in trying to avoid that.

At this point I just suspended rational thinking and hung on to what my midwives were saying. One midwife helped keep that cervical lip out of the way through contractions, the other coached me on how to bear down better. That lip inhibited a lot of my natural urge to push. Slowly, slowly we worked through it all. Kyle stood right in front of me and I clung to his belt loops as I bore down, each contraction bringing Livvy closer. Kyle says he was getting worried I’d pull his pants straight off! Each contraction I pushed harder and harder. There aren’t words to describe the feeling of being asked to do the impossible again. And again. And then once more. One midwife put an oxygen mask on me during the last couple pushes to give me just the extra bit of strength necessary to push her out. The oxygen cleared my head.

11:45 AM – “THIS IS THE LAST PUSH!!” I yelled to myself. She started to crown and time hung still. Suddenly my world went black and I felt out of control. For a few milliseconds it felt like something bad had happened since I’d been so aware and present during the whole labor. Half cognizant, I heard one midwife say to stop pushing, and another coached me to puff out my breaths. Livvy’s head was out and they wanted the rest of her to slowly come out so I wouldn’t tear.

11: 47 AM – A cry.

Snap back to reality. The blackness disappeared. My little Livvy had arrived.

We walked back to the bed after everything was cleaned up a bit. Livvy latched on to nurse seconds after I put her up to my chest. I didn’t tear, though I was absolutely convinced that I had. All the afterbirth stuff passed approval and Livvy was weighed and measured; 19 inches and 7 lbs., 1 oz. (I was off by one ounce in my weight guess!). After she and I passed inspection I took a shower with Kyle’s assistance while mom held Livvy. We could stay at the birthing suite until 5:30 PM so we felt no rush to get going. It’d been just over four hours since our arrival and we were more than a bit winded! Mom left to get some groceries and Kyle, Livvy, and I hopped into the bed. Too keyed up on adrenaline, I laid down next to Livvy and, as all moms do the world over, inspected every inch of her.

She’s here”. I thought. “My beautiful girl is finally here”.


Not sure about the outside world yet. She was COVERED in vernix (that white stuff) since she came so early.
Her first gaze at me :) I tear up at this pic. every. single. time.
Looking at Daddy
BOWS. I DIE.
A Great Grandma Rowley special puff quilt! (From my maternal grandmother).
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