Mothership Confessional

I feel like a different person now. I feel like an actual human!! I think the real turning point was right at the start of the fourth week, right as I was posting my last post.  Ava doesn't wake up as often at night. She will go 4-6 hour stretches between feedings.Of course that doesn't mean that's the number of hours I'm sleeping because time between feedings starts from when the feeding starts, not when she's done, so part of that time I'm changing her, nursing her, and then rocking her back to sleep. But at least I get to sleep in bed! That has made ALL the difference. Before she got good at sleeping in her rock and play next to the bed, I had to sleep while holding her in the recliner. All I wanted to do was lay down flat. For awhile I had to put a pillow under my feet in bed because it pulled too much on my incision. Then that got better and I was gradually able to sleep on my side with the help of my pregnancy pillow for support.  TMI alert...

This is gonna be a great post - I can feel it already. All done during middle of the night feedings while barely conscious, typing with one hand via my app on my phone.  I hope you will accept my misspellings, grammatical errors, and lack of formatting in this post.  Because honestly, I'm so sleep deprived that I don't really care about much these days! I thought I googled a lot of things before becoming a new mommy. Now I think I look up at least one or two things each day, anything from "low-grade fevers during c section recoveries" to "how to survive the newborn stage". What's funny about that last one is that I've asked my mommy friends when this uber stressful stage gets better, and none of them can remember!! They literally don't recall how hard the first several weeks are. It's like it vanished from their brain.  On one hand, it makes sense because half the time I'm so tired I really don't remember things fr...

I have a very special baby girl, who we struggled to conceive, who shouldn't have existed due to the medicine I was taking, who made it through a high-risk pregnancy and defied the odds, and who almost didn't survive delivery. This is the story of her birth day! We really hoped Ava would show up on her due date, the 4th of July. Of course, we had no control over it, so we continued about our last few days as if nothing was different. I made 2 pecan pie cheesecakes for a BBQ on Saturday. We made some food for the 4th, and chose to just hang out at home all day. We went for a walk with Duke, about 2.5 miles. We went to see fireworks on post with a comfy view in our car. The joke was always that if Ava hadn't arrived yet, that the fireworks would scare her out! (And they did!) We went to bed that night, and I played on my phone for a bit. And I felt a mild contraction. I didn't really think much of it because I had contractions through the nigh...

I'm writing up this post early, not knowing if I will even be able to publish it on Friday or not. So I think I will update this post a day at a time, and we'll just see how far it goes! (Actually, I work on all my posts throughout the week, or else pregnancy brain would cause me to forget all the new things that happened!) I'm not sure if I will be posting too often after Ava's birth. One, because I will obviously be busy/tired/exhausted/unavailable. And two, because I don't know how I feel about plastering photos of her on the internet where anybody  can access my posts. I get a ton  of spam comments (fortunately Blogger is able to block them from ever being posted) and a lot of random spikes in traffic on my site and traffic trends that make me think weird things are going on. I want to keep it a public blog, so I'm thinking that I may not post too much more about my private life on here. I wanted to have my fertility and pregnancy stories on here to...

Only one week  until the due date!! Obviously, I am not having a csecton today. Ava has remained head down, and I am half a centimeter dilated and 50% effaced!! Not really big stats, but I guess the feeling you could say that I have is that I am "proud" of Ava for being able to do what she needs to do in my heart-shaped uterus. Even though she is head down, she is still not able to lay "normally" in there. I still have two lumps on each side when I have Braxton Hicks contractions - her butt is on my left side and her legs and feet are on the right. Ordinarily, babies would just be butt up in the middle with their legs tucked beneath. So she's a little sideways! Despite feeling a tad disappointed that we aren't meeting Ava today, we were encouraged to hear that things are happening! My pelvis has been hurting  like crazy  at night when I'm trying to roll around in bed. I have woken up many times, on my back, with my legs bent and knee...

Is it really?! 38 weeks?! I know we are being incredibly inpatient, but Ava, darling...we are wanting you to join us so badly!! I have been feeling a lot of different emotions this week, and they usually come in this order: Excitement. I can't wait for Ava to be here, to see her eyes, to hold her, to admire her hair, to watch her while she sleeps, to watch her daddy with her . This wait has to be one of the most unbearable waits ever! The house is full of baby things, just sitting...waiting. I find myself spending a lot of time just staring at them, imagining what Ava will be doing in each of these baby things, what she will look like in the car seat carrier, which motion on the swing she will prefer, and I can even visualize her flailing arms and legs when she will get her diaper changed on the changer (for some reason I am imagining her hating  getting her diaper changed!). So much eager anticipation! I think about how exciting these changes will be. And the...

I am not an expert on pregnancy. I have not even finished my first one, but I thought I would share some products and ideas that helped me make the most of this time with my little one growing inside, the same little one who is responsible for some less-than-desirable symptoms! 1. Ginger Ale, Sprite, and Water These three are your friends from the very beginning. The ginger from the Ginger Ale is helpful for nausea and most general tummy issues, while the bubbles from the Ginger Ale and Sprite can have the same soothing affect. Switch over to drinking water as soon as your upset tummy will allow - both these carbonated beverages have lots of sugar in them, which can be counterproductive for your health in the long run! Water is  extremely  important in all stages of pregnancy for the health of you and your baby, so you may as well get used to drinking a ton of it. Sometimes water can be the cure-all for whatever is ailing you - hydrating is key. How to Help Yo...