Some pictures...and video!

Here are some recent pictures of our little lady...3 weeks old!

Links to Youtube videos showcasing our daughter's supreme cuteness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKX8wT_VLk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLb8fPxmAzw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBc1g1bm-78

Musings of a brand new Mama

Our little girl is 2 weeks old now (16 days on earth, to be exact!) and we are both adjusting to our new demands of parenthood very well. We are fortunate, of course, to have been blessed with a very pleasant little baby who is happy and healthy and enjoys eating and sleeping and making faces. She is kind enough to sleep for long stretches during the night, which has let her parents avoid the stresses of insomnia. Tumi doesn't mind staying up late, and I don't mind waking up early, and while I used to think that this difference in our preferences was a bad thing for our relationship, it turns out to work perfectly when co-parenting an infant! She eats huge amounts in the evenings (who knew a teeny tiny baby could fit so much milk in her itsy bitsy belly?) and then sleeps for several hours into the night. I have been able to go to sleep after these marathon feeding sessions while Tumi soothes her to sleep. Then, when she wakes up in the morning, I am well rested enough to meet her needs in the early hours of the day. I am proud of my partner and the balance we've struck as new parents.

Since my brain is still in 'Milk Fog' (aka 'Mommy-Brain') and not likely to clear up for a few months, I figured I could use this blog as an opportunity to expound on some random thoughts I've had recently about the adventures of parenting an infant....After reading as much as I did about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood, I considered myself well-prepared to take on the challenges of motherhood. Still, there have been several surprises I was not prepared for at all!

Everyone talks about how difficult labor can be; how painful it is, how challenging. With all the hype, I was expecting labor and delivery to be harder than it actually was. It's true that once it it over, it is hard to describe the actual sensations of labor. It was surely not comfortable, but as I remember it, I was very excited feel the contractions coming on, because it meant that the labor was progressing. After a particularly intense contraction, I remember feeling proud and excited that things were moving along. Labor hormones are amazing things, and I don't remember being aware of the passage of time (I'm sure Tumi and the midwife were more exhausted with the whole process than I was!) despite the fact that it was a very long labor. Surely the epidural and induction drip I received once we arrived at the hospital were a great help with the pain towards the end of labor, but I don't remember labor and delivery as being the hell on earth it's usually described as...

Nobody, however, had prepared me for the pain and agony of breast-feeding! My little daughter sucks like her life depends on it (cuz it does) and it has taken my poor defenseless nipples some serious drive to survive her enthusiasm. Nobody prepared me, either, for the amazing feat of the female human body that happens when new milk comes in...for a few days, I was walking around the apartment with breasts the could easily rival Pamela Anderson. Huge, square, and the hardness of a basketball, my ladies were quite impressive there for a while! Sadly, having breasts as hard and flat as a wall makes it really hard for little baby to latch on properly, so my nipples were shredded to bits. After a week of shear agony (I was afraid to feed her because it hurt so very much) and after trying all the home-remedies I could find online, we decided to visit a lactation consultant at the hospital. She adjusted our latching technique a bit, and gave us some cream to help the wounds heal faster. Since the visit, breast-feeding has become less painful, but sadly is still not without discomfort. I'm told that eventually it will be easy and painless, a time which I am really looking forward to. As of now, I am extremely mad at people who choose to pierce their nipples...why would people willingly choose to wound themselves in such a special, sensitive place? Be nice to your nipples, people! Think of the new mamas out there with cracked, open wounds on their nipples who have to face their hungry children's eager vigorous suck twelve times a day!

People also don't tell you how much new moms sweat. I can't take enough showers in a day to keep myself from getting funky. When I wake up at night, I often feel like I've just jumped into a pool. I've seriously considered sleeping with a towel under me so as not to damage the mattress...People also don't tell you how hungry you can be and how quickly hunger can come on. I've been sitting innocently on the couch (where I spend most of all day every day these days) and all of a sudden started shaking from hunger, and have the 'need to eat something right away or I'll faint!' sensation. People don't tell you how hard it is to be away from your baby. I've left her for only an hour at a time, and I find myself enjoying the first ten minutes or so, then I become really anxious, and can't hold a conversation because all I can think about is getting back home to baby. I hope that this anxiety will also improve with time :)

A few more random new-mom thoughts: I've never in my life been so blissfully happy to crawl into bed at night greeted by soft flannel sheets and ear plugs, nor have I been so excited for the first glorious sips of my morning coffee. I've gotten really good at typing with one hand. We've been listening to 'Lonesome Dove' during nighttime feedings, and I am feeling grateful for my subscription to audible.com which is allowing me to enjoy 'reading' without using my hands. I'm taking recommendations for what we should read next. I haven't had a chance to try my new post-natal yoga video yet (somehow all the 'free time' I have during the day is sucked into sleeping or cleaning) but I am really looking forward to trying it out. I apologize in advance for not responding to emails, letters, facebook posts, text messages, and other attempts to communicate....keep it up, please, and I'll respond eventually (maybe when we're more settled into a routine here at home!). Lastly, little baby girl looks so much like her dad, I've been asked if I'm sure she's mine. Also, we're still deciding on a name, but will have one soon!

Birth and the first week

This morning our beautiful little daughter turned one week old. She celebrated by sleeping last night from midnight to 4am and then again from 5 to 8. Her parents love her dearly and are blissfully happy with their new little family. Now that she is full of milk and sleeping well, there is time to sit and write about how she was born and the wonderful adventures of the first week on earth!

In the hospital after she was born, the midwife asked me how long I had been in labor, and I found it almost an impossible question to answer...I had been having irregular contractions since Monday (March 29th) and they were heavier and heavier since then, so I'd like to think that early labor started then. By Wednesday, I asked our midwife to sweep the membranes (when they separate the bag the baby is swimming in from the walls of the uterus) so we could encourage real active labor to begin. After that, the contractions were more steady and about 10 minutes apart, though I was able to sleep through the night, so they weren't that strong yet.

On Thursday afternoon, contraction were coming more frequently and picking up in intensity. The midwife came to our house to check me in the afternoon, and I was 3cm dilated and about 50% effaced, so real progress was finally starting to take place! I continued to labor into the night, contractions growing more steady and intense all the time. It is weird that they say your sense of time and sequence are disturbed by the hormones produced during labor and delivery, and I definitely found this to be true in my case. I have a hard time remembering what happened when, and during the actual labor itself, it was hard for me to tell how much time had passed. I know that the midwife came to our house at around midnight on Thursday, April 1st. When she arrived, I was about 4cm dilated and she and Tumi got to work setting up the birth pool while I walked around the apartment contracting.

By the time the pool was ready, my contractions were about 3 minutes apart, so I got in right away. While I enjoyed being in the pool, a weird thing happened, and my contractions stopped completely. I was in the pool for about 15 minutes, and had not one contraction the whole time! Birth is a mysterious thing, I suppose, but it was clear from that point on that this baby did not want to come out in the water.

Labor continued once I got out of the pool, but was going pretty slowly. The midwife broke my water when I was 6 cm dilated, but even that did not speed things up very much. Later on, after much intense laboring, the midwife checked once again and I had gone up to 8 cm, but the baby's head was in a strange position. She then checked the heart rate, and noticed that it had slowed significantly. It stayed low for long enough to make us worried, so the decision was made to call an ambulance and finish the birth at the hospital.

Tumi whirled around the apartment and packed our bag for the hospital. Even on such short notice, he grabbed absolutely everything we needed; extra clothes, baby clothes, blankets, food, camera, etc. By the time the ambulance arrived, the baby's heart rate was back to a normal pace, but she had turned in such a way that made the contractions really painful in my back. The ambulance ride was mercifully brief (we live about 5 minutes away from the hospital) although I was really feeling the contractions, and it was overwhelming that the conditions for labor had changed so quickly.

When we got to the hospital, they provided some nitrous oxide, which really helped calm me down (love that stuff!). The midwives decided since the labor was going slowly and was in my back that I would be induced and given an epidural. I was completely happy with that idea, since I know that babies come out whatever way they need too, and it had been so long was ready to be done. After the epidural, Tumi and I slept for about 40 minutes, which was a heavenly break that I am convinced helped me keep up my strength for the pushing phase to come.

After about 4 hours in the hospital, it was time to push. I started pushing at 9am, and little baby girl was born at 9:14. She was crying right away, and they placed her in my arms as soon as she was out. What a beautiful moment! We stayed in the delivery room for about an hour, and then we were moved to a family recovery room. There, Tumi's parents and my mom (who had arrived in Iceland just 2 hours before little one was born) came to visit us and check out their new granddaughter. Once they left, all three of us slept for a long time and left the hospital by about 10pm.

Little baby girl's first week of life has been an amazing adventure. She is a really good sleeper, eater, pooper, and face-maker...what more can you ask for?! Breast feeding has it's ups and downs. I was really surprised by how solid and huge my breasts got when the milk came in, and since their colossal size made it hard for little one to latch on, they have been a bit sore, but are getting better every day. In Icelandic, they call the forgetful, spacey cloud that covers the brain of new mothers 'Milk Fog.' I have noticed since giving birth how hard it is for me to remember things or to have a decent conversation with my friends. While I have found this stupidity difficult to deal with, it is comforting to know that it is temporary and someday I'll have my old brain back (fingers crossed!)

Name coming soon :)

She's here!

Little Tummy Baby was born Friday April 2nd at 9:14 am. We are all healthy and blissfully happy... I'll post the birth story later, but for now I have to go admire my new family!

Raise your hand if you're pregnant!

Well, Little Tummy Baby, Tumi, and I have officially made it to 39 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy, which makes tomorrow, March 27th, our due date! It has been a fantastic pregnancy, and an amazing adventure to watch my body change over the past nine months as LTB grew from just a couple of little cells into the watermelon-sized baby in there today.

I first learned I was pregnant in late July, and started preparing for the journey ahead...I spent the first week of pregnancy online learning everything I could about about pregnancy and the development of the little creature growing inside me. I was blessed enough to miss out on all that morning sickness badness I've heard so much about. I felt a little more tired than normal, but since it was summer and I didn't have any classes, I could just nap when I felt like it (wonderful to be a pregnant grad student!).

We decided not to tell anyone until 12 weeks along. It was fun to keep it a secret for the first trimester, but I remember feeling very excited when it was finally time to tell our loved ones we were expectant parents. Some of our friends had their suspicions, especially given my strange behavioral changes, like skipping on beer and wine at dinner parties. We had our first ultrasound on a Friday morning right around 12 weeks. It was so wonderful to see that beautiful wiggly baby on the screen! Seeing the heartbeat, nose, fingers, and toes for the first time made the whole thing feel so real; parenthood here we come!

At the 20 week ultrasound, the baby made the nurse laugh out loud because it was opening and closing it's mouth like a little guppy in addition to the normal kicking and wiggling around. I'd like to think that Tumi and I have bred a person with a quality sense of humor, so I take it as a good sign that LTB can make strangers laugh from the womb. We asked the nurse if she could tell us the gender, and she said that while it was impossible to tell for certain until the baby was born, she said it looked to her like a GIRL! I have absolutely no idea how she came to this conclusion, since the baby's legs were crossed and folded up during the whole exam, effectively blocking out the whole area-of-interest on the ultrasound. Guess we'll know if she was right any day now!

Over Christmas break, Tumi and I were married in a simple civil ceremony in Reykjavik. We decided not to try and get all of our loved ones in the same country to celebrate with us. While it would have been spectacular to have everyone together, the logistics and expense were just too much to make such a wedding a realistic option. Instead, we went to the Pacific Northwest for the holiday and had a wonderful celebration in Olalla with the State-side family and friends, and then had a beautiful party in Reykjavik when we came back for the New Year. All of this amounted to a month-long celebration, and many happy memories.

I promised myself that I would have a Master's degree before I became a parent, and I just barely made it. Knowing that I had to be finished with my graduate program before late March, I planned my research and writing for my thesis accordingly, and am proud to say that I defended on March 15th. There are a few more revisions I have to make to the final final thesis paper, which is officially due in May, but it's now safe to say that I have MSc degree in Environment and Natural Resources. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed doing the research, data analysis, and writing for the project...I am even starting to think that my next professional move might be in the PhD direction, but that is still months away, so I am focusing on motherhood at the moment.

Since defending my thesis, I have been focusing on relaxing and preparing for LTB's arrival. There has been much napping, movie-watching, fiction-reading, long walks, coffee breaks with friends, and trips to the pool filling my days. I am focusing on appreciating every second of calm, quite, alone time, since I know that these precious moments are limited to the very near future.

We decided that if all goes well, we are going to try and have the baby at home. We have two midwifes who will come and help us with the delivery, and if anything isn't going the way it is supposed to, it is comforting to know that the hospital is a five minute drive away from where we live. We've rented a birth pool, and I was pleased to learn that it is more sophisticated than the kiddie-pool I was envisioning (no pictures of colorful fish or summer beach themed images on the sides or anything!). I have nothing at all against hospitals, but don't see the reason to go to one if you don't really need too.

I am struck by the amazing power my body has to grow a new human being. Have you ever seen how complicated the circulatory system is? It's impossible to not be captivated by the magic of reproduction as you see your own body making a new life. What a blessing that all the millions of things that could go wrong and ruin the whole process don't happen. With this new amazement I have with my body's abilities, I am very excited to see what it is capable of during birth and motherhood. I am also more excited than I can possibly describe to meet the little person I've been carrying around for the past several months. LTB will come out whenever it decides it's time to come (babies are always born on exactly the right day...they always come out on their birthdays) and when it does, we are bursting with love to shower all over our new addition, and welcome it into this beautiful world of ours!