Baby Babble

Four months and counting

krishill — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:54:58 +0000

Wow, where has the time gone?
Today, Lyla is four months old.
And, naturally, we took her for her four month well child check this morning. She was weighed, measured, looked over and got her shots.
At four months old she weighed in at 11 pounds, eight ounces (there are 16 ounces in a pound for the math challenged) and was measured at 23 1/2 inches long. So, she has put on two and a half pounds in two months and grown two and one-quarter inches since her last appointment in January. She’s still on the petite side, but, our doctor says she’s “gaining steam” and “appears to be thriving.”
Our family doctor also asked us about various milestones such as vocalizing, “Has she laughed yet” and “Does she grasp objects?”
He was pleasantly surprised when we told him she’s sleeping through the night which, of course, is a good thing for our sanity.
She was happy, smiley and pretty mellow. It was great. Everybody at our doctor’s office thought she was cute and sweet.
The doctor mentioned that we could start giving her cereal as a first food in a month or so, but, I asked him if it is OK to wait until she’s six months old before starting her on any solid foods and he thought that was just fine.
He gave us some hand outs on four month olds, which I’m sure will be helpful, then headed out the door to see his next patient. As he left, he told us we’re “doing a great job.”
Yay!
Oh, and a nice girl named Nicole would come in and give Lyla her shots.
One of the three sets of vaccines was in an oral form, so, I attempted to give it to her but while waiting for Nicole to come into the room, Lyla passed out. It was time for her morning nap. So, when I tried to give her the oral vaccine, she just spit it out. We had to get another one and this time Nicole did the job.
Nicole said Lyla was so cute and relaxed, she felt bad giving her shots knowing she was going to make our little darling cry.
I wasn’t too worried because Lyla handled the shots at two months really well.
So, she whimpered a bit after the first shot, then had a full meltdown after the second one. We soothed her and gave her a pacifier and within a minute she was back to happy, calm Lyla.
I suspect that this is one area where being a diabetic pays off for me as a parent. Nearly eight years ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Doctor’s visits and needles are par for the course. Add to that the fact I’ve had an emergency appendectomy and back surgery as well as given birth in the past seven years and the whole vaccination thing is no big deal to me.
Though I haven’t had a chance to research my theory to see if calm parents equals calm baby when it comes time for the shots, I hope there is some empirical evidence out there to support it, if not at least anecdotal evidence.
From my perspective, at least, I figure if we don’t make a big deal out of it and remain calm then, of course, she’ll be calm too.
I took this picture literally two minutes after she got the shots, one in each thigh. You wouldn’t even know it based on this photo.

One of the women in the reception area checking patients in commented on the fact she was so peaceful and calm as we were making her six month appointment.
“Usually babies come out still crying,” she said.
Not our Lyla. I knew from the beginning she was going to be awesome.
Just having Lyla in my life makes me feel like the luckiest person on earth, but, knowing what a calm, happy baby she is really makes me feel blessed.
And I keep hearing it just keeps getting better from here.
Really?
Sweet!

Another eventful weekend

krishill — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:24:51 +0000

Lyla and I were quite busy this weekend while my husband was working.
On Saturday, we went to Ginger Passarelli’s soup class at her restaurant in Black Diamond, Mama’s Steak & Pasta where we learned her famous beef stroganoff recipe, among others.
Ginger is also founder of The Soup Ladies which is a fantastic non-profit I seem to be writing a lot about recently, go here or here to read more about it.
Lyla had a great time watching Ginger cook up four different soups that featured beef and at one point while I was taking notes, she grabbed my pen and examined it closely, trying to determine what exactly that thing was supposed to do.
After about 45 minutes of that, she took a power nap, then woke up to have a little face time with Ginger, one of Lyla’s many fans. Turns out that Ginger’s mother’s name was Lila, so, maybe she has a special place in her heart as a result.
From there, Lyla and I went to Fry’s to pick up a Crock Pot, as I have decided I need to cook up food at home and in the easiest, least messy way possible. I see my mom friends post about their awesome Crock Pot meals on Facebook and figure it would be a good thing to invest in.
On Sunday we spent time with her grandmothers. My mom came down to visit and we had lunch together. After my mom left, my mother in law and I took Lyla to the SuperMall to use some coupons I had for Carter’s.
We put Lyla’s car seat in the stroller and walked all the way around the mall. We stopped at Old Navy, The Children’s Place, Burlington Coat Factor’s Baby Depot and finally Carter’s.
While at Burlington Coat Factory we were looking at pretty Easter dresses for Lyla. I pulled her out of the car seat and we walked around looking at all the dresses and baby clothes. She checked out toys and other children. She seems to be quite the curious little girl.
About halfway through the mall we stopped to hit the bathroom, change her diaper then feed her. After she ate, Gale, my mother in law was burping her so Lyla was sitting on her knee and watching every little thing happening around us. Maybe all babies do that but it was fascinating to watch her people watch.
She seems to do pretty well with running around with me, she didn’t really fuss or cry at all either at the class on Saturday or during any of the shopping, in fact she seemed to really enjoy it.
It used to be that she slept through errands but now she doesn’t seem to want to miss a thing. She smiles and giggles at strangers who coo at her which immediately endears her to anyone who stops to check her out.
So, anyway, we bought a pile of clothes for Lyla. Gale and I split up the purchases but we did quite well. My goal was to stock up on summer essentials and with the sales and coupons we did really well. And, of course, we found her the sweetest dress for Easter. I’ll post pictures when we get her in it.
And, boy did Lyla get worn out. Not five minutes after we pulled out of the SuperMall parking lot she was fast asleep.
When we put her down for the night, it was 10 p.m., and she slept until 7:30 this morning.
I have realized recently how lucky I have been with Lyla. She’s not fussy, she doesn’t mind strangers much, she loves going places with me and enjoys seeing all kinds of new things in new places, she sleeps through the night and in her own crib.
OK, now I’m just bragging. I’ll stop. Heh.
Now we just need to get her into tummy time so she can start figuring out how to get mobile. My mom says I was crawling at about five or six months old and walking at nine months.
I guess while we work on tummy time we should start thinking about baby proofing the house.
Life with Lyla is just one adventure after another and I can’t even begin to say how happy I am to be going on these adventures with her.

growing like a weed

krishill — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:37:45 +0000

Lyla is getting bigger all the time, as any baby would.
It’s funny, though, because she seems so big to me now compared to how big she was at birth — just 6 pounds, 9 ounces and 20 inches long — yet people out in the world see her and think she’s little.
For example, a couple weekends ago I went to a big baby/kid stuff consignment sale at Pickering Barn in Issaquah, and a group of ladies were cooing at her and gushing about how adorable she is and all. This sort of thing happens all the time, of course, and I’m getting a big head about it. Heh.
One of the women mentioned that Lyla was little and motioned her friend over to come see “the tiny, adorable baby.”
People are always surprised when I tell them how old she is because she is still small for her age. At her two month appointment she was 9 pounds and 21 1/4 inches, putting her in the 10th percentile for weight and height.
Lately, though, I’m sure she’s got to be around 11 or even 12 pounds. Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, who takes care of her while we work has thought Lyla was up to 12 pounds a few weeks ago.
One thing that really made me think Lyla has gotten bigger was when I put her in a University of Washington onesie I bought Dec. 22. It was part of three pack of 3-6 month UW onesies that are really cute and even pretty. I am a UW grad, having earned a degree in Communications in 2000, so she’s got to have Husky gear.
About three or four weeks ago I tried to put her in one and she swam in it. I knew when I bought them it would be a while before they’d fit her, but, I figured at three months it would be pretty close.
Yesterday morning, just for fun, I told Ellie to see if one of the UW onesies would fit her. When I got home, there was Lyla, wearing one.

And it fits really well! She still has room to grow into it, though, which is good.

Next Thursday Lyla has her four month well child check up with our family doctor, so, we’ll know then just how much bigger she’s gotten. She may always be a petite girl, or, she may well catch up to her peers. I have no idea and I won’t even try to predict how she’ll grow. I’ll just sit back and watch.
And who wouldn’t want to do that … I mean, just look at this precious angel!

Daddy’s girl

krishill — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:11:37 +0000

Today is my dad’s birthday. I think fondly of him on this day. Our birthdays are exactly six months apart, his on March 8, mine on Sept. 8. For some reason I always thought it was special.
My dad was 39 1/2 when I was born. I am his only child. It should come as no surprise that I was a daddy’s girl. Somewhere among my mom’s photo collection is a picture of me in a nightgown at about 4 years old that proclaimed, “Daddy’s Little Girl” on it.
My parents, who did not marry, split when I was 4.
It’s interesting to me that this year the anniversary of his death in mid-February slipped by without my noticing it, but, even some 25 years after his death I still remember his birthday.
This year on his birthday I wish he could see his granddaughter. I have come to accept that he missed major milestones in my life such as high school and college graduations and my wedding.
But, I think that if he could hold Lyla, he would have such a big smile on his face.
My father was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 12 years old. He lost his eyesight before I was born but he would touch my face and tell me I was beautiful — this was particularly important to me just weeks before his death when I got my first pair of glasses and was suffering taunts of “four-eyes” and the like at the hands of my second grade classmates.
Even though he wouldn’t be able to see her, I know he would touch her face while holding her, and proclaim she’s beautiful.
Who I am was forged by his presence in my life and his absence after his death.
It is unlikely I would be a writer were it not for his insistence on giving me book after book well before I could even read. He gave me Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, the Little House on the Prairie series, Treasure Island and my favorite, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.
I was already well on my way to becoming a bookworm before he died and afterward, I sought sanctuary in books, taking out stacks of tomes from the public library once a month when my mom would take me.
Already I had a temper when he died and afterward, when I wasn’t holed up in my room reading, I would act out angrily. To this day I still have a hard time controlling my temper or being patient.
But all that reading and pent up anger eventually led to writing which in turn became an interest in newspapers in high school and finally allowed me as a sophomore at Interlake to determine this would be my career.
I am hoping that his parenting style will also influence how I am with Lyla, patient, doting, but focused on encouraging her intelligence and natural curiosity. Between time in a montessori school thanks to my mother and the books my dad gave me, I started reading and writing around the age of four. I don’t have those kinds of expectations for Lyla because that’s unfair, but, it would not surprise me if she was smarter than me.
My dad gave me a lot of gifts and I so wish that I could repay him with the gift of his granddaughter.
Today is his birthday and all I can do is say happy birthday, Daddy, wherever you are … with love, from Lyla and I.

Finding her voice

krishill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:10:17 +0000

In recent weeks, Lyla has had more and more to say, that is she is really becoming more vocal. It started with little coos and now she’s added squeals as well as giggles and other noises to her repertoire.
Her jungle animal bouncer is one of her favorite places and last night she was particularly chatty and active, so, I grabbed the video camera I got for Christmas and shot a little over a minute of video. I apologize that it’s a little dark, I’m still new to the video camera stuff, but it’s so much fun watching her. I got a little misty eyed watching it again after I uploaded it.
So, without further ado, here’s Lyla:

Where we’re going

krishill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:11:58 +0000

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of hours talking with Ron and Colleen Starr, who manage Vine Maple Place here in Maple Valley.
What they do at Vine Maple amazes me. They take in homeless families and they provide transitional housing. Beyond that, they provide child advocates, financial classes, parenting classes, connection to educational opportunities and more for the single parents and even two parent families that seek them out.
This year is Vine Maple Place’s 10th anniversary. For a small, grassroots organization which is supported almost entirely by the community — churches, individuals, business — that is quite an accomplishment.
One of the very first stories I did for the Covington-Maple Valley Reporter was about Vine Maple Place back in September 2005.
I remember when I first sat down with Colleen Starr to learn about the organization, I was blown away by what they were doing, but I also could completely relate to the people they were helping.
Growing up, we very well could have sought out the help of VMP, because we always lived hand to mouth. We were on the verge of homelessness probably my entire childhood.
Carra Purvis, a staff member at VMP who was also part of the meeting, told me that many of the families have moved a number of times and the children had switched schools often, as well. I think I went to four or five different elementary schools. I begged my mom when I was in seventh grade not to move again until I got through high school. We moved twice while I was in middle school, but, I didn’t have to switch schools. I just rode my bike a bit further to get to where I was going, Highland Middle School in Bellevue.
There are times I wish we had been scooped up and transformed by something like a VMP when I was a kid but I think that no matter what, I have a great appreciation for what I did not have, which has given me a strong determination to provide for Lyla all the best that I can offer and so much more than what I had.
And while it is important to me to provide her with essential material possessions such as a nice roof over her head, decent clothes to wear and whatever extras a little girl might want — what is today’s equivalent of the Cabbage Patch Kid? — but I also want to give her the intangibles I didn’t have, like a stable home, two parents who love each other and their child, an extended family that basically gets along despite our differences and opportunities to live life, not just exist day to day.
I see that VMP is doing that for its families and that is why it is so easy for people in the community to support its mission. As of early February, they had helped 191 parents and children, not just survive but thrive by providing them a foundation in all the things they need to be successful in life.
Those were things I had to learn on my own, the hard way, from the mistakes of others as well as my own.
But, don’t take my word for it, read about it right here.

Milestones

krishill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:56:01 +0000

Part of my job requires me interviewing high schools students fairly frequently and it’s interesting talking to teenagers now because when I first started out in this profession I was barely 22 years old and could totally relate to those kids.
Now, though, fast approaching my 32nd birthday I enjoy talking to teens but I can see the generation gap growing.
One thing I often observe is how much of a rush these kids are to grow up. But, not just teens, even kids I see in grade schools.
I had this revelation a couple days ago that illuminated why kids are in such a rush to grow up — it’s our fault as adults.
Well, this may not be the case with all parents or adults in a child’s life, but with Lyla even now at three months old it seems like we’re all in a big hurry for her to sit up on her own, get her first tooth, talk, crawl, walk, get her freakin’ driver’s license already.
Oh. My. Gosh.
She’s three months old!
But, those developmental milestones have become a huge focus in my life, our life, and it’s funny because Lyla is the only one who couldn’t care less about them.
Everyone else, well, we can’t wait till she’s crawling — that’s assuming she doesn’t go straight to walking — and wow, how fun will it be at Halloween this year and Christmas this year and this summer think of all the things when can do when she can sit up by herself and man, I better start thinking about a high chair and starting her on solids…
Her life is going to go by too fast. One day, I’m going to blink, and she’s going to be graduating from high school.
So, I need to slow it down and enjoy the things she’s doing now, the milestones she’s achieving now at her own pace which is plenty typical of babies her age or else I’m going to wonder if I’ve missed all the important stuff.
This reminds me of a strategy I employed when Jason and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii nearly 10 years ago. I didn’t take a single picture the whole nine days we were there. Yep. Nine whole days and not a single obligatory happy vacation, look we’re on our honeymoon, photo.
Now, as you know, I like to take lots of photos of Lyla and I promise I won’t stop doing that but I think the idea of no photos from Hawaii was that we were so busy enjoying our trip — it was the first time I’d been to Hawaii — that we didn’t stop to take pictures. We had a camera. We just … didn’t use it.
So, I want to be busy enjoying Lyla grow up, each precious moment, rather than spend all my time taking pictures and video or looking up the next milestone she’s going to reach. Lyla will get there when she gets there.
I mean, she’s in no hurry, so why should I hurry her there?
Then again, that doesn’t mean I won’t encourage her development.
I’m working on tummy time to help her eventually achieve independent mobility even though she haaaaaates it.
I also want to get an exersaucer since she really is getting stronger all the time with her head and neck muscles.
Then there’s this:

It’s a Bumbo babysitter for infants developing those all important sitting up skills.

So, I guess I’ll have to walk a fine line between encouraging her development and rushing it.
As long as I tell her I love her, that she’s beautiful and amazing every day, the rest should kind of fall into place. I think.

An ounce of prevention

krishill — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:25:34 +0000

During the crazy whirlwind that was the first 24 hours of Lyla’s life at Valley Medical Center, one of the bajillion people that came through to check on us, talk to us about things we needed before left, ask us to do this or that, take our picture and so on was a representative from the Pacific Northwest Research Institute.
I can’t remember her name, I just know it was a woman, and she asked us if we would be willing to allow them to use some of the blood taken after Lyla was born for a study on Type 1 diabetes.
I am a big fan of research. My father had Type 1 diabetes, a disease that killed him much too soon, so I am happy to help in any way that I can.
About a week and a half ago we got a letter from PNRI.
“We would like to thank you for taking part in the TEDDY Study on type 1 (juvenile) diabetes. We have the rest results for your child’s sample that was taken while in the hospital shortly after birth.
“Lyla’s blood spot tested negative for the genetic markers of type 1 diabetes. This does not promise that Lyla will never get diabetes. The good news is that Lyla’s risk is not more than that of the average child, who has a chance of about 1 in 300 or .3 percent of developing type 1 diabetes.”
It went on to thank us again, that no further participation on our part is necessary, but if Lyla is diagnosed someday with Type 1 to contact them as it would be helpful for the study.
I was definitely relieved to see that Lyla does not have the genetic markers for Type 1.
Since I found out just how important it was to have tight control over my blood sugar while I was pregnant for Lyla, I have tried to do everything I can to make sure I could minimize the potential she would get Type 2 as well, and luckily she was not a big baby.
And the more I talk to my mom, the more horrified I am by the stuff she did when she was pregnant with me, it’s no wonder I’ve struggled with my weight most of my life and that I developed Type 2 at such a young age.
Now, I have to take responsibility, too as I ate junk food and sweets without thought of the consequences and didn’t stay active when I went to college.
But, it certainly didn’t help that my mom ate chocolate ice cream daily during her pregnancy which led to my birth weight being nearly 10 pounds.
Yesterday she came to visit and was asking me about when we might start Lyla on infant rice cereal.
Mom was telling me that she started feeding it to me when I was two months old because I had such an epic appetite — shocker, I was a big baby who survived on sugar in the womb, hmm — so she had to supplement because breast milk supplemented with formula wasn’t enough.
I told her I wasn’t sure yet, since Lyla seems perfectly content to eat four ounces of formula every two hours, and she’s nowhere near as big as I was so I hadn’t really thought about making any changes to her diet. I did just put her on soy formula a couple weeks ago and that seems to be working well now so since it ain’t broke I don’t see any reason to try and fix it.
I added that we can ask our family doctor when we go in for Lyla’s four month well child check up on March 18.
Later on yesterday I told my husband about it and decided to do some research on the topic.
What I found about infant rice cereal was not comforting. From my perspective, it’s not something I want to give my daughter, who is at risk already for developing diabetes because not only is her mother diabetic, but so are both my parents. Commercially produced rice cereal apparently is just sugar and other junk I don’t want to give her. Some parent testimony I read, including from a doctor, said it is essentially a “rice brick” sitting in a baby’s tummy.
Now, some parents like that it creates a fullness which breast milk or formula can’t provide, as some anecdotal evidence from parents points to that helping babies sleep through the night.
Lyla already sleeps through night and I’m not sure I’m keen on starting her on anything before the six month mark even though plenty of pediatricians say infant rice cereal is fine for babies at four months.
Now, I’m not some kind of organic, whole food freak but growing up with an older sister who is a vegetarian that introduced me to organic and vegetarian food when I was in grade school I do enjoy that kind of thing.
Ultimately, I would like to make Lyla’s first solid foods myself. Things like mashed sweet potatoes, bananas, avocados and the like appear to be good options at the six month mark and if we want to add some kind of grain, homemade oatmeal would be a good way to go.
We do have a Cuisinart food processor. It’s totally doable.
But, maybe not all the time … so, maybe I’ll get some organic baby food, too. I’m not sure, though, since the “organic” label can be misleading. Luckily being diabetic, I am a master label reader, and I have also learned a bit about what to look for on baby food labels, too. So, I’ll be that mom in the Safeway at Four Corners standing there reading the baby food label jars. Probably not the only one, though.
Either way, I plan to add some spices to her food because I’ve read quite a bit that babies who eat flavorful food are less likely to be picky eaters as they get older. Sweet potatoes and bananas can have some cinnamon and maybe a little vanilla, for example, so that’s something we can try.
It just is so important to me that she learns to eat right from the beginning and that she enjoys eating all the good stuff. Plus I would like for her to be an adventurous eater. I don’t want her to turn her nose up at the thought of sushi or Vietnamese food or even leafy green vegetables.
For me, I was lucky that my sister is an adventurous eater and encouraged me to try things outside my comfort zone when I was young. OK, she teased me into it at first, but as I got older I was enthusiastic. I never would have had sushi at 13 for the first time, eaten Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, Moroccan or Indian food (with the latter being one of my absolute favorites) were it not for my older sister Elizabeth.
Hopefully I will be a good model when it comes to eating and that will be a major step toward preventing the health problems I’ve experienced in my life.
That’s just one of the ways I want to provide my daughter with the things I didn’t have growing up. My body started to fail me when I was 19. If there’s anything I can do to help Lyla have a healthy life, then I’ll do it, even if it is kind of inconvenient. She is SO worth it.

Sleep is a precious commodity

krishill — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:06:05 +0000

Everyone has heard the horror stories, er, the tales from parents about the joys of the early days that are defined by sleep deprivation, lack of time for hygiene or food, and a renewed appreciation for coffee.
My mother-in-law, Gale, for example has said often that the only way she could get my brother-in-law to sleep was to spend hours in her rocking chair. Often, her mother would arrive on weekday mornings to find Gale and Dave snoozing together in the rocking chair.
With both Jason and Dave, my mother-in-law recalls being exhausted, and just trying to get through work in a zombie-like state for the first nine months of their lives.
Now, my mom has long said I was a good sleeper, and that I was sleeping through the night by about three months old.
During the past 10 days or so, Lyla has gone from sleeping six or seven hours after being up well past 1 a.m., to conking out for the night around midnight and sleeping about eight hours. Sometimes we’re lucky and she sleeps a little more.
Up until two days ago, she had slept in our room in a bassinet, which was graciously provided by a friend of Gale’s. Had we not been given a bassinet, we wouldn’t have had one, as I had no intention of spending the money. I am quite thankful for the gift as it has been well used.
She has pretty much outgrown the bassinet. Lyla is a bit bigger now than she was in this picture, which was taken Feb. 9. Well, she’s longer, taller.

So, two nights ago Jason put her down in her crib. This is how I found her around 7:30 this morning. She fell asleep for good around midnight. She was still asleep when I left the house around 8:20.

It’s weird that she’s not in our room. Especially now that she’s sleeping pretty well — a trend that I hope continues — we had adjusted to her sleeping in the bassinet.
Last night after we crawled into bed, Jason was initially on high alert for cries of distress coming from Lyla’s room, but whatever noise he heard was likely one of our beagles or our evil orange tabby cat.
I think we should invest in a baby monitor now.
I am glad, though, that she’s finally in her crib and in her room.
But, now this really forces me to clean it up. Her clothes need to be reorganized as she’s outgrown all the newborn stuff finally and I need to get a few other baby items put away. Plus we have stored our Christmas wrap under her crib but it so doesn’t work because the storage boxes don’t fit underneath it. So, you have to try not to trip when approaching the crib.
In the end, though, I guess these are all good problems to have.
And maybe now that I’m getting more sleep I can wean myself off coffee again.
Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Who does Lyla look like?

krishill — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:22:43 +0000

Since she was born, friends, family and co-workers have looked at me, looked at Jason, then looked at Lyla and pronounced whom she looks like.
Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, says simply, “She looks like Lyla!”

But, what do you think?

Here’s Lyla, snapped with my cell phone camera just moments ago:

Then there’s me. Both photos were taken when I was four months old. This one is with my mom at Christmastime. I hear I was nearly 10 pounds at birth. So, compared to Lyla, I was huuuuuuuuge!

And this one is with my dad, Nick. I hear I loved riding around in the backpack with him.

And then there’s my husband, Jason, when he was a baby. Turns out he was 8 pounds, 3 ounces when he was born. I’m not sure how old he was in this photo but I’m guessing about three or four months old.

So, now that you have seen the photographic evidence, who does Lyla look like?

Busy weekend

krishill — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:19:03 +0000

Lyla and I had a busy weekend.
On Friday, she spent some time with her grandparents, Art and Gale. She hadn’t seen them in a couple of weeks and she cried a bit when Gale held her so I guess she’s at a point where she doesn’t like being held by whoever wants to hold her. I guess after a while she settled down but it was a little tough at first.
As you can see in this photo of Lyla with her Grandma, she was just fine…

Friday evening my sister, Elizabeth, drove down to visit us. We had dinner at Hacienda del Mar and then went back to my house just about a mile away and hung out. We talked and talked, my sister and I, which was great. Lyla was very unhappy. The first two days or so on the soy formula, our little girl didn’t like it too much as it constipated her a bit, but by the end of Sunday she was fine. But, unhappy Lyla didn’t want to be held by her auntie, either.
Saturday afternoon I ran down to Mama’s Steak and Pasta (formerly Mama Passarelli’s Dinner House) in Black Diamond so she could meet Mama herself. She did pretty well getting a little time with her honorary Nona Ginger, who got her smiling and giggling, but she did seem a little unsure at first. Ginger is clearly an experienced Nona (I understand that’s the Italian word for “Grandmother”) and I look forward to Lyla, Ginger and I having lunch together sometime soon, especially so we can talk about The Soup Ladies (an organization Ginger helped start a few years ago to feed emergency responders who handle disaster response) who will be recognized for work they did in Pierce County in the past year.
Coming soon will be a photo of Lyla in her very own Mama Passarelli’s onesie.
On Sunday my friend Nancy, her husband Ryan, their son Tannis, 8, and daughter, Jerrin, 6, came over for the Super Bowl. In addition, my friend Bambee, and her three year old son, McKailen, also came over. We ate, we drank, but Lyla still didn’t want to be held by anyone else.
Jerrin wanted to hold the baby, so, I had her sit on the couch and she did a great job holding her but after a few minutes the crying began so I took her back and she quieted right down.
Later, I handed her off to Bambee so I could have something to eat, and she cried the whole time. Within moments of me taking Lyla back after I finished scarfing down some of our tasty Super Bowl food she settled right back down.
It was one of those days where I just couldn’t put her down. It was all about mommy. I even tried to put her down in her crib after she passed out. As soon as I did that, her eyes snapped open, so I picked her back up and by the time I had gotten back out to the family room to sit down and watch the game she was asleep again.
I keep reading that you just have to follow your baby’s lead and this was one of those times where Lyla was happy only in my arms. Alrighty then.
After everyone left, I watched some of the Super Bowl highlights to catch a few big plays I missed while tending to my little girl, thank goodness for technology and our desire for on demand everything and instant gratification.

On another note, I wanted to show you a couple of other photos.

Here’s one of the pictures from our photo session a couple of weeks ago at Yuen Lui:

And this is Lyla laying on her new quilt, handmade by Victoria Laise Jonas, Maple Valley Deputy Mayor and driving force behind the Maple Valley Farmers Market which started last year, something I’m very excited to take Lyla to on Saturdays this summer and fall. She went with me to almost every market over the summer, anyway, while I was pregnant.
Anyway, I just wanted to share a peaceful Lyla and her quilt. It’s a sweet photo.

Bits and pieces

krishill — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:56:37 +0000

I promise all is well in the land of Lyla, I’ve just been crazy busy recently, so I apologize for not writing a blog post in almost two weeks. My mom and husband’s birthdays are just four days apart so the end of January is always nuts. Tack onto that the fact that I’ve just come back to work and get busier here with the paper with each passing day, well, it’s been hectic.

I don’t really have a theme for this post, I just want to post about some things that have been going on to just so everyone knows what’s going on with our kiddo.

Food
Now that I’m back at work, I’m eating much better than I was while on leave because I have structure to my day and I don’t feel guilty taking a break from work to eat, because work doesn’t mind if I put it down. Granted I eat at my desk most of the time, but, at least I eat.
It kind of pains me to admit that I gave up nursing about four weeks after Lyla was born but she wasn’t gaining weight and I just wanted to her to be able get enough to eat, which wasn’t happening with nursing. She’s a stubborn girl, like mommy, and I think the tongue tie issue just set us on a different path from the start whether I liked it or not.
So, we started out with this ready to eat formula that they sent us home from the hospital with:

But it’s $10 for a box of six bottles, which lasts about three days now — Lyla’s drinking four ounces per meal now, yay — so we switched to the powdered version.
Basically this (I don’t have my own image, so, I grabbed this one from another photobucket account)

Today I picked up a soy based version at Costco because Lyla gets really uncomfortable gas and even with burping and passing gas she can be pretty fussy. She fusses badly when she’s hungry and has painful gas, otherwise, she’s a pretty happy baby.
So, this is what I got today (thanks Mom, for the $100 Costco card for Christmas)

We’ll see how the soy based formula works. I’ll report back on that in a week or so.

Development
Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, has been taking care of Lyla while we’re at work which I have previously mentioned. Every day when I get home, she tells me all about Lyla’s day, new things she’s doing and all the things she does with Lyla.
She puts Lyla in her activity gym so she can work on developing her coordination and plays music to help stimulate her growing brain.

Ellie also is doing a little bit of tummy time with Lyla every day so she can build up strength in her neck and arms so that she will be able to eventually sit up on her own as well as roll over. These things lead to eating solid foods, crawling, and all the other skills Lyla will need to be a self-sufficient person. My mom and Ellie think Lyla will be walking early and suspect she’ll skip over crawling altogether.
Lyla already has awesome head and neck control for her age. She blows me away.
Ellie told me yesterday that she is surprised by how alert and active Lyla is at 2 1/2 months old. Usually babies her age spend most of their time eating and sleeping, she said, but not our girl. She’s curious and looks around as well as just likes to see what’s going on.
Lyla likes it when Ellie reads books to her. Jason’s parents got her a box of “Baby’s First Books” with small cardboard and bath safe books.
A new favorite activity is playing with her pink elephant rattle which plays music when you pull its tail. She smiles and giggles at that.
Many mornings Jason and I will sit with her on our bed and sing along with music on the radio or his iPhone. We just got a Phillips alarm clock radio with an iPod/iPhone dock so we can play her our favorite tunes or the playlist Jason made while I was pregnant called “Lyla’s Songs.” It starts off with, “Lyla,” a song by my favorite band in the world, Oasis.
Jason was telling me this morning that he was singing to her yesterday and she really enjoyed it, she was laughing and smiling at him. That makes me happy. We’re both musicians (he played clarinet and I played viola — he plays guitar now) so she’s going to grow up with lots of music. I hope she takes to music and wants lessons of some sort when she gets older.
And we know music is good for her … I play jazz and Mozart for her, especially when we’re in the car, we listen to Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk.
Every day is so exciting with Lyla.

People ask me all the time how she’s doing and I could talk endlessly about everything she’s doing since every day is a new adventure. There’s a reason the blog is called Baby Babble!

Growth
This is the last thing I’ll talk about today. Lyla is getting bigger all the time but she seems to just be getting taller more than anything. She’s finally outgrown her newborn clothes and is filling out 0-3 month size items.
A growing Lyla also means making a change in her sleeping arrangements. We got a bassinet from a friend of my mother-in-law’s before she was born. I had zero intention of her sleeping in our room but once we got her home there’s now way I could let her sleep anywhere else.
Ellie has been putting her down for naps in her crib the past couple weeks so that when we do start putting her in there at night it’ll be an easy transition. Right now, when Lyla stretches her arms out, her armspan is too wide for the bassinet and in a couple weeks she’ll be too long to fit in it.
I had planned to put her in her crib last Friday night but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! At this point I don’t wake up every couple hours to make sure she’s breathing — I’m such a new mom! — but we don’t have a baby monitor system so I’m still kind of nervous letting her sleep in her crib at night even though she’s only about 15 feet away from us.
Pretty soon, though, I won’t have a choice. I better get a monitor so I can better handle the transition. She’ll probably be just fine.

So hopefully in the next day or two I’ll post some videos of Lyla here on the blog so you can see why I am already planning to sign her up for martial arts — Bill Woodcock suggested tae kwon do, of course!

Till next time.

The question of the week

krishill — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:52:50 +0000

It’s been almost three weeks since I came back from maternity leave and whenever I talk to one of my regular sources, I get the same question:
“How does it feel to be back at work?”

Every morning I have to tear myself away and go to the office. This week my husband suggested I get up half an hour earlier than I need to so I can spend some time with Lyla before I leave. Jason has been off for the past three weeks spending some quality time with our daughter since he only had about four days with her after she was born. So, that gives him a bit of a reprieve in the morning while I change her, get her a bottle or feed her so he can get a little extra sleep or do a couple other chores around the house.
I have found that it’s a bit easier to head out the door after taking the extra 30 minutes or so to spend with Lyla.
Once I get to the office and get focused on work, and I hope this doesn’t sound horrible, but for a little while I forget I’m a parent.
During the past three weeks I’ve been getting re-connected with the communities I cover and all the wonderful people I work with as well as meeting new people. I am reminded daily what I love about my job.
Basically I get paid to talk to awesome people about awesome things they are doing or awesome things that are happening in the community, take pictures, write about all of it then put that work onto a newspaper page or upload it to the Reporter Web site.
For me, there really isn’t a better job.
And at the end of the day I get the reward of going home to my beautiful daughter and wonderful husband.
It keeps everything in perspective and so far, I seem to be finding a balance.
Have I mentioned how lucky and blessed I am lately?

Busy day for baby

krishill — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:55:24 +0000

There is probably nothing more startling for a baby to wake up to than a needle being jabbed into her thigh.
And that is exactly what happened to Lyla this morning after she got the once over by our family doc for her two month well child check up.
After she was weighed and measured — she’s 9 pounds now and 21 1/4 inches — our doctor checked all her vitals, reflexes, we talked about how she’s eating, various developmental milestones, whether or not the water at our house is fluorinated (probably not, it turns out) and other important baby health issues.
After he left with instructions to come back in two months, we had a bit of wait, then the nurse who weighed and measured Lyla returned to give her the immunizations — a pair of shots and then an oral medication.
From there, we headed home and left Lyla in the care of her great-grandmother, Ellie.
We got our hair cut, then I grabbed lunch then headed to the office. While I was working Ellie was able to get Lyla to nap in her crib. That’s a pretty big thing since she’s primarily slept in her bassinet or cuddled with a family member. We’re hoping daytime naps in the crib will help her transition to it more easily at night because she’s going to outgrow the bassinet very soon.
After work we headed to Yuen Lui photography studio in Kent. My in-law’s bought a family plan four years ago that came with four sittings and we only used one so I figured we should take advantage of the sittings to get a nice family portrait as well as professional photos of Lyla.
While I am a good photographer, I’m not a portrait photographer, nor do I have the equipment to take good portraits or the training, really.
I can’t tell you how much I love the pictures. Technology is great because we were able to view and order the photos 10 minutes after the session was finished. Normally I hate pictures of myself but the photographer did a great job of picking poses that made me look good.
And Lyla looked adorable, as always.
She was fussy and we weren’t able to totally settle her down to feed her but we got her calm enough to get pictures. They really show off her big baby blues.
Once we finished the session, we fed her, and by the time the photos were ready to be viewed she passed out. She’s been asleep since and that’s no surprise considering what a busy day it has been but it was well worth it.
Days like this remind me what a wonderful life I have with my own little family. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It takes a village, right?

krishill — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:06:04 +0000

OK, so, I must profess that I don’t actually know anything about the book, “It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us” by Hillary Rodham Clinton that I referenced in my blog post title.
I do, however, think the concept of having lots of awesome people taking part in your child’s life is important.
Having my family and friends involved in Lyla’s life is critical. When I was quite young, we spent a lot of time with my mom’s family, but as I got older she drifted from them as my cousins grew up and moved away, as things changed and as I grew up. By the time I was 15, I lost touch with all but my most immediately family, my mom and my sister.
I was close with my best friend’s family, Mike is the fifth of nine children and I spent a lot of time with them after we started hanging out in sixth grade.
After Jason and I started dating, I was blessed that his family is so wonderful, now I’m not saying there weren’t bumpy patches since I was 17 when we started dating and 19 when we got engaged but as we’ve grown up our relationships with his parents, his brother and his grandmother have gotten better.
One reason I was so dead set on moving back to Washington state after we lived in Las Vegas (where Jason attended UNLV and earned his business degree) was so that when we did decide to start a family we’d be near our own relatives. We knew there would be plenty of baby sitters.
As I’ve discussed in previous posts, we agonized over what we were going to do about child care.
In mid-December, Jason’s grandmother, Ellie was at our house with one of her sisters, Rae.
During the visit, Rae asked, “have you figured out what you’re going to do about child care?”
Oh, boy. This was a tough question while I was on maternity.
“We’re not sure yet,” I admitted.
“Oh, I’ll take care of her,” Ellie said.
She had a big smile on her face. I was thrilled. Having a family member take care of Lyla would be ideal but Jason and I had thought his mom would have retired (she’s got more than 35 years in with the Bellevue Fire Department) and would be available. We didn’t think Ellie would be available and we definitely didn’t know if we should even ask her to take on such a task.
Believe it or not, up until little more than a year ago, she was working. In fact, she was taking care of Jordan and Madison, providing in home care for those kiddos from the time Jordan was a little boy. They were the ring bearer and flower girl in our wedding.
They’re teenagers now and changes in the family left Ellie without work.
It must have been meant to be … just a few months later I was pregnant.
So, starting tomorrow, she’ll come over and help us out. Jason goes back to work next week so she is going to spend this week with him learning about what we do, where everything is, and so on.
No one is better qualified. She’s the second oldest of eight children, raised two children of her own, helped take care of my husband and his brother then later took care of Jordan and Madison.
What’s more, she only lives about 20 minutes away from us off Issaquah-Hobart Road, about halfway between Four Corners and Issaquah.
I am stoked.
Jason tells me she’s pretty excited, too.
Maybe it doesn’t take a village, it just takes a great family, and I feel so blessed that we can give that to Lyla.

Here’s Ellie and Lyla the day our baby girl was born.

Change

krishill — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:28:13 +0000

For months people would say to me, “Just wait, your whole life is going to change.”
Duh. Can you hear me rolling my eyes?
Isn’t that the point? To change your life, start or expand your family, and so on when you get pregnant?
People can get so melodramatic when you tell them you’re pregnant. But, you’ve heard all those complaints.
Obviously — and to all of you reading this who told me my life was going to change, forgive me — I just nodded my head, smiled and said, “I can’t wait” while silently dismissing you.
Don’t you know that until someone is in the parenting club there’s no point in telling them that? They’re not going to listen. That’s like trying to tell a teenager there’s no reason to rush into adulthood because there’s bills and work and chores and other mundane responsibilities. All they see is freedom.
And all an expectant parent sees is the wonderful, adorable baby they’ve envisioned in their mind.
So, obviously I was expecting my whole life to be turned upside down, to go through some major upheaval and need beta blockers or valium or both to manage the insanity.
Granted, the first week home with Lyla was challenging, but it really didn’t take long for her to fit right into our life.
Yes, there’s change, but it’s incremental … almost like weight gain, before you know it you’ve put on 20 pounds.
Or, with a baby, before you know it there are toys everywhere, making a bottle or changing a diaper is second nature, you reach into your pocket for something and discover a pacifier and after the first couple trips out of the house that took an hour to get ready, suddenly you can be out the door almost as quickly as when there wasn’t a bundle of joy to strap into a car seat.
Sometimes when people would tell me “your whole life is about to completely change” it almost sounded like an ominous warning tinged with a bit of resentment and wistfulness.
There is something about pregnant women that makes people, especially veteran parents, want to scare the crap out of them. What is up with that?
Parenting so far has been wonderful. I wonder to myself, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
And I’m already plotting what I need to say to persuade Jason to go for no. 2 in a couple years. I don’t want to wait too long, I’m 31 and high risk as it is, plus I don’t want to have a huge gap in age anyway. My sister and I are nearly 12 years apart while Jason and his younger brother are separated by more than six years.
So, yes, life has changed. For the better. And in ways I would never have expected, which is what I suspect everyone was trying unsuccessfully to articulate.
I enjoy changing diapers, even stinky poopy ones, and feeding Lyla and trying to soothe her when she’s fussy. Every moment is awesome when it’s challenging.
Therefore I hereby promise to NEVER tell an expectant parent, “Just wait, your whole life is going to change.”
I know better because I have officially joined the parenting club. Like every pregnancy and every baby, every parent is different, and every parenting experience is different so I’ll just let you expectant parents find that out in your own way and time.

And now, pictures of Lyla.

Visions of Lyla’s future?

krishill — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:29:41 +0000

On Monday I was at Lake Wilderness Elementary School in Tina Newberry’s fifth grade social studies class. I was there to witness students using netbooks for the first time in the classroom.
It is part of the Tahoma School District’s efforts to help students at all age levels have access to the best kinds of technology tools with the idea that the skills learned will help them after they walk of the stage, diploma in hand, ready to head out into the world that is increasingly wired and wireless.
This kind of thing is funded by a technology levy passed in 2006 — a levy that took three attempts before it finally passed — which over its four year life will collect $10 million in taxes from residents of the district.
I have no problem admitting that as a resident of the district, I voted for the levy, and would do so again. At the time we didn’t have kids and hadn’t decided to have kids. But, there’s a whole lot of kids in Maple Valley, about one-third of the city’s 20,000-plus residents are under the age of 18.
And a handful of them live on my block not to mention the hundreds of youngsters that live in the surrounding neighborhoods.
My thought process then was if the kids who live around me are getting a good education and have plenty of opportunities to do the right thing they won’t go breaking into my car or my house.
Now, though, I realize that someday my own kid will be using these tools. Whoa.
As I stood next to Kevin Patterson, the district’s spokesman, and talked with him about how far technology has come just in the four years since the technology levy originally passed (which I wrote about then, too, and that’s crazy for me to wrap my mind around having been working in this community that long).
Then I thought, man, imagine what kind of cool stuff kids are going to have when Lyla is in grade school. Right now students are using netbooks to draw maps, create PowerPoint presentations — a skill I do not have and I consider myself quite tech savvy — and do online research.
And not just kids at Tahoma High, no, all the kids at the elementary level have access to these netbooks and eventually there will be 1,700 of them throughout the district.
Considering less than six months ago I bought myself a Toshiba netbook to tote around in my camera bag for doing interviews and other handy work-related things, this puts Tahoma on the edge of technology, not quite the bleeding edge because netbooks have been available for a few years now but in the past six months or so have really come into their own.
I am trying to envision what kind of cool stuff Lyla will be doing in kindergarten with technology, in fifth grade, in high school. It blows my mind.
My dad was an engineer, an O.G., and by that I mean original (tech) geek. When I was five years old I was playing video games on a black and white screen monitor on a computer my dad had at home. He had a VCR and a microwave in the early 1980s when they were still novelties.
I remember sitting next to him on the couch when I was 7 years old, watching “Dennis the Menace” on Nickelodeon, nodding inattentively while keeping one eye on the TV as he explained how batteries worked.
So, here I am, 31 years old. My dad is long gone. But the geek factor is clearly an inherited trait.
Look in my camera bag for an example. Inside is a Nikon D80 with an 18-135mm lens attached, a speed flash in another compartment, and a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens. Also in there is my netbook, a digital voice recorder (the high tech version of a tape recorder minus the tapes) and my 120GB iPod classic with Bose TriPort headphones.
If someone got hold of my camera bag they would have well over $1,500 in gadgets.
Add to that my love of cell phones. I have the newest BlackBerry available, the Bold 2, which replaced my year-old Bold. I ordered it from at&t with my upgrade the day before I went into the hospital to have Lyla. It was waiting on my door step when we brought her home.
Normally I would have torn into that box right away and set up my new toy.
It took me almost four days. A newborn is kind of hard not to focus on.
Quite a few folks jokingly asked what cell phone Lyla would be getting. Heh.
Oh, I already have a couple cheapo spares ready for her to play with when she starts reaching for my BlackBerry. And she will.
Now I also wonder how much will she be into technology.
According to a guy name Ian Jukes who spoke to Tahoma teachers a couple years ago, kids these days are “digital natives” anybody over the age of 25 is a “digital immigrant.”
Pfft. Not me!
But, anyway, the point is this tech stuff is second nature to kids these days.
So, if I’m lucky, we won’t blame any tech geekiness on my genes and simply say Lyla’s just one of them “digital natives” Mr. Jukes talks about.
Meantime, how young is too young to give a kid their first cell phone?
Oh, you think I’m kidding. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The conversations I’m preparing to have with my daughter. I have to be prepared because every parent I know says time flies and before I know she’ll be graduating high school.
I think I’m going to stop envisioning the future of technology in Lyla’s lifetime and just enjoy her being a baby.
The rest of the stuff, I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Yeah.

Ink

krishill — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:24:56 +0000

Many people say tattoos are addicting, once you get one, you’ll want more.
For me, this has been quite true.
My first tattoo was one I thought about for a long time. When I was 16, a junior in high school, I decided I wanted a feather quill pen on my right forearm. Then I went to college and thought about it some more. I realized I couldn’t have a tattoo there and get a job in an office. Since I decided I wanted to be a journalist before I settled on this tattoo, I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize getting a job in the business, so I figured I’d get the ink on my right arm in the bicep area.
Then I moved to Las Vegas after graduating from college where sleeveless shirts in the summer are a must, at least for women, so I decided the final placement of my first tattoo would be on my right shoulder blade.
With no knowledge about how to select an artist, I went to the nearest place I could find to get the work done, Diversity on Maryland Parkway across from UNLV. Our apartment was just a half mile away.
I set my appointment for my birthday, Sept. 8, 2002. I turned 24 that day. It took eight years from initial thought (though legally I couldn’t get one for two years after I came up with the idea) to finally going and getting it.
Much to my dismay, the kid who did the tattoo showed up an hour and a half late, he barely grunted more than a few words to me during the process and not long into it I found out he had only been tattooing for about nine months. I paid $150 for my tattoo, about double what I would’ve paid anywhere else.

My second tattoo was a much better experience. In October 2007 I decided to write a story about Maple Valley Tattoo next to Gloria’s on Maple Valley Highway. I decided a great way to write the story would be to get a tattoo. I had wanted to get a memorial tattoo for my dad, who died when I was 7 1/2, because my mom scattered his ashes but doesn’t remember where anymore. At the time, she wouldn’t tell me, so I guess I’ll never know.
So, I decided to get a triquetra knot, also known as the trinity knot. It’s common design found in Celtic knotwork. It seems like I have a lot of Scottish stock in my ancestry, particularly on my dad’s side, which seemed appropriate. Another reason I picked the triquetra is because it looks like three fishes, or pisces, and my dad’s birthday is in March, making him a Pisces. Plus, I just liked the way it looked. His name and birth date are also part of the tattoo.
Eddie Campion did the work and I love the way it looks.

My third tattoo was done by Jay Hand in June 2008 while he was at Ancient’s Arts tattoos in Renton. It covers up a scar on my lower back that remained following surgery I had in March 2006 to repair a bulging/herniated disc. By the time I got this piece done I was totally pain free and felt like that was a good time to cover up the scar. It was closure. I just like fleur de lys. I know I had some good reasons for why I picked this, but, first I figured it was different plus there’s some strong connections to this symbol from my teen years as well as some more connection to my ancestry, both French and Scottish.

Finally, another very personal tattoo. I got this one done yesterday. Not long after I found out I was pregnant, maybe a month or so, I decided I would get the baby’s name tattooed on me as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I tracked Jay down at Kya’s Underground Ink in Auburn via Facebook.
I got a time set up with him after talking over the idea on the phone. I told him what I wanted in sort of vague terms and somehow I got exactly what I was looking for from him, but, given how awesome my previous ink came out this wasn’t at all surprising. I love it and hope Lyla does, too, when she’s old enough to realize what it means.

What will I do someday when she comes to me wanting a tattoo? I’ll tell her she better wait till she’s 18. Then I’ll talk it over with her, what does she want, where does she want it, will it have an impact on any future career plans and go with it from there. If she seems dead set on it and it won’t create an obstacle for her, as well as if it means something, then I wouldn’t try and stop her — at least that’s how I feel now. I can only hope that my own thoughtfulness in the process to getting each tattoo will inform her own thoughts on the matter. For all I know, she’ll hate tattoos and never want one. We’ll just have to wait and see.

For now, I can only hope that she understands that I put her name on my shoulder so she’ll always be with me, because I am so proud to have her in my life and that I love her more than I could ever express in words.

Back to the grind

krishill — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:06:34 +0000

Yesterday morning I rolled into the office to work for a living for the first time since the middle of November.
It was a little weird to be going work after more than six weeks away from the place but once I sat down and started talking to Dennis about everything that’s been happening around here (and it’s been a whole lot, good, bad and otherwise) it felt like I’d never left.
We went over some of the more interesting stories that broke while I was gone — I swear, all hell broke loose, people getting fired, quitting, resigning mid-term, developments changing their construction schedules, and so on — as well as talking about what we would be dealing with this week as far as getting the paper out.
Dennis is a great boss and definitely did what he could to ease my transition back. I totally appreciate that … but don’t tell him I said that to you. I would *never* give him such a compliment in person because then he’d want to don a cape and mask pretending he’s a superhero. Or worse.
But, I digress.
Colleen Starr from Vine Maple Place stopped in yesterday afternoon to drop off some calendars bearing the name of the local non-profit she founded. VMP helps single homeless parents transition from a tough situation to permanent housing and as a Christian based organization supported by the community and local churches, they help through faith, counseling and education.
One of the very first stories I wrote after we started the Covington/Maple Valley Reporter was about Vine Maple Place and Colleen is one of the first people in the community I met, so, I was happy to see her on my first day back to work.
She asked me how motherhood is treating me.
I love it. I love being a mommy more than I could have ever imagined.
So, as you can imagine, it was a challenge to leave Lyla at home yesterday morning. I have to admit, I had to hold back a few tears, but I took a deep breath and kissed her and my husband goodbye for the day.
There is no doubt that I was torn. I have loved journalism since I first got into it when I was a sophomore in high school. The longer I’ve done it, the more I love being in the business, and I’m thankful to be working here because my office is only two miles from my house. Plus, it’s just fun covering these communities, especially now that I’ve been doing it for more than four years.
That’s why I blogged while on leave. I had to stay connected and keep writing. Ultimately, the core of my identity is the fact I’m a writer, even if I weren’t a reporter I’d still be a writer.
But, now, another significant part of my identity is being a mom.
Somehow, I have to find a way to balance both. I am pretty sure I can do it, especially with the help of Jason, as well as our family. Heck, even our friends are awesome and supportive.
For example, I bought U2 tickets for the show at Qwest Field that’s coming up in June, and I posted on Facebook that I got the tickets. A couple wonderful ladies were offering to babysit when I mentioned I’d need one. It was bordering on a friendly competition. Heh.
Lyla is blessed to be so loved.
And that’s what makes it easy for me to be back at work, the knowledge that she is well taken care of when I’m not there, that way I can make a living to make sure she never wants for anything.
But, she is the wallpaper on my cellphone, because I do miss little Lyla terribly. It’s all I can do not to pester Jason (who is off for a few weeks to spend time with her now that I’m back to work) constantly to find out what she’s doing.
Tonight when I get home from work I’m sure I’ll rush in the door and scoop her up then shower her with kisses and coos and hugs.
That’s me, journalist, wife, working mom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Six week visit

krishill — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:16:25 +0000

It’s been nearly eight months since I first met my obstetrician at Valley Women’s Clinic. I had been a patient there for a few years but my annual exam had been done by a nurse practitioner, Barb, whom I like quite well. Since things generally looked good there hadn’t been a need to see one of the doctors.
Then I got pregnant and after the initial once over by Barb in May, I finally met the OB who would handle my pregnancy, and as I didn’t have a preference they assigned me one seemingly arbitrarily.
Now, I had done my research and not only had I found that I liked all of the docs in the practice on paper, but I’d had nothing but positive experiences with the clinic staff so I wasn’t stressed — especially when Barb reassured me that this doc has a ton of experience with high risk pregnancies, more than 20 years in fact, and that other OB/GYN practices sent their high risk patients to VWC.
Cool.
The first time we were supposed to meet the doc, he got called away to deliver a baby, so when we finally got to (Jason went to all but a handful of appointments with me) meet him it was a relief.
He walked in the room and said, “Hi, I’m Jim Rice,” then shook both of our hands. We talked some things over and from the start he was serious about making sure I got my diabetes under control.
For some time I was sure the man had no sense of humor. I realize now that because of his approach I probably did a better job managing my diabetes and ultimately the pregnancy than I might have with a more lenient doctor.
And now that Lyla is here, Dr. Rice is totally different, well he even showed his humor when I was in the hospital. In fact, I wanted to tell him at one point that it’s nice to know he’s such a smart aleck.
Last Wednesday I went in for my six week post-partum appointment and I would dare say he was almost relaxed.
Right after, “How are you?,” he went straight to asking about my blood sugar.
I paused for a moment, seriously considering bluffing my way through this conversation, much like I have with my endocrinologist over the past three years.
Instead, I realized I respect him too much to lie, so I came out with it.
“I don’t know.”
And he lectured me a little bit but I explained that I had an excuse. I broke the lancet pen on one of my meters and I couldn’t find the other one.
He said that he’d order me another one but he couldn’t because I’m not pregnant anymore. I promised him I would get another one and I would get back to it because he’s right, it is important to keep my diabetes under control still.
Luckily, I stopped at my office that afternoon and discovered that my extra meter was in my desk drawer where I had left it, instead of lost somewhere because I thought I had put it in my camera bag and brought it home before I went on leave.
Had I not found it, though, Jason would have picked one up for me … he can get me a meter for $15 at the pharmacy he works at so no excuse for not testing.
Now, if I could ever get more than quick answers out during appointments, I would have explained to him that I remember vividly how sick my dad was before he died of complications from Type 1 diabetes when I was 7 years old. His feet were purple due to loss of circulation, he was blind, and generally miserable, not to mention grossly overweight.
That is the kind of thing that motivated me to take care of myself while pregnant and will continue to motivate me during the rest of my life. Not only do I owe it to myself, I owe it to my husband and more importantly, to my daughter.
But, I digress…
After discussing birth control — hey, there’s no reason to get pregnant again right away, hopefully everyone understands — and settling on a new method since the pill made impossible for me to lose weight there was the joy of the full on exam. I’ll spare you the details because the conversation was more interesting anyway.
Becky, his assistant, asked how was Christmas with her.
“It was great,” I said. “She slept through most of it and was passed around from relative to relative.”
“I bet she got her weight in gifts,” Dr. Rice said.
“Oh yes, toys she can’t play with yet and clothes she can’t wear, but that’s OK. That’ll come in handy later.”
Something he mentioned related to the new birth control method we agreed on led me to say something about how it would be ideal to have some space between child no. 1 and child no. 2, though it did take me almost nine years to talk my husband into having no. 1.
“Now that you’ve had her,” he said, “and she wraps him around her little finger, it won’t take nearly as long the second time around.”
Sounded like he was speaking from experience. Heh.
Becky also kept commenting on how cute Lyla is — I hear this a lot so my ego gets bigger all the time — and my favorite moment of the appointment came.
“She is precious,” Dr. Rice said.
Yay!
I have to think that getting to this point is one of the reasons he does this job, which from what I’ve read requires some of the most hours put in of any specialty, at least 55 to 60 hours a week on the low end with many OB/GYN’s putting in upwards of 100 hours a week.
At the end he said that everything looked good and he’d see me in a year.
He put out his hand and shook mine again, closing with “Happy New Year” before turning to leave.
What a New Year for me, the first time in my life I haven’t minded watching the holiday season and the old year slip away as I trudge forward into the dark and dreary dead of winter.
And to think, this time last year we were just planning to start trying, with the hopes I’d be pregnant by Christmas.
Now we have our little family, I’ve got the clean bill of health, goals for taking care of myself and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Let’s see how long this lovely glow lasts.
Tomorrow, I go back to work.

Old (and new) habits die hard

krishill — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:47:50 +0000

First, let me tackle old habits.
Hi, my name is Kris and I have a potty mouth.
There are a fair number of you reading this who are surprised by this revelation. I make every effort, especially when I’m dealing with sources, the public in general and just about anyone I encounter in my professional life to keep my foul language out of the conversation. I do this because I am representing not only my newspaper, but my company and the profession of journalism and they all deserve the utmost respect. Nothing I do should sully that if I can help it.
But, anyone who knows me outside of work knows that I can curse a blue streak.
It’s an old habit.
Growing up going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with my mom (she got sober two years before she got pregnant with me) I learned a lot of bad words at an early age.
I didn’t really begin to employ this knowledge until I was a freshman in high school. I was quite the angry teenager and when my fuse was lit generally how I would respond was with some inappropriate outburst of obscenities followed by stalking off with a figurative black cloud over my head.
As I got more into writing and found better, more constructive ways to express myself, this became less frequent. But it took some time.
But, the outside of work version of my speech is still peppered with a lot of bad words, and I worry that Lyla will pick up on that and eventually incorporate that into her own vocabulary.
I’m not so sure I can curb my bad language around her, but, I’m going to try. I know I probably don’t need to worry about it for a little while but I know that little ears pick up on those things sooner than you think.
As for new habits, well, my eating habits that I developed during my pregnancy are sticking a lot better than I thought they would.
Now, with a newborn, it’s been hard to eat perfectly and some days I hardly eat at all because it’s more important to me that Lyla’s needs are met.
During my pregnancy, I couldn’t wait until all the dietary restrictions were off and I could eat whatever I wanted again.
Now I’m finding myself generally making the same choices and eating the same healthy things I was eating for six months to manage my blood sugar.
I have, however, totally embraced caffeine again. Mmm.
But, some of the other things I was looking forward to aren’t as great as I thought they would be, like potatoes. I thought I missed French fries. Turns out that I’m pretty good without them. I’d rather eat fruit or salad than have fries.
Yesterday I was at Target at The Landing in Renton. I love the cheap-o popcorn they sell in the little cafe. I almost always get a bag of it on my way out. Yesterday I had no trouble resisting. In the past, if I tried to leave without buying it, I’d have quite an internal conflict.
Another thing that helps is my appetite is much smaller and it’s easier to eat better when you get full fast. Portion control is critical.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been great about testing my blood sugar. Yesterday I stopped by the office and found my extra meter was still there and not lost somewhere in my house as I had thought.
So, my plan is to start testing regularly again so I can be even better about what I eat now.
This is starting to sound dangerously like a set of New Year’s resolutions as I write this on New Year’s Eve.
But, really, these are long term goals.
I’m sure you’ve realized that I am like any other new parents with the best intentions and these things are motivated out of love for being the best mom I can be for Lyla.
So, here’s hoping that bad habits go away and the new habits stick around, not just in 2010 but for the long term because not only will I be a better person and parent for it but hopefully Lyla will benefit, too.
Happy New Year, my friends.

Obsessive behavior

krishill — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:25:08 +0000

Long ago I discovered “A Baby Story” on TLC. I was in my early 20s, not remotely ready for children and barely married, but I loved the show.
Since then, TLC and its parent network Discovery have added other new baby related shows to its stable of programming, and while I’ve been on maternity leave I’ve been consuming it all obsessively.
Take today. I got out of bed with a very alert baby at 8 a.m. and turned on TLC. The non-HD channel has two episodes of “Bringing Home Baby” from 8-9 a.m. This show documents the first 36 hours a baby spends with its family at home.
Next up was two older episodes of “A Baby Story” from 2000-2003. There goes another hour of my morning. By now, Lyla is passed out after her morning feeding, so I am entrenched on the couch.
After that, TLC in HD is on the East Coast feed, so I get three more episodes of “A Baby Story” that have been shot typically in the past two years.
At one point this morning after flipping to the HD channel, a mom featured in the last episode of the day was pushing, I found myself pushing with her. Ha!
Moving on …
There’s an episode of a show called “Birth Day” to cap that all off but those are eight or nine years old and the shows have more of a documentary feel to them and I find the impersonal touch to be a little off putting.
So, then I flip to Discovery Health to watch “Deliver Me: Home Edition.” This show follows a trio of women who all work together in an OB/GYN practice in L.A. as they work together with their patients while trying to balance their practice with their own personal lives.
This half hour episode condenses a previous hour long show and wraps up with a follow up some months later with patients to see how they’ve adjusted to life with their new babies.
For a break I switch over to Food Network and watch “Guy’s Big Bite” with Guy Fieri, and get a half hour of watching someone else cook, then back to Discovery Health for another episode of “Bringing Home Baby.”
I’m done at that point, so, I have some lunch, take a shower and generally head out to run errands. Or I do chores around the house with ESPN on as there’s about 90 minutes of sports talk analysis shows on that make for good background noise.
If you’re thinking, “Kris, you have lost your mind,” you’re probably right.
I’ve always been like this. When I get interested in something, I develop an obsessive fascination with it, which can be offputting to some people on a personal level but can also be very helpful in my job. I’ve actually had to force myself not to do it as much at work now because it can have a detrimental effect. If I get too focused on one thing, all my other stories can suffer, which I just can’t do working in a two-person shop.
But, since I’m on leave and my no. 1 job is to spend 24/7 with a newborn, this seems like a great thing to be obsessed over.
I just hope I can tear myself away when I go back to work in January.
One thing I do know is that it will be a little bit easier to leave Lyla when I go back to work now that we have the child care issue resolved. We need to work out the details with the person who has offered to take care of my precious baby girl but there’s no one in the world I would trust more with her and I am thrilled. I will come back to this topic after Christmas.
Next time, though, I plan to tackle my bad language or someday I’m going to have to tell Lyla not to repeat what I say because “Mommy has a potty mouth.”

Pretty in pink

krishill — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:50:52 +0000

Way back in July when I first found out we were having a girl, I expressed my distaste for pink and my hope to keep the cotton candy color to a minimum, which was like hoping for a money tree to spring spontaneously from the earth in my back yard.
Not only is Lyla awash in pink, I have found myself purposely putting her in pink when taking her out so that people have that visual cue she’s a girl, plus I have even happily purchased outfits with pink in them while exclaiming to my mother in law “Isn’t this so CUTE?!?”
Holy cow.
I’ve never liked pink. I’m a tomboy. As a fifth grader I was so deep into tomboy world that I wore my hair short, played football with the boys in my apartment complex and often was mistaken for a boy. As I got into middle school and pre-adolescent pressures to conform began to set in, I tried to be girly, something I so am not.
So, I got my ears pierced and started wearing pink, too much pink.
By freshman year of high school I swung back the other way and realized that wasn’t the path to acceptance which also resulted in my loathing of pink being further cemented. I was getting to a point where I was more comfortable in my own skin and pink was never a part of that. I wanted to be myself and not worry as much about what my peers thought.
But, the reality is that when shopping for baby clothes for a little girl or receiving gifts, pink is just part of life.
I’ve had to do a couple of trips to buy clothes for Lyla. Remember at 37 weeks the ultrasound technician told us Lyla was estimated to be about 6 pounds, 14 ounces? Well, if she was that weight and gained half a pound a week, then doing the math we figured she’d be about eight pounds.
Most of the clothes I received at my shower were for three to six months and even items my mother-in-law and I bought toward the end of my pregnancy were in that range because we thought for sure she’d be able to fit into those items right away.
Plus, I’m diabetic. I’m supposed to have a bigger baby.
Ha! I did SUCH a good job managing my blood sugar, Lyla was a dainty bundle of joy.
And, um, as a result she had next to nothing to wear.
Oops.
Luckily Fred Meyer in Covington has a nice selection of baby clothes and there’s a Carter’s outlet store in the SuperMall. A trip to each got me plenty of nice newborn items that should get us through the first couple months.
When shopping for baby clothes it quickly becomes apparent that the folks who design (for lack of a better word) this stuff generally stick to the “girls wear pink and boys wear blue” edict.
So, yeah, I have intentionally purchased pink items for Lyla because a) it’s readily available and b) admittedly pretty darn cute.
Sigh.
I’m hoping there’s greater diversity in toddler clothes.
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on finding someone to watch Lyla when I go back to work, that’d be awesome. I’m still looking into that and forming my thoughts on the topic.

Eating and sleeping

krishill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:10:26 +0000

Giving birth was much easier than I thought it would be while breast feeding my daughter has been an epic challenge which I wasn’t expecting.
After having Lyla’s tongue tie fixed last Monday by Dr. O’Hara in Seattle, I thought, ‘Sweet, now we’ll just get right to nursing.’
Nooooooooo.
It was a struggle after her tongue was clipped (the flap connecting her tongue to the bottom of her mouth was “clipped,” that is) to get her to eat. At all.
So, I called the lactation specialists at Valley and took her in last Thursday. Lyla had dropped down to six pounds before we saw the specialist and I was concerned she would lose more and I couldn’t have that.
Jane, the lactation specialist, was awesome. She gave me some great tips. I went home, tried some stuff out, and I thought we were on our way.
But during the past week it was hit and miss. One of the things that I thought worked, the nipple shield, became an obstacle instead of a help.
Lyla started eating, though, with a little time to heal her tongue and a little children’s Tylenol. It just wasn’t nursing every time, but, I tried not to stress too much because she was eating a ton and I had a follow up appointment with Jane yesterday.
First thing Jane did was get a weight check on Lyla, who had put on eight and a half ounces in a week, which was awesome.
Jane and I talked about the challenges I was still experiencing, that sometimes Lyla was all for nursing and other times she hated the very idea of it, and I also asked what other things I could do to manage some of the other obstacles I’ve encountered.
I felt a lot better after I left, knowing it would take more time and practice to get Lyla nursing, and now that I knew exactly how to work the Medela breast pump I am renting from the hospital (thankfully the insurance company is covering the rental cost through mid-February) that I could move Lyla away from formula and to regular consumption of breast milk.
So, yesterday was great, then this morning I try to do stuff on my own and I struck out. I have to remember I am determined. I am persistent.
On the other hand, I have times I want to just give up. I’m going to keep trying to nurse and pump for another week. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll decide where to go from there.
As for sleeping, well, that’s a question I get from everyone.
“How are you sleeping?”
The first week, well, we slept awful. We just didn’t know what we were doing. I mean, we sort of did, but now we’ve got a handle on sleep. We’re lucky that Lyla sometimes sleeps six or seven hours at a time, but, usually we get four to five hours of sleep then either Jason or I get up with Lyla in the middle of the night, feed her, change her and get her back to sleep. We’re trying to take turns so that we’re not both sleep deprived. When Jason has to be at work early, I get up, and when Jason has a day off, then he’ll get up. It seems to be working so far.

Next thing I need to tackle is child care. I’m leaning toward a babysitter or nanny. I just need to find one.
Then there’s the issue of clothes. Particularly the fact that no matter how much I hate pink, it is now part of my life, and since Lyla was way smaller than we anticipated I’ve been buying clothes to get her through the winter. Pink clothes. And I kind of like it.

Care and feeding of baby … and mom

krishill — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:15:48 +0000

Shortly after Lyla was born I tried to breast feed her but it wasn’t successful. During the first 24 hours of her life I tried repeatedly to nurse in the hospital but she just couldn’t seem to latch on.
I was determined to breast feed so I remained persistent.
But, Thursday morning as I was getting ready to be discharged and she still wasn’t eating, a lactation specialist came to see if she could help. She discovered that Lyla has a webbed frenulum, also known as being tongue tied, which was preventing her from latching on and nursing.
I was referred to a specialist in Seattle to get her tongue fixed, a quick procedure that would alleviate the issue that kept her tongue anchored to the bottom of her mouth, and I got an appointment set up. Lyla handled it beautifully, getting “clipped,” so to speak and moments later we were able to get her to nurse. She still needed some help with the supplemental nursing system I was provided at the hospital. This is basically formula provided through a tiny tube so you don’t have to use a bottle which still allows her to practice suckling using a finger or breast.

It’s going to take some practice to help her get the hang of nursing but we’re working on it. I am determined.

Meanwhile, I’m adjusting to the diet of a diabetic who isn’t pregnant. It’s weird. I can eat whatever I want now.
Wait. Let me back up a bit.
Before we were discharged from the hospital, my OB stopped in and among his instructions were to go see my endocrinologist in a week to work on the transition from insulin to oral diabetes meds.
Forgive me, doc, but I ignored that suggestion. I dumped the insulin the day after we got home from the hospital. I still haven’t been to see the endocrinologist, heck, I haven’t even called her office. I’ve been more focused on taking care of Lyla and, honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary.
Oh, I will call her this week and set up an appointment. I do plan to see her before I go in for my six week post partum check up with my OB. But, that’s the only reason why … for some reason I’m more likely to be compliant for my OB than my endo. It’s terrible.
In any case, I haven’t tested my blood sugar in a while, either. I broke the lancet pen that goes with one of my meters and totally misplaced my other meter.
I feel fine, though, and I’m basically back to the pill regimen I was on before … half a 5 milligram tablet of glyburide (a pancreatic stimulant) and 1,500 mg of metformin a day.
While I am treating myself to things I haven’t eaten in six months, I have made a point not to overdo it as I might have before, plus the weird thing now is that the change in hormones after giving birth has killed my appetite. Well, coupled with being focused on taking care of a newborn, I seem to forget to eat.
I got so used to being ravenously hungry all the time during the third trimester that not having an appetite is strange. Hopefully when I get to a regular nursing routine with Lyla that will change.
Taking care of myself and Lyla is still a roller coaster ride with its ups and downs, but, it’s a different ride than the one that we call pregnancy. But, it’s only been two weeks, and there are still more ups and downs, loop de loops and hairpin curves to come. Or, so I hear.

Catching Up

krishill — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:33:39 +0000

I apologize profusely for leaving you all hanging the past two weeks. Life has been busy and hopefully all my friends and followers understand. I’ve also been hoping the tingly fingers caused by pre-natal carpal tunnel syndrome would improve but I’m still waiting for that to go away completely. Since everyone has been waiting for a full update I decided it was best to just catch everyone up now.
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, I was due to be induced at Valley Medical Center. Being a Type 2 diabetic, my obstetrician was worried about letting me go too far past my due date.
At 6 a.m. I called the Birth Center as instructed. The charge nurse asked me to call back at 9 a.m. with the hope that they’d have a C-section “under their belts” as well as getting a few patients discharged. In other words, they were busy and didn’t have room for me.
We were both thankful for some more sleep. Facing the unknown of parenthood for the first time we both tossed and turned. We were both a little freaked out.
An hour later the phone rang.
“How soon can you be here?”
We were at the hospital at 8:30 a.m. We checked into the Birth Center. We had pre-registered so it was a breeze. We were directed to follow the signs but turned one corner and a nurse whose name I have now forgotten flagged us down.
“I think we’re waiting for you,” she said.
She showed us to our room, introduced herself and another nurse, Jehna, and we got settled in.
After a lengthy admitting assessment, getting into the gown, the nurses got to work. Instead of 3.5 cm dilated like my OB thought at the last appointment, they thought I was only 1 cm dilated.
I was disappointed.
Jehna told me to expect to have the baby in about 24 hours … that was about 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Oh, boy.
Eventually a medication to induce labor was provided, it’s called cytotec, feel free to look it up if you want to know more. It’s a bit too graphic to explain how it works.
I started feeling stronger contractions but I wasn’t really dilating further. The nurse who came on in the afternoon decided not to do the second dose when my doctor wanted it to be done because I was experiencing strong contractions close together. She was concerned I would hypercontract.
But, as it became clear later in the evening that I was not progressing, I was given two more doses of cytotec about four hours apart, around 8 p.m. then midnight. Somewhere in all that Jason and I went walking on two separate occasions.
Jason and I tried to get some sleep. I had been on a monitor tracking the baby’s heart rate as well as my contractions pretty much the whole time I’d been there.
At 3:30 a.m. the overnight nurse, Celina, took me off the monitor and I was checked again by the resident, Dr. Heather Something Something. If I remember right I was 2-3 cm dilated at this point.
It was suggested we walk around again. I just wanted to go back to sleep. Jason had passed out in the fold out bed next to the hospital bed. I decided to lay down next to him for a while.
Half an hour later things started moving. Serious contractions, about 90 seconds apart, give me something for the pain, please.
Happily I was given a dose of fentanyl “to take the edge off.”
Cool by me.
Around 5 a.m. Dr. Heather checked me again and now I was making progress. I was 4-5 cm and the resident said I could have an epidural at any time if I wanted.
Sweet.
I chose to try another round of fentanyl. That lasted about half an hour, or so it seemed, and I requested an epidural.
At this point things start to get fuzzy. Time passes in a blur after I got the epidural. I basically passed out.
But, after a while I could feel the contractions again, not to mention that I was uncomfortably aware of the Foley catheter in my bladder.
My OB came to check on me. Side note, my super serious OB clearly loves being in the hospital, he was cracking jokes (he’d popped in three or four times and he started off with, “I told you that you wouldn’t be pregnant forever.” Smart aleck) and smiling, at least until he realized early on that my body just wasn’t ready to go into labor.
Luckily pitocin never came into the picture because that third dose of cytotec kicked things into high gear.
It was around 7 a.m., I think, when the OB checked on me. He had to head out to deal with some patients at his office but he said he’d try to be back in time to deliver the baby.
But, uh, I was 7 cm dilated. He missed her arrival by about half an hour.
Anyway, I was trying to explained through the drug haze to my OB that I wasn’t feeling so awesome, but I suspect I wasn’t terribly coherent.
In any case, the nurses got the anasthesiologist back into the room, and he initially tried to explain to me that I had to suck up and deal with the Foley catheter discomfort. Then he decided to do the epidural over again and in the process realized the pump with the epidural meds had clogged up somewhere, hence the problem.
During this I had three strong contractions and was relieved when the epidural kicked in again. Jason helped me focus on breathing — that birth prep class was worth every penny just for the breathing exercises! — to get me through it.
I was knocked out again, the epidural made me barely functional, but next thing I knew I felt the urge to push.
After watching what seems like a million episodes of “A Baby Story” on TLC I thought I would recognize this but I blame being zonked out of my skull for not realizing what was going on.
I told the nurse that no, I couldn’t feel the contractions, but man did I ever feel the urge to push — something out.
This was a good sign, I was told, and all I really remember next was a flurry of activity as the team prepared to deliver the baby.
Flat on my back, feet in stirrups, somehow I thought to have Jason go get his mom. Everyone else had been cleared out of the room except for him and my mom. I had promised my mother in law she could witness the birth of her first grandchild and I was going to make sure that happened.
They got back just in time.
Jason was on my left side, and he took over the oxygen mask duties before I began pushing, putting the mask on my face between pushes. My husband hates hospitals and kind of freaks out at the sight of blood. On this day, he was awesome, just as I knew he would be and he kept me calm and focused.
Then the nurses and the on-call OB, who thankfully I knew a little bit because he is part of the same practice as my OB, told me to push.
About a half dozen pushes and 10 minutes later, with a little assistance from the vacuum as the baby experienced a little bit of distress at the end, our baby girl was born.
All in all it was seven and a half hours of active labor then 10 minutes of pushing. It was almost too easy and I barely felt a thing.
At 11:04 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, Lyla Elizabeth Hill came into the world. She weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces and was 20 inches long.
Because her heart rated dipped a bit during labor, a neonatal nurse and doc looked over and cleaned her up, so I had to wait a bit to see her but oh, I could hear her cry and it made me cry, too. It was a joyous noise.
When they laid Lyla on my chest wrapped up in a receiving blanket I couldn’t believe how tiny she was after all the worries we had about her getting too big. I was convinced she was going to be at least a pound heavier.
I was blown away by how adorable she is, yes I’m biased but I really wasn’t prepared for this, and everyone who sees her just fawns all over her now. That’s not good for my ego. Heh. But, that’s a topic for another blog on another day.
Our family has fallen in love with her and I can tell they’d do anything for her.
So, that’s how she arrived in our life.
I’m going to tackle a couple other things in the next post tomorrow including the challenges we’ve faced in feeding her and what we’ve done to resolve that as well as the transition from insulin to oral meds.
For now, that’s enough and hopefully my recollection was clear enough to put you there.

Waiting game

krishill — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:31:25 +0000

Patience, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not a strong point for me. As you can imagine, looking at the calendar and watching my due date come and slowly pass me by is now officially starting to irritate me. Thankfully, I am now officially on maternity leave, so my snippiness and impatience is not something my co-workers or sources have to deal with — just my family members and poor husband.
Yesterday I was restless. I felt like there were things that had to get done but I couldn’t pinpoint what those things may be so Jason and I went to lunch then walked around Southcenter Mall. From there we checked out Christmas decorations and picked up a laundry hamper and diaper bag at Babies R Us. By that point, about four hours later, I was wiped out.
Then we stopped at Walgreens to get my insulin refilled so I’d have enough to get me through Tuesday when I am scheduled to be induced. And I think this is the one big thing I was being poked to do and couldn’t accomplish because I had no refills left. Ugh.
I have to admit I had a major meltdown over this. Controlling my blood sugar has been THE focus of my pregnancy. Everything hinges on this. It’s particularly important to not have high blood sugar when the baby is delivered because once she’s born her endocrine system kicks in and overcompensates which can lead to hypoglycemia at birth. That scares the crap out of me.
Plus, no short acting insulin — that’s when I ran out of last night — really restricts my diet again.
So, by the time I went to bed last night I was exhausted physically and emotionally.
Today we passed the time with a nice breakfast, then another trip to Walgreens to have the pharmacy fax a request to my endocrinologist’s office for a refill of the insulin first thing tomorrow. After that we watched football, walked the dogs, and now we’re watching Food Network which is one of my favorite pastimes while pregnant.
I had hoped the walking I’d done in the past week would encourage my little one to drop into the pelvis and possibly get labor going.
But, alas, I am still watching and waiting. Impatient, emotional mother to be playing the waiting game.
I really shouldn’t be all that surprised though, after all, I was two weeks late. My mom says she was 2 cm dilated for a month before I was born.
I guess I’ll just try and suck it up, then, since it looks like induction is an inevitability. I’m not too worried about it, though, in fact I’m more comfortable having a time and date to go into the hospital knowing that my obstetrician will be there to deliver her.
Let’s just hope I can make it through tomorrow without losing my mind. I don’t do well with too much free time on my hands. It’s a good thing that’s about to change. Heh.
Watch for updates here later in the week. I’ll try and post photos, too.

Questions answered

krishill — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:52 +0000

People ask me three questions more often than any other:
• How are you feeling?
• Are you ready?
• How are you sleeping?

Generally speaking, I feel great. Oh, sure, there are times I am uncomfortable but it’s nothing I can’t handle. This is a question I’ve been getting since I announced my pregnancy. I told my friend Emmily a week ago before she shared news that she is expecting her first (which I am thrilled about) that she should expect this question often. She’s a recovering journalist, heh, and has a blogThe Sin City Siren with a good sized following. So, like me, she is something of a public figure. I am sure she will have many eyes, more than I have, watching with baited breath as she moves through the pregnancy experience.

Am I ready? Yes. Hell, yes. And not because I’m uncomfortable, not entirely, at least. More than anything I’m excited. Pregnancy is a long wait and we already waited nine years to start a family, anyway, so there’s is a lot of anticipation for this. I am as ready as I’ll ever be and I genuinely can not wait to be a mom. Ever since I found out I’m pregnant I’ve been excited and as the reality sunk in over the past seven months, I have realized that from the beginning I’ve been head over heels in love with the baby. When I initially realized that, it was shocking to me I could feel so strongly about having a kid, but there it is and indeed I am so I’ve embraced it. I think it’s helped me get through the rough parts of the pregnancy more easily.

The last question is my favorite. Generally moms ask me this question. It’s insightful and speaks to the experience that moms share. My nightly routine the past four to six weeks has been something like this:
Go to bed no later than midnight.
Get up and go to the bathroom about three or four hours later. Probably chomp on some Tums.
Go back to bed. Possibly get up at least once more to go the bathroom.
Occasionally get up and have a snack to combat low blood sugar. Go back to bed.
Get up no later than 8 a.m. Basically feel refreshed.

My mother in law’s best friend, Mary, told me at my baby shower that she thinks the sleeping habits of the last trimester are God’s way of getting us ready to get up for the midnight feedings and function later on four hour chunks of sleep.
I’ve heard some variation of the theory a few more times since then from moms and I’m inclined to agree.

During the past three weeks I’ve been getting one other question: “Haven’t you had that baby yet?”
Sigh. Nope. Today when I went to the obstetrician’s he checked me and said that I was “about the same as last week.” So, not much progress. Up until the past couple days I haven’t really minded that this little girl is in no rush.
Now, I am ready. Like I told Emmily on Facebook yesterday about my approach to labor and delivery, up until a few days ago I was trying not to think too much about it, but now I’m like, “BRING IT!”
Heh.
Maybe I was professional athlete in a former life. Or a soldier. Who knows.
But, all else fails, if the baby is inclined to show up fashionably late she’s coming no later than Tuesday (or maybe Wednesday if labor takes a long, long time) as I am scheduled to be induced at 7:30 a.m. at Valley Medical Center.
So, there you have it. Any other questions? Fire away.

Six weeks off

krishill — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:26:40 +0000

My maternity leave officially begins Monday, Nov. 16, and I’ll be back Monday, Jan. 4.
Part of me is really looking forward to having six weeks off to focus on the baby. But, being someone who hasn’t taken more than 10 days off in nearly seven years, having six weeks off sounds like a looooong time.
OK, let me stop you moms out there now, I know it’s not a long time. But, this is my first time, so you have to realize that I have no idea what I’m really getting myself into. I mean, I have a vague, abstract notion of what six weeks off to just be a mom of a newborn is going to be like but until I am in it then I just don’t totally know what I’m doing.
This is probably what trips me up mentally: six weeks off in the unknown.
Last time I had that much time off I was unemployed. It was great. I read as many books as I could, spent time with friends I hadn’t seen in years, shopped, ate out, went to sporting events … oh and of course I was looking for a job. After two months, I got the first gig with the Reporter newspapers, and at that point I was ready to go back to work.
Somehow I doubt I’ll get bored during this extended period of time off. That’s what made me want to go back to work.
But I’ve been loving my job so much this year, I know I will be happy to come back and keep working on making this weekly paper better than it was this time last year.
On the other hand, I know it will be a challenge for me to leave the little one with someone else, so how much will I be chomping at the bit to work?
I just don’t know. I guess I’ll have six weeks to figure it out.
For now, maybe I should just focus on having this little girl. Yep, here I am, four days away from my due date and she’s still happily ensconced in the womb.
I can’t wait to see my obstetrician’s face tomorrow when he sees me for what better be the last time in the clinic before the baby is born. He seemed sure I’d end up at the hospital before this appointment.
Everybody who knows me did, in fact, but me. And in all fairness, I was rooting to get up to the due date. But it’s because starting maternity leave on Monday is perfect — I’d be off through the entire holiday season and come back right after the New Year.
So, we’ll just see what happens tomorrow. One way or another I’ll have this baby. If not between now and Sunday, I’ll be induced on Tuesday. So, this time next week I’ll be someone’s mommy. I can’t wait!

Envisioning the future

krishill — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:25:49 +0000

Like any other expectant parent, I often ponder what my daughter is going to be like as she grows up: What hobbies will she embrace? Will she like sports? Will she want to take dance lessons? Will she be a picky eater? What color will her eyes be? Will she look like me or Jason? Will she be a creative person like myself or a number cruncher history buff like my husband? What might she want to do when she grows up? Will she go to college, join the military or back pack across Europe after high school?
Naturally I am hoping for a perfect blend of my husband and I, someone who gets math and science but loves music and art, who will be a good listener as well as comfortable carrying on a conversation with anyone, someone who is open minded and adventurous but knows not to cross the line.
Of course, I know she’ll make mistakes, hopefully she’ll learn from them and own up to them. And hopefully I’ll be the kind of parent who helps her with that and reinforces the idea that life is about learning all the time and the important thing is to take responsibility for your mistakes while not making them over and over again.
My aspirations for her are only that she has a happy, healthy life and that she finds something she loves and does it. I’m a firm believer in education and we’re preparing for her to go to college someday — my mother in law said at my shower that with parents like us she’ll surely go to college but I know anything can happen — but if something else comes along that takes her in a different direction then I’ll support her in that endeavor.
I’m not sure what my mom’s aspirations were for me when she was at this stage of her pregnancy (about to pop…but I ended up arriving two weeks late!) but I don’t know that she would’ve ever guessed I’d end up where I am now.
Journalism has suited me so well. I was first drawn to it as a freshman in high school when at the end of the year the Soothsayer was looking for reporters and editors for the next school year.
Writing has been essentially one of my defining identity traits since I was 11 years old. As a freshman in high school I wanted desperately to find a way to make a living at writing. My mom is a high school drop out, though she did get her GED, and my super smart sister who should’ve gone to college got talked out of finished her high school diploma when my mom figured she’d be better off working full time to help pay the bills.
So, at 14 years old, I was a little freaked out about where I’d end up in life if I didn’t pick a path and soon.
I applied for the newspaper and somehow ended up as sports editor as a sophomore, default, really since there were no upperclassmen who wanted to do the job.
Initially, I was terrible. I had no clue what I was doing, no clue how to write an article, no idea how to lay out pages. It was challenging. And I loved it. As a 15 year old 10th grader I decided this would be my career.
Eventually I landed at Gonzaga University where I declared a journalism major. I got to work as a sports clerk at the Spokesman-Review my second year at Gonzaga. I did some writing for the campus newspaper. I still had a lot to learn.
After my second year at Gonzaga my plans went all wonky. I had planned to take a year off but Jason’s school plans changed and after two years apart I decided to stay near him. I transferred to the University of Washington. While at UW I got a job as a news clerk at the Eastside Journal.
Jason and I got married shortly before graduation. He decided to finish school at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and it so happened that one of the assistant city editors knew someone who worked at Greenspun Media Group which owned a daily, the Las Vegas Sun. That contact told me to get in touch with Warren Johnston, city editor at the Sun, who quickly realized during a phone conversation I wasn’t qualified for any of his open beat positions. But, they could use a warm body and I was going to move there anyway, so they decided to hire me as an intern.
At 22 years old I was a newlywed living in Vegas with a shiny new journalism degree, a handful of clips, and living 1,600 miles from home. It took me about 30 minutes to realize that despite what I previously believed I didn’t have a freaking clue what I was doing.
I spent nine months as an intern at the Sun under the excellent tutelage of assistant city editor Jean Norman. While my degree and other newspaper experience was a good start, I really learned how to be a reporter working for Jean. Like my initial foray into journalism as a teenager, this was hard stuff, but it was a much more daunting challenge.
But, I stuck with it, and I realized I’m not so bad at this newspaper stuff. After my internship finished I landed across the street at what was a twice weekly at the time, the Henderson Home News, covering sports and news. My ambition had always been to cover sports for a magazine or a newspaper so after working on the city desk for nine months at the Sun I was glad to cover sports again.
For a whole slew of other reasons the 18 months I spent at the Home News was also challenging. But, I learned a lot there, and frankly I perfected the critical work ethic of cranking out as much copy as humanly possible something that has essentially kept me employed all this time.
When Jason finished school, we moved home in December 2002. It was a relief. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes six months before he finished his degree. I was horribly home sick. I even missed the rain.
One of the editors with HBC Publishing, the family-owned company that put out the Henderson Home News and Boulder City News, had actually worked up here for a time for Denis Law. Denis, now the mayor of Renton, originally started the Reporter newspapers. He was publisher for a few months before he left the company to pursue his political career.
John Santana was the editor and he had heard about a position opening up here, a new one, in fact. The Kent, Renton and Auburn Reporter newspapers were going to hire a sports and business writer. After two months of unemployment (a much needed rest after the dues paying I did in Vegas for two and a half years) I landed with the Reporter newspapers.
Another two and a half years later, I helped start the Covington/Maple Valley Reporter, and I am the only member of the original staff who remains.
It’s amazing how far I’ve come since I first fell in love with journalism at 15.
But, I tell you what, if my daughter loses her mind and wants to follow in my footsteps I’ll intervene. Journalists are too neurotic — you either are that way to start with or you become that way after too much exposure to the job and the other crazies in the business. If nothing else, I want my little girl to be as well-adjusted as possible, and that just won’t happen in this gig.
Now, she doesn’t have to have White House aspirations, just something that makes her happy.
I can’t wait to see what she decides to do with her life … as long as it’s not being a reporter.
Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. It should be interesting, to say the least.

How it all started

krishill — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:27:55 +0000

Yesterday I was chatting with Elena Stowell, co-founder of the Carly Stowell Foundation , about the baby, relationships and I ended up telling her how Jason and I met.
I thought it might be kind of fun to take everyone back to the beginning to see how my own family got started.
Jason and I went to Interlake High School together. He was a year ahead of me. Freshman year we were both in Mr. Michael’s first-year algebra class. We also had biology together with Mr. Witt first semester. I remember thinking even then that he was cute in a tall, geeky kind of way.
Sophomore year he sat behind me in Mr. Rasmussen’s geometry class. He would wear shorts in the winter, played clarinet in Wind Ensemble, and never did his math homework. He got a C because he aced the tests. I got a C because he helped me with my homework while I barely managed to pass the tests. I’m pretty sure I fell head over heels in love with him when I was 15.
It just took me a while to figure that out.
Junior year I asked him to fall tolo (that’s the modern name for ‘Sadie Hawkins dance’). I had been soundly rejected by another boy and just wanted to go have fun. Jason had just been dumped by his first girlfriend and was the worst date ever. During dinner he talked about her non-stop, analyzing the relationship, dissecting it in that left-brained, logical way he has about him. Now, once we got to the dance and the music played, we had a great time. No pressure, we were both nursing bruised egos. That night remained in my memory.
About a year later, Jason was home for Thanksgiving. He was at the school for some reason while I was there for basketball practice. I didn’t play, I was the statistician/manager/gym rat who spent all my time with the girls team because I loved being around them even when school wasn’t in session. I remember walking toward the gym entrance and Jason was standing by his dad’s old red and silver Chevy van, a college boy now attending Montana State University, looking tall and handsome.
But, I was dating someone at the time.
Over Christmas break I bumped into him again, we exchanged contact information.
A couple months later, about three days after that guy I was dating dumped me unceremoniously an hour before a dance he was supposed to attend with me, I received a letter from Jason.
From there the letters turned into calls. Shortly before he finished his first year of college, I sent him a letter asking him to my senior prom, primarily because after my last relationship I decided to swear off guys. I just wanted to go with a friend and I knew after the last dance we went to that we could have fun together. Perfect.
It took a little arm twisting, but he agreed.
We doubled with my best friend Mike, who went with our friend JP (short for Jenifer Park), and had dinner at Red Robin on the pier then danced away on the Spirit of Puget Sound.
Jason and I ended up talking most of the time. By the end of the night we were holding hands. Later, I took everyone home in my 1983 Toyota Corolla, returning Jason last. I told him I’d call him the next day.
It took me all day to work up the nerve to call him. But, I did, around 7 p.m. He was dying to get out of the house. His little brother, David, who was 12 at the time was driving him nuts. So, we went to a movie, maybe had dinner.
That was May 26, 1996. We have been together ever since. We got married May 26, 2000.
We went through two years of long distance while I was at Gonzaga and he was at Montana State. I eventually transferred to the University of Washington. We got engaged when I was 19 and married when I was 21.
People thought we rushed into it but we did wait four years from our first date. We *were* young. And I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. You have to be a little crazy to get married at any age, but, especially that age. I wouldn’t change any of it, though.
We talked early on about kids, decided we wanted them someday and at most, we’d have two.
Now, here we are, 13 1/2 years after we started dating and 9 1/2 years since we got married having our first child.
It’s amazing to me how far we’ve come. I told him a few months ago that he’s been there for all the best days in my life: graduation from high school, graduation from college, the day we got married, the day we found out I was pregnant, the day we found out we were having a girl.
And soon, he’ll be there for the next best day of my life, the day our daughter is born.
Never would I have guessed that tall, quiet, cute, geeky boy who sat behind me in geometry class would become my husband and father of my child but I would have it no other way. He’s the love of my life and soon our little girl will be the light of our life.
And the best is yet to come!

Getting closer

krishill — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:37:41 +0000

Today’s appointment with the obstetrician went well.
While our little one has definitely not been in a rush to come out, she’s getting ready, almost methodically.
Jason had to work today, though he offered to switch his schedule from an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift to 4 p.m. to midnight but I would rather have him home at night, so I was on my own. Hopefully I’m remembering it all correctly.
Baby girl was quite cooperative. It took no time to find a good steady heart rate on the right side of my tummy and we were even able to strap the monitor down. The medical assistant I worked with today, Dasha, said “It’s nice that you’re so cooperative.” I try.
So, I laid there for about 10 minutes listening to her heart beat, watching the monitor to see the peaks and troughs of her heart rate as well as the couple little contractions — that I saw but didn’t feel.
Then the doctor came in, told me my blood sugar numbers look good, and I told him, “I try.”
He also commented that he wants me to be careful about my weight, I’ve put on a pound or two a week and I’m a bit over what they wanted me to put on with the pregnancy, but I told him I’ve been trying to be careful. Granted, I haven’t walked as much lately since I’m really freaking pregnant. But, now that I’m really close, I’ll try to get back out there since it can help keep me from getting heavier unnecessarily it can also help move me along into active labor.
Oh, that should be soon, now.
My OB checked my cervix and said if I heard him right that I’m 3.5 cm dilated. Last week I was one cm dilated. Remember what I said about methodical progress? Yep, there you go. Just 10 days away from my due date and things are progressing, slowly, surely but steadily.
I could sit at this level of dilation until next week or even up until Nov. 17, when my induction is scheduled, or all of sudden labor could kick start in the next day or two and we could very well have our baby girl this weekend!
This may sound crazy, but, I’m in no rush. Oh, sure, if she wants to come this weekend then I’ll be delighted. If we get all the way to next Sunday, I won’t be bummed, either. She’ll be here soon enough. We waited nine years to start a family so what’s a few more days before she arrives?
Everything happens for a reason. I told my OB that I try think positive so I’m not worried about when she is going to be born.
He says he would like to see “nature take its course” and I’m on the same page there since induction does increase the chances of a C-section, among some other risks and downsides. But, I trust my OB, he’s taken good care of me and helped me take good care of our little one so I know he will continue to do what’s best for the baby and if that means a C-section then that’s what we’ll do.
Just in case, though, he had me make another appointment for next week but I get the feeling he thinks he’ll see me in the hospital before I’m in his office again.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t make to the appointment next Thursday, either.
So, cross your fingers, everyone that my maternity leave starts before the end of next week because it looks like it just might happen!

Going over the checklist

krishill — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:08:04 +0000

OK, I think we have just about everything we need. I am sure that within 24 hours after arriving home with the baby we’ll discover a dozen things we need and don’t have (but here’s hoping we don’t!) so I figured while I have a minute I’d ponder baby stuff.
I’m looking at the “New Baby Checklist” on Amazon.com. Yes, I’m aware that they’re trying to sell me stuff but it seems like a good place to start. I remember back in May when I first looked at this list it was overwhelming to even consider the sheer amount of stuff we needed to collect.
Perusing it now, I feel like I’ve got it together pretty well.
So, let’s see, we have an infant car seat and a stroller.
Next is the feeding category. Um, I have some of this stuff like burp cloths, bottles, a breast feeding pillow and a couple pacifiers. I don’t really want to buy infant formula unless I’m a complete failure at breastfeeding. I’m keeping positive about this.
Nursery items, I feel better about this category. Crib, crib mattress, sheets, bassinet, changing table, check on all those. Mattress pads and waterproof liners. Hmm.
Diapers. What the heck is an all-in-one diaper? Well, not going to worry about that right now. I’ve got some disposable diapers and wipes as well as a diaper pail. My sister-in-law has promised to get me a diaper bag so… Good to go, right?
Clothes? Heh, yeah, we’ve got a big drawer full of them and I just bought more on Sunday. Definitely not a problem.
Bathing, hmm. Infant bathtub, hooded towels, wash cloths, body wash and shampoo, yup got all that. I’m going to get a little emery board to file her nails. Yep, got the diaper rash treatment ointment stuff. Oh, yes, we already use a mild laundry detergent, so good to go there.
This next category on the list, “Baby Health,” we don’t have some of this stuff but it’s my understanding we’ll get some of these items like a thermometer and a nasal aspirator before we leave the hospital so I think we’ll be OK.
This last one, “Activities for Baby,” oh I have so got this one covered. Jason’s grandmother bought us a gliding rocking chair in July. It’s gorgeous. I’ve just received my Baby Bjorn soft carrier in the mail from Amazon this week (they had a killer price!). I picked up a Winnie the Pooh infant swing about a month ago at Kid to Kid in Covington for a great deal and way back in June I got a safari themed bouncer there, too.
So, am I missing anything that I’m going to be scrambling for the first couple weeks at home?
I hope not, but, if so we’ll find out really quick, huh?

The things that fall out of my mouth

krishill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:40:20 +0000

Yesterday I flashed back to a blog post on the What To Expect When You’re Expecting Web site that I read a month ago about things people should not say to pregnant women. It was dubbed “What Not To Say To Pregnant Women” and at the time it blew me away.
Now parts of it are becoming my reality.
I am 12 days away from my due date. I am definitely ready for this little girl to be born but I honestly won’t mind if she arrives right on time, her due date of Nov. 15 is a Sunday, then my six weeks of maternity leave will run all the way through the holidays and have me back in the office right after New Year’s. Seems ideal to me.
Read through the comments of that blog and quite a few women mention that the closer they get to their due date the more silly things people say to them, like, “You’re still pregnant?”
Let me backtrack a minute. On Sunday, Jason’s parents, Art and Gale, came down to help out with a few little last minute details around the house. Art raked our leaves and mowed the front law — I am sure my neighbors love him for this since we had a TON of leaves out there — and Gale put the Winnie the Pooh appliques to the wall next to the baby’s crib. They look super cute and I will add a photo of that later today, promise!
Because I had a serious nesting fit last Tuesday night, I had washed and folded all of the clothes and blankets I received at the baby shower, as well as organized and put away most of the other items. Gale had planned to come help me do that. Instead, we went shopping.
While we’re driving she tells me people at her church in Bellevue have been asking, “Is there a baby, yet?” I think others in her professional and social circles have asked, as well, but I lost track.
And I’m thinking, “Um, don’t these people realize that if the baby, her first grandchild, had arrived by now she WOULDN’T be around to ask?”
Duh.
So, yesterday people were surprised I was at work. I’m telling you, the baby is in no rush, and delivering early isn’t really all that common anyway if the statistics I’ve read are correct. After the third person that asked me basically, “You’re still pregnant?” I got a little annoyed.
“Next person that asks me that is going to get smacked!”
It actually got pretty funny after that, but, I think I’ll keep that story to myself.
But, that’s what fell out of my mouth. I try to be more tactful with people but for crying out loud, she has a due date, there’s nothing saying she is required to come out early or even on time. Of course, we know that I’ll be induced if she decides to be late, but anyway…
So, my suggestion is, don’t ask the really pregnant chick if she’s still pregnant. Just a bad idea.
What’s funny is that when you’re pregnant, you deal with this in various forms the entire time. At first people want to hear about how miserable you are with morning sickness and so on, and as I had none of that, I left a lot of disappointed people in my wake. Which is strange.
Then you hear the horrible miscarriage stories. Add to that all the awesome advice you get about everything under the sun. And people predicting if it’s a boy or a girl based on old wives tales.
Then things kind of settle down a bit as you get ready for your baby shower. People just ask you how you’re feeling eight million times a day. I have a friend who is coming up to the end of her first trimester and she has not yet announced it to the world, so, I sent her a message last week asking her how she was feeling with the advice to expect that for the next six months. I tried to give her some practical insights about being pregnant and the things she’ll hear from people with the hope she won’t feel as homicidal as I did at time.
Oh, yes, I hid it well because I love you all too much to bite your heads off. I only do that to my husband, poor thing.
Anyway, fast forward to the end of the third trimester, you have your baby shower and now you’re hearing horror stories about things other people’s children did as toddlers.
Or people comment on your size. I was at my friend Leana’s baby shower a couple weeks ago and someone called her a pumpkin at her place of employment.
Yes, I know I’m waddling, yes I know I’m huge. Thank you for reminding me.
I am trying really hard to remain positive. No one wants to hear the pregnant lady complain TOO much about being uncomfortable because, well, you do KNOW this condition can be prevented. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more*
Thankfully I have not heard labor horror stories. Either that or I’ve blanked them out.
The nice thing about that blog, which is nearly a year old now, is that it and all the comments reminded me that I am indeed not alone in the insanity known as the final days of pregnancy.
Oh, man, I just got that song, “The Final Countdown” by Europe going in my head. Ugh.
Just 12 more days, 13 if I have to be induced.
Trust me, when I’m not pregnant anymore, you’ll know. So, quit asking.

Buying a car should be easier

krishill — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:45:54 +0000

I’m kind of fed up with financial institutions lately.
I am just going to come right out and say it, we tried to buy a car last week but we couldn’t because our credit is dinged pretty badly right now.
My husband’s credit, well, that’s partially his fault and partially the fact that technology doesn’t work like it should. The part that’s his fault is the credit card that is in collections. Once that comes off, his credit will improve, I just didn’t realize when we walked into the dealership last week that it was still an issue.
Then there’s my credit. This is where the financial institution has become the enemy. We sent our mortgage lender checks. They didn’t get them, didn’t cash them or didn’t apply them correctly to our loan. We set up online bill pay instead. They lost our payments, misapplied them or the payments disappeared into the ether. Next thing we know, despite the fact that we sent them money, we’re the bad guys because THEY lost the payments. Sigh.
So, they brought the hammer down on my credit since the mortgage is in my name and despite spending the past five months trying to resolve the issue (our bank traced five of the six payments the lender said they never received so, yeah) it is still crushing my credit. I had hoped it would be managed before the baby arrived so we could get Jason a new Subaru Outback.
As it stands, no one on earth, apparently will finance us.
Jason’s credit can probably be fixed relatively quickly so we may still be able to swing this by the end of the month. The salesman at the dealership was positive he could get us financed somehow and I feel bad for walking in the door of the place unprepared. Unlike other dealerships, this gentleman was no-pressure, plus he knew we’d come back once we got it sorted because it’s such a laid back place — for a car dealership, at least. And he pretty much bent over backward trying to help finance what we couldn’t cover with our cash down payment and trade in value of Jason’s truck.
The whole scenario frustrates me because this never should’ve happened, we shouldn’t have had to babysit our mortgage payments, but apparently we did. But now the lender doesn’t want to deal with us so we’ve enlisted the help of a counselor who specializes in this kind of thing to help us speed the process along.
All we need is the paperwork. Our loan has been re-worked, it’s a win-win for everyone, but unfortunately with the millions of people in trouble with home loans in this country lenders are swamped with people trying to save their homes. So there aren’t enough analysts to review the paperwork, put the final stamp of approval on it, then send it out. Once we get it and return it, my credit will be repaired in two weeks.
Sweet! Too bad the lender has been telling us for two months that the paperwork is on the way. Sigh. Hopefully this loan counselor can get it across that we’re serious about getting this done and that we will be here until we get it done.
Initially this was a devastating blow to my ego. All my other bills are current. My car is paid off. I have two credit cards with a zero balance. I am a responsible adult. Plus, I’m pregnant, so the hormones really let this knock me for a loop.
Friday morning I woke up with resolve. We’re getting this taken care of not because it’s important for my ego but because it’s important for us to have a safe car to drive my daughter around in and because it’s important for us to have a good mortgage situation so we can provide a home for our daughter.
It’s amazing how my priorities have changed. My focus has shifted so that everything is about making sure my little girl has the best we can afford, the things I didn’t have growing up, and I can’t believe myself. I never knew I had it in me.
So, everyone cross your fingers we can get all this resolved, not for us but for our baby.

Busy, busy

krishill — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:40:49 +0000

That past couple days have been crazy busy and will continue to be that way.
Yesterday afternoon I visited the obstetrician, who keeps insisting “you won’t be pregnant forever.”
Well, duh, you said you’re going to induce me if I don’t deliver by my due date!
In any case, we started off the visit with an ultrasound, but because baby girl has gotten so big we didn’t even get a print out of the sonogram. There just wasn’t a good image to be had. Besides, the point was to look at her size to make sure she isn’t growing too big.
I have good news, though, based on the ultrasound yesterday our little one is six pounds, 14 ounces, on the 50th percentile. She’s JUST right. I love it. If I get all the way to Nov. 15, she should be about eight pounds, not too big and not too small. I was quite relieved at this news.
My OB was happy with her size and said my belly is measuring perfectly, too, so it seems things are humming along.
I had a handful of little contractions yesterday while I was on the fetal monitor, so small I didn’t feel them, but I saw them on the graph. Heh. Our baby girl was totally cooperative for once. We found her heart beat right away, I held the monitor in place, and everything moved along just fine.
And I am now officially starting to move toward active labor. As of yesterday, I’m one centimeter dilated, so anytime now I could really start active labor. Yay! It looks like I’ll have one more appointment next week and after that I better end up in the hospital. One way or another, though, I will.
People ask if I’m nervous, excited, ready. Yes, all of the above, but I’m trying to focus on the excitement and keep a positive attitude. If I don’t, I’ll worry myself into a nervous wreck, wound as tight as a Swiss watch.
I’m working on tying up some loose ends, getting some baby gear now that I’ll need the first couple weeks, among those being these cool nursing shawls that were developed by a pair of local women. They have a business called Bellies & Beyond where the nursing cover ups, called NursEase are available. I’ve written about the pair twice over the years for the Reporter newspaper.
A week ago I contacted Marie and Joanne about getting my hands on one of the shawls, but, looking at the sizing I was a little concerned their biggest size would fit me. Joanne invited me over to try them on and I did that this morning. She has three boys, Anthony, who is 8, Cole, who turns 3 in December, and baby Sam, who was born May 5.
So, you know that Joanne knows a little something about breastfeeding in public.
My plan is to take our little girl with us pretty much where ever we go whenever we can — except to work, of course! I want to be able to feed her and be discreet about it. The product seems pretty awesome, plus, these days Joanne and Marie use organic cotton which I think is pretty cool and baby friendly.
And you don’t have to take my word or it, you can scope out user reviews on Amazon.com.
Going to organic cotton is a new thing, Joanne explained, and it makes the cost a little higher but the end result seems worth it.
Another new aspect to the business is the addition of the NursEase to the online catalog for the Australian version of Toys R Us/Babies R Us.
“We don’t have any competition there,” Joanne said.
Not a bad way for them to work on expanding their business. In the next year or so, Joanne added, they expect to start making a nice profit which isn’t bad for a business that’s just about five years old.
For me it’s cool to support a pair of local moms and businesswomen that are trying to help other women balance being moms with having a life.
Now I’ve got myself two, in fact, I picked out the same ones Joanne uses. I can’t wait to put one in the diaper bag and have one at home.
Plus, it’s kind of cool to be a part of this mom club, which seems to be really expanding for me lately. It’s exciting to connect with women on this level. I had no idea this would happen and it’s been a really great bonus.
Next time … the joys of car shopping. Maybe.

A gift for my baby’s future

krishill — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:47:50 +0000

This morning Jason and I started up a savings account at the Boeing Employees Credit Union branch at the Four Corners Safeway.
For us, this did two things that are all about taking care of our little one.
First, it is the baby’s college fund. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Second, it gives us the opportunity finance a new car (hopefully this week) in a way that will work with our finances. We’re looking at trading in my husband’s Ford Ranger for a Subaru Outback.
Since last winter’s snows, we have had our eye on an Outback because they do well in the snow with that spiffy all wheel drive. Once we found out about my pregnancy, we knew it was a good choice for a family friendly car, unlike Jason’s truck or my Mustang (which I can put a baby seat in, but, it’s not my first choice).
The dealership we’ve chosen to purchase from has a direct lender partnership with BECU, which is spiffy, because now that we have an account we can go to the dealership, tell them what we want, fill out the paperwork, give them our cash down payment and trade in Jason’s truck. The last time we financed a car through a different credit union, it was a bit of an ordeal, so I’m excited at how easy this is going to be.
Plus, I’m really happy that we’ll have a safe car to bring the baby home in after she’s born in just a few weeks. The 2008 Outback we’re looking at has the LATCH system, which plays nice with car seats — on the advice of many mom friends and hundreds of user reviews online I selected the Graco Snugride infant car seat to start off with — and is just generally roomy.
My father-in-law, who is a firefighter in Kirkland has high praise for the safety of the Outback after he saw one come out nearly unscathed from a nasty car wreck while the other vehicle was significantly damaged.
My best friend, a mechanic for more than a decade, gave it his thumbs up from a maintenance perspective.
Plus it has tons of space. There’s room in the cargo area for all kinds of things for the baby, or, if we’re doing a full on family trip we can put the beagles back there.
So, I’m stoked.
Now, back to the savings account.
Jason and I decided right away we wanted to start a college fund for the baby. Both of us are still paying off our college loans and we’d like to put our daughter in a position to decide based on the merits of the school and not the price tag of the education. Of course, we’re assuming she’ll decide to go to college, but the general consensus seems to be that since Jason and I are so smart (heh, OK, if you say so) that our kiddo is definitely going to head off to college someday.
A few weeks after I told my mother I was pregnant, she started giving me cash, a repayment of money she used from the life insurance policy I received after my father died when I was 7. I’m telling you this in the hopes you won’t judge my mom, just more that you know the circumstances of how we were able to start saving for our daughter’s education.
My mom says she used about $8,000 of money that belonged to me. She initially invested it in a CD then put it into savings bonds. I should have had a little nest egg when I graduated from college but instead the money was gone by the end of my junior year. I used it to pay for books and living expenses while I was at Gonzaga.
At the time I discovered my money had run out prematurely, I was really angry, I didn’t know where it had all gone but could only assume I had miscalculated and spent it all.
Turns out I hadn’t but I didn’t find this out until a few years later.
My mom says she felt guilty about taking the money and always wanted to pay it back. With my daughter on the way she was spurred to action.
I told my husband about this after going out to lunch with mom some months back. I explained to Jason what I wanted to do with the money and he liked the idea. Mom initially thought I could use the cash to pay off my student loan from Gonzaga (I think I’ll perpetually owe them $8,000) but it seemed like if my dad were still around he would want me to do something for his granddaughter.
So, someday, when she asks, I’ll tell her that my parents helped start her college fund before she was born and that I couldn’t think of a better gift for her future.
Now that we’ve got it established, after she’s born, I’ll sign us up for Washington state’s GET tuition program which we can set up to draw monthly payments from the savings account.
I am really happy with this choice and I hope our baby girl appreciates it someday when the time comes.

Packed for “D-Day”

krishill — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:07:20 +0000

Last night Jason and I got my hospital bag packed for the trip to Valley Medical to have the baby, which in reality, could happen at any time.
So, there’s blankets for the baby, her little going home outfit and a couple of onesies to go under that, clothes for Jason and I — the bathrooms in the labor and delivery rooms at The Birth Center are pretty nice so I plan to shower before I throw on my Interlake sweats and head home after she arrives — as well as some toiletries, books, an iPod and a little speaker for it since I’m a big music fan, her baby book so the nurses can put her foot prints in it, as well as some other items that I can’t recall off the top of my head.
We’ll get some other items together when it gets a little closer and there are a few things we’ll have his parents bring. We decided to ask them bring snacks and change for the vending machine so Jason can keep his strength up. I will be limited to water and ice chips for sustenance, woohoo! At least while in labor. There’s a kitchen with a full menu and all that which is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. but I think it’s best to be prepared in case the little one decides to arrive when the kitchen is closed.
As Jason went back and forth between our room, the family room and the baby’s room retrieving items for the hospital bag, there was only one item that was a real sticking point: my vision.
Or more precisely, should I wear contacts or glasses while we’re at the hospital. Jason insists that I wear glasses the whole time we’re at the hospital. His reasoning is that it will be a pain if one of my contacts tears while I’m in labor and that it would simply be easier for me to wear glasses instead.
My issue is that I hate wearing my glasses for extended periods of time. It’s nice at night to put them on after a long day at work and give my eyes a rest or on the weekends for a while before I leave the house. Otherwise, they’re just not very comfortable for me.
I got my first pair of glasses when I was 7 years old. Now, while I don’t get called “four eyes” anymore, my vision is atrocious. It only stopped changing three years ago. I have coke bottle glasses, even with all the nifty tricks they can do to try and make lenses smaller, so after a few hours I just hate wearing them. They slip down my nose. I have virtually no peripheral vision. Blah.
And I will admit my vanity. I think I look better wearing contacts. Not that my vanity is going to be a major concern while I’m in labor but anything I can do to be more comfortable physically and emotionally seems like a good idea.
So, we put the decision off. I offered to compromise. If it’s the middle of the night when we decide to head to the hospital, I’ll wear my glasses, but I’d like to throw my contact lenses into the hospital bag. I wear daily disposable lenses so if I do rip one in the full on exertion of active labor (I seriously doubt it, but, Jason insists it could happen) then no big deal. Pop it out and throw it in the trash. Then I can throw on my glasses or pop in another lens.
Basically, though, it’s a game time decision.
In the meantime, we need to grab a few other items for the bag, otherwise I think we’re good to go.
We are packed for “D-Day.” You know, Delivery Day!
And that, my friends, is just around the corner, at most 20 days away. Wow.

Sounds like she’s a concerned mom

krishill — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:55:27 +0000

So, I think my OB has a little bit of a sense of humor … or at least isn’t a total robot. More on that in a minute.
Today I again had the joy of being strapped to the fetal monitor for a non-stress test to see how the baby’s heart rate is doing. It also has a kajigger that monitors contractions. This is the fourth week in a row — I think — I’ve had this done. As you may recall, week one was a snap and our little girl performed perfectly.
Then she got ornery the past couple weeks. Not active enough then too squirmy … last week once we found her heart beat she did just fine.
This morning it took just a couple minutes to find her even though she was pretty active all morning. Becky and Sarah, the doc’s medical assistants, and I have determined that it works better not to strap the heart rate monitor down so Sarah found her heart beat and I held it to my belly.
Then there was no paper in the monitor to record the test.
So, Sarah found some paper, loaded it up … the paper was being spit out but there were no lines charting the data. She removed the paper, put it back, turned the recording off then on again and finally it started charting the data of her heartbeat and my contractions — well, until today it’s been a lack thereof.
The baby was totally cooperative today. She did not move around too much, but, she moved around just enough for her heart rate to go up then down in just the right way in the right space of time.
There are two lines on the graph paper as it records her activity and contractions, top is the baby’s heart rate, the bottom are my contractions.
I keep an eye on the data as it’s being spit out, watching her heart rate as well, but generally hadn’t paid attention to the bottom line because it remained flat. That meant there had been no contractions while I was on the monitor.
About halfway through, though, I noticed a little mountain in that bottom line and wondered if I had a contraction and missed it.
The doctor came in, said everything looked good, checked out my blood sugar numbers for the past week and said they were good, “looking respectable” and I asked him what that little peak on the bottom line meant.
“Oh, that’s a contraction. You’ll be having those more and more in the next few weeks,” he replied, quite non-chalantly if you ask me.
Well then, baby, I guess it’s about to be on like Donkey Kong. :p That is, things are starting to pick up steam and there’s no turning back now.
I explained to him that I ask questions like this because my mom asks and she has a little bit of a medical background having been a nurse’s aide for 25 years.
“Well, she just sounds like a concerned mom,” he said.
She is indeed, but, she’s curious as well. I told him about how my mom wanted to see my appendix after it was removed six and half years ago. She was disappointed when the surgeon told her they’d disposed of it.
My mom is a little different. I told him he’d probably get to her meet and see for himself.
I was kind of chuckling. He didn’t look totally stone faced. I am claiming a victory.
Finally, I asked him what happens if I don’t deliver by my due date.
“Because of your diabetes, I’m going to have you induced,” he said, pausing barely a beat to ponder the question.
So, according to his data, my due date is Nov. 15 (the ultrasound technician is the one who has given me a due date of Nov. 19, but, it turns out the OB wins here) which means that if our baby girl doesn’t arrive on her own by then, I will likely be induced on Nov. 16.
Don’t worry, I will keep you all posted. In two weeks the hospital will allow my OB to schedule the induction. Becky explained they won’t do it any sooner than a week before an expectant mom’s due date. The paperwork has all been signed so it’s just a matter of setting it up if it becomes necessary.
There’s three and change until Nov. 15 as I write this and my cervix has not yet softened or dilated, so, the baby is still in no rush to come out. That’s good news. If she stayed on pace from the last ultrasound she’s about six and a half pounds today. That’s on the low end and I’d like it if she were at least seven pounds.
Next week I have one final ultrasound scheduled to check on her weight. Both my OB and I are hoping she’s stayed in the 53rd percentile range she was at three weeks ago.
Cross your fingers for us.
From here on out, though, it’s hurry up and wait.
“You can’t stay pregnant forever,” my obstetrician said today.
Good. I wasn’t exactly planning on that!

Cast your vote on the baby’s name!

krishill — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:16:58 +0000

Finally! The poll for the baby’s first name is up. Please go vote. I’d love to hear what you guys have to say about the top four selections. Poll will be up for two weeks.
And, you guys can start making predictions about birth date, weight and length in inches too if you like. I’m not sure we’ll get a contest up for that but I’d still like to hear your predictions.

Anyway, without further ado Go Vote!

Images from the shower

krishill — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:59:10 +0000

Here’s the photos my sister-in-law, Melanie, shot at my baby shower on Saturday. Many thanks to her for uploading them and sharing them with me.

Now I know why it’s called a “shower”

krishill — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:38:41 +0000

My baby girl is spoiled. That’s all there is to it.
Oh, yes, she will be loved dearly by Jason and I as well as her family but I know now after the baby shower this past Saturday this little one will be spoiled rotten.
I’m not sure how many guests were at the shower, but, the pile of gifts was kind of insane. My sister-in-law, Melanie, snapped a bunch of photos and I’ll see about posting a slide show as soon as she gets a minute to post them to flickr — she’s got a lot on her plate, too, as her and her husband, Jason’s younger brother, Dave, just bought their first house and they’re putting the finishing touches on it before they move in.
There were blankets and onesies and little socks and caps and dresses and books and on and on.
Oh, and Gale, my mother-in-law, did an awesome job hosting the shower. She made sure there was plenty of food I could eat that would also appeal to our guests and she even ordered me a Borracchini’s sugar free cake that was pretty delicious. Everyone seemed to enjoy it which was nice. I appreciate that our guests were such good sports about my dietary restrictions.
At the end of opening presents, there was a pile of four boxes from Gale, as well as a gift bag.
“She’s been accumulating all this since Kris told her she was pregnant in May,” Mel said.
So, that’s five months of buying and putting things away, just for this moment.
One box was full of onesies. The gift bag, if I remember right, had a pink photo album in it that had the shower invitation on the front page as well as blank pages. In those I will place the little note cards from the ladies at the shower who offered advice about being a first-time mom.
Another box was full of handmade diaper changing cloths. We can put them in the diaper bag and put them fabric side up on a flat surface and have an instant changing table.
My husband’s favorite item was this fleece footie pajamas and matching cap. We decided that we’ll put this outfit on our baby girl (over a diaper and onesie) when we bring her home from the hospital — which will be in just a few weeks!

In the final and biggest box was one of my favorite items, a handmade sage green blanket with an Eeyore applique, which I think we will take with us to the hospital.
There’s so much more great stuff. My sister, Elizabeth, got us Winnie the Pooh crib bedding set that we now have in her crib as of last night.
A co-worker, Kristi, gave us a handmade Pooh bear pillow and matching blanket, which is super soft. Jason was pretty fond of that, too.
Oh, and, Gale had the coolest idea for a guest book.

Anyway, I had a blast. I wish I could tell you about each and every gift and each wonderful person that was there or sent a gift but it took me two and half hours to open everything so I don’t think we have the time for talking about it now. You’ll see it all when I get the photos up.
I never envisioned myself as the guest of honor at a baby shower but it was wonderful. I am glad I gave all control of the event to Gale. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.
Now I just need to get the last few things we need: a baby carrier, like the one made by Baby Bjorn that I like or maybe one of those wrap slings, a diaper pail, baby monitor, a diaper bag and an infant bath tub.
Not too bad for being a few weeks away. I guess I need to start packing my hospital bag, too. Maybe this weekend if I can squeeze it in around my friend Leana’s baby shower on Saturday and test driving a new car on Sunday with Jason.
Phew. And it’s not going to slow down, either, huh?

An awesome job

krishill — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:48:24 +0000

This morning we were running around like mad trying to take care of a bunch of medical stuff today. A couple weeks ago we got all three of us set up with a family practice doctor here in Maple Valley that Jason and I both like but it’s been years since my husband had gotten a thorough exam.
Yesterday he got one, but, today had to go back and get his blood drawn just to check some vital numbers on his overall well being. He couldn’t do it yesterday because he’d just come off a graveyard shift and wasn’t fasting … you can’t go an entire overnight shift without food!
Jason doesn’t do well with needles and hasn’t had blood drawn in ages, so, since we had an OB appointment this morning anyway I went with him to the blood draw before we saw my obstetrician. He got poked twice and the first one kind of startled him but the second one was fine, the blood was drawn, and off we went. Here’s hoping all his numbers look good since the doctor told Jason is in overall good health, maybe just ought to consider losing some weight.
From there we stopped at the pharmacy to get prescriptions filled. In the 11 years Jason has worked for Walgreens he has never had to get a prescription filled. I am the opposite, a freaking walking pharmacy, but today he got to experience the joys of being on the other side of the pharmacy counter today (he is a certified pharmacy technician, part of his responsibilities as an executive assistant manager).
Finally we got to the OB’s office about five minutes early and then into the back, urine test, weight, blood pressure, the usual.
Then the fun began. Heh. Generally my appointments have been relatively painless, all those checks, review my blood sugar, measure my belly, the occasional ultrasound, listen to the baby’s heartbeat and send me on my way until next week.
Now, because I’m getting close to delivery, in addition to being put on the fetal monitor (which also monitors for contractions, none yet to speak of), we get to see if my cervix is dilating yet.
Look, I’ll spare you the gory details, the women out there who have ever been to an OB/GYN has a general idea what this is like and it was not so pleasant. Goody, goody, I get to do this on a regular basis from here on out. Good news is that there’s no dilating yet. I am happy to know she’s not in a rush. Yet.
Beyond that, though, the little one was squirmy again and it took about 15 minutes to find her and yet again, she did not like it when the monitor was strapped down, so I had to hold it down but once I did we got a good reading and she did beautifully.
Next on the to do list was to look at my blood sugars. The doctor was happy (they’ve been pretty good the past couple weeks, not perfect, but pretty good) and so was I on that score.
Before he rushed out, I said, “Oh, I have a couple quick questions.”
I asked his opinion on the flu vaccines. He wants me to get them, unfortunately, he doesn’t have the H1N1 in his office because they aren’t high enough in the pecking order to get it. Walgreens is out. So, maybe I’ll try the hospital. I just have to be sure to get the injection that is mercury-free if possible. And it is also recommended to get a seasonal flu vaccine.
We’ll see how that works out with my schedule because at this point I don’t have time to go hunting for the vaccines.
Next I asked him about what medications I can take after I have the baby and am breastfeeding. My endocrinologist wasn’t sure last week. I would like to go back to the pills I took before because they worked better than insulin and I had a much less restricted diet. It would be easier, I think, to not have dietary restrictions while nursing a newborn.
More good news on this count, my OB says I can take the pills to manage my diabetes while nursing, so woohoo!
Finally, I mentioned to him that my endocrinologist tested my a1c last week and that it was 5.7.
“Yes!”
Then a Tiger Woods fist pump. Seriously. My firm, virtually robotic obstetrician who never laughs at my attempts at humor can actually get excited about something. Again, this was like giving my inner second grader a shiny gold star for a book report.
“You’re doing an awesome job, better than most, and that number really reflects that. Good job!”
I felt like I had given him the best news he’d heard all day. It was pretty satisfying.
We just have a few more appointments left before this baby girl is ready to come into the world. It’s nice to have them get better every time.
I just can’t believe how far we’ve come. And now the next chapter of my life is about to begin.
Yeah, it’s definitely an awesome job.

The baby belly

krishill — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:00:44 +0000

Last night I had Jason snap a quick photo of me in profile so folks who haven’t seen me in a while or may not get to see me before I have the baby got a good look at me all pregnant and stuff.
I posted it to Facebook, but, after chatting tonight with Mayor Laure Iddings tonight after the Maple Valley City Council candidate debate I realized that I should have shared it here on the blog, too.
So, for those of you who want to get a good look, here’s the baby belly at 35 weeks and change:

How a baby shower taught me to chill

krishill — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:36:56 +0000

This Saturday is my baby shower. Within an hour or so of telling my in-laws about the baby, I told my mother-in-law Gale, that I wanted her to plan the shower. My husband said, “I don’t think you would have had a choice in the matter.”
I am pretty excited about the shower but I can’t tell you much about what’s planned. I have a general idea who is going to be there, that there’s going to be a sugar free cake from Borracchini’s (mmmm) and gifts.
Now, I know I have mentioned in past blog posts that I am a control freak. I have long been picky, long been someone who wanted to be in charge of every detail of things that are important to me, almost to my detriment I think.
I learned some important lessons about this when Jason and I planned our wedding. We only let his parents pay for the photographer and I did everything I could to keep their input to a minimum. I was determined to have a wedding that bucked the trends, small, simple, and a little bit different so that it would reflect us as a couple.
Not to say I was a ‘bridezilla’ by any means but I realize now how difficult I was, especially with my mother-in-law, who was watching her oldest child get married with virtually no input on it.
With this experience, getting ready for our first child, I decided to go take the opposite approach. I knew being a high risk pregnancy that I was going to have to learn to be much more flexible anyway but the baby shower is a true exercise in conquering my almost obsessive need to control every little detail of a big event like this.
My mom told me last year when I turned 30 she used to stress out planning my birthdays and I have since discovered that Jason does the same thing.
Wow. I definitely need to find a way to grow as a person here.
So, my first step was to give Gale total creative control.
“As long as there is food I can eat, presents and my friends and family there, the rest will be awesome,” I told Gale.
Plus, I haven’t been to many baby showers, whereas she is much better versed on the subject. It just seemed like a no brainer to just let her run with it since I didn’t have a set, detailed vision in my head anyway.
In August we settled the date, I asked her to host it at her house, then I gave her a nice bonus: I told her since she was hosting and organizing she could use all the pink she wanted in the decor, favors, whatever.
Yes, I hate pink, but I am having a baby girl and there’s going to be something like 15 to 20 ladies at my shower. While I am resisting pink in other areas, I thought that it would be good to do this, let Gale have fun with it and carry out her vision for the perfect baby shower for her granddaughter … it only seems fair, especially since she always wanted a girl in her family and we made her wait nine and a half long years to become a grandmother.
I can manage being bombarded by pink for a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon.
Amazingly, letting go and letting Gale plan this while allowing her full creative freedom has not been hard. With so much other stuff to worry about, it’s been a relief, and hopefully I’ll remember this going forward — that I don’t have to do everything and obsess over every detail because I’m the only one who can do it all exactly right and exactly the way I want.
I know why I’m a control freak, but, that’s a discussion for another blog post. But, now that I recognize it for what it is and what I can do to step back from that behavior, I think this will be good for me and my relationships with pretty much everyone in life, especially my daughter.
Anyway, I promise to post photos and a recap of the shower as soon as I can, because I know how much you all want to see me surrounded by pink trying to act like it’s not killing me. Heh.

Random tidbits

krishill — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:46:10 +0000

Yesterday and today I have been bouncing around ideas in my head for what to post a blog about. I was so busy and overwhelmed on Tuesday that I just couldn’t even focus enough to settle on a topic.
First, I was pondering just telling you all how bloody stressed out I was yesterday. I went to eat at a local restaurant and the bartender (I just sit in the bar when I’m by myself, no drinking, promise!) who knows me well enough said, “You OK? You look kind of out of it today.”
Or I could have posted something like what I wrote for my friend Emmily Bristol’s blog, The Sin City Siren, on Monday night about trying to juggle work and the increasing limitations I face as I get closer to my due date.
But, I thought that was unfair, because I wrote that just for Emmily and hope to continue to contribute to her blog about being a working mommy. It’s nice to write toward a little bit of a different audience.
Just now I realized that after being out and about the past few days, many of you out in the community really want to vote on the baby name poll that has still not been posted. I am bugging Dennis who is bugging our IT people. Apparently this is more challenging than I originally realize but we do have a Contests on our Web site where that might end up. I’ll keep you posted.
Another thing I have been wanting to address, speaking of being out in the community, is all the wonderful feedback I get from people about my columns and this blog.
Thanks for reading. I had no idea so many of you were checking it out and enjoying it. Sometimes I just feel like I’m talking to myself.
But, I am doing this for all of you, so you can keep up with me since I can’t talk to you all on a weekly basis to let you know how everything is going.
One other thing that’s been on my mind recently has been mother-daughter relationships. This topic first came to my brain reading my friend Jenni Clayville’s blogs in recent weeks about her life, her marriage, her mistakes, her successes, her kids and her relationship with God.
I was amazed at one of Jenni’s posts about her relationship with her mom. Jenni and I graduated from Interlake High together in 1996 but I have learned more about her in the past month than I did in four years there. I know, shouldn’t be a huge shock, but what amazes me is how much she and I have in common. Especially when it comes to the relationships we had with our mothers growing up.
Then after getting home from the final Farmers Market on Saturday afternoon, Emmily called me, and we had an epic five hour long conversation about her life and how it has been impacted by her relationship with her mother.
With that on the brain, I went to lunch Sunday afternoon with my mom, who took a trip to Northern California recently to visit her 84-year-old mother. By the end of lunch, which was at the Cheesecake Factory in Bellevue and awesome by the way, I felt like I was hearing this same theme over and over again from three women in my life who have gone very different directions.
It really got me thinking about my relationship with my mom, which has had its ups and downs, and especially the relationship I will have with my baby girl.
In order to really tackle all this, though, I would have to do so in a series of posts. And to be frank with you, I’m not sure I’m ready to put it out there, the ups and downs with my mom as well as the hopes and fears I have for the relationship with my daughter — who is hiccuping right now inside me as I type this.
So, you can see why I just didn’t post anything yesterday, I had a lot to process. Now that we’ve basically finished putting together Friday’s print edition (which I feel pretty proud of at the moment, 10 letters to the editor, a record for this newspaper!) I was able to collect my thoughts.
Hopefully that all came out in a coherent manner.
Anyway, my baby shower is this weekend and I have another appointment with the OB on Friday, so tomorrow I’ll tell you what I know about the shower and Friday I’ll give you a recap on the OB appointment Friday afternoon.
Phew, what a busy week.

More good news

krishill — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:27:20 +0000

At my appointment on Friday with my endocrinologist, a vial of blood was drawn to test my hemoglobin a1c, something my doctor wanted done on a monthly basis (so maybe one more time in November) during the third trimester.
This test, as I’ve mentioned before, tells the doctor and I what the average blood glucose levels have been for me during the past three months. According to some reading I did last Thursday night, the past month accounts for about 50 percent of the number.
The results are calculated in a percentage compared to a reading you would get with a blood glucosometer when you test before or after a meal. This morning my number was 88 milligrams of glucose per deciliter before breakfast (they want is under 95) and afterward it was 116 (they want it under 120).
As a general rule, doctors want their diabetic patients to have an a1c number under 7 percent, while a non-diabetic typically hovers around 5 percent. Of course, this all depends on the doctor, whether they follow the American Diabetes Association standards or the American Endocrinologists Association standards (the latter is more strict, I believe), as well as the patient.
Me, I’m pretty happy to be under 7 percent. My goal is to be around 6 percent, but, as long as I’m under 7 then I am OK.
In March and June, I was steady at 6.6 percent, which is pretty good all things considered. Not long after my second a1c was done, I was put on insulin because the oral medications I take otherwise just weren’t doing the trick, plus the medical community is split on the potential problems metformin (also known as glucophage and is used to treat insulin resistance in Type 2 diabetics) can cause during pregnancy.
Once I figured out how much insulin to take and what foods I can eat as well as what I am sensitive to, I started seeing improvements in my numbers, so some of the frustration of the second trimester was smoothed over.
I did not, however, expect the results of my September a1c to be as good as they were: a shocking 6 percent. Knocking six-tenths of a point off that number in just a few months is incredible.
So, on Friday, when my blood was being drawn I figured it would be about the same and maybe even a little lower if I was lucky.
Today, Melissa, my endocrinologist’s assistant called and told me my a1c is down to 5.7 percent. WOW!
The lowest it has been since I was diagnosed (which was in March 2002) was 5.8. That was in December 2002 just before we moved back from Las Vegas.
I am thrilled. I can’t wait to tell my obstetrician. More imaginary shiny gold stars are in my future for my inner second grader. Heh.
What does this all mean? First, it means that my control has been good, so the baby’s blood sugar has also been well controlled. That means she hasn’t had to deal with excess sugar in her system, so, she isn’t putting on more weight than necessary. Like adults, sugar turns into fat in a developing baby, especially in the last month or so of the pregnancy.
So, since she isn’t getting too much sugar, she’s growing just right. It also means that when all her vital internal systems were developed, they likely were not adversely affected, either. That reduces her chance of developing diabetes later in life.
The OB says that keeping a good handle on it now, as she finishes growing in the womb, means that in addition to not getting too big now it will also reduce the likelihood of her having weight management problems.
To know that our mutual goal of helping me grow the healthiest baby possible under difficult circumstances is being achieved makes me feel good. Like any other expectant parent, all I want is for this little one to be healthy and have the best start possible, something that I have worried about constantly for six months. It’s a huge relief that I haven’t messed this up.
All that from one little number. Amazing, huh?

Another reason to smile

krishill — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:46:21 +0000

My endocrinologist hugged me today.
Wow.
This morning I went in to see her since I usually get checked out every three months. She wanted another hemoglobin a1c test done (that looks at the average blood sugar level of a diabetic over a three month period, my last one was excellent) and just to look over my numbers for the past week or so.
She asked me how I’m feeling — sore, today it’s my right hip and calf — and just generally how things are going.
“How far along are you now?”
Almost 35 weeks.
“Wow! Where has the time gone?”
Heh, didn’t we just ponder that very question together last week?
We talked about how I’m handling insulin, she said my weight gain seems to be ideal given my health issues, if I’ve been able to better manage my diet and find ways to not hate the restrictions, if I’m planning to breastfeed and what medications my obstetrician will approve for my diabetes once I have the baby.
It was a pretty pleasant appointment and like my OB yesterday, she seemed pretty pleased with my progress and management of diabetes, so that was really nice.
Then I stood up and I thought we’d shake hands again, per usual, and she wanted a hug.
Kind of took me by surprise but it’s all good. It’s funny, though, because I tower over her and I’m only 5 foot 6. And, she’s a petite woman, so my pregnant bulk made me feel that much more humongous.
While unexpected it was a nice gesture on her part.
Again I left the doctor’s office with a smile on my face. That’s quite a turn of events, eh?
Hopefully all the stuff I’ve learned over the past two months or so will help me better prepared if Jason and I decide to have another kiddo someday.
We shall see, I guess.

Patience is a virtue

krishill — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:40:30 +0000

Here’s hoping I am virtuous!
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts the past couple weeks, baby girl has not been too cooperative during the fetal non stress test.
Two weeks ago she was too relaxed to have her heart rate go up and down like it’s supposed to — something like go from 130 beats per minute to 150 or 160 then back down twice in a 20 minute span as I learned today — and last week she was so squirmy it took 45 minutes to get a consistent chart of her heart rate.
Today she was more cooperative but she still put up a fuss. Sarah, one of the obstetrician’s assistants, tried to find her heartbeat and couldn’t find a good consistent spot. So, she called in Becky, whom Sarah explained is more experienced at this.
“When Sarah said, ‘Kris Hill’s baby …’” that’s all I had to hear,” Becky said.
Heh.
Becky moved the little pad sensor kajigger (yeah, that’s the technical term) all over my baby belly in an effort to find a spot where it could rest for a while and record little one’s heartbeat. She thought she had it and started to strap it down so no one would have to hold it in place.
Nope. Baby girl just slipped away. Got it again … strap it down, nope, still wouldn’t hang onto the heartbeat. After about a half dozen attempts, we realized that strapping it in place just wasn’t going to work.
In the meantime, we also discovered that baby girl’s hearing must be a heck of a lot better than we think because every time Becky said something about getting it, she lost it.
So, we chatted about my weekend plans — watching Washington football on Saturday after going to the Maple Valley Farmers Market and the Seahawks on Sunday, among other things — and finally we got a good read on my little girl.
My OB is a busy guy, so, by virtue of that it’s a given that both Becky and Sarah have much to do, as well.
I offered to hold the monitor pad to my belly so Becky could step out and take care of important stuff. I’m sure she crossed her fingers as she walked out hoping that this time we’d get a nice read out of the baby’s heart rate.
Within seconds of her walking out of the room, I lost the little one’s heartbeat for a few seconds, but within about a minute it came back and held steady. I pressed that pad against my belly, then spent the next 25 minutes splitting my attention between the graph paper being spit out by the monitor and her heart rate while also trying to just enjoy listening to the sound of her heart beating away. It’s really a beautiful sound.
When Becky came back to check on me, she said she was dreading coming back in and seeing the same results we had last week with Little Miss Squirmy, but she was pleasantly surprised to discover this kiddo decided to cooperate finally.
This made sitting in the waiting room regretting drinking two glasses of iced tea at lunch shortly before my appointment while waiting half an hour to be called back to an exam room totall worth it. I was really happy with how the fetal monitor session worked out today.
The doctor was pleased, too, both with her heart rate as well as my blood sugar levels this past week. He told me that given how much trouble I had early on in the pregnancy managing my sugar that I am “doing really well, not perfect, but better than the vast majority.”
Really, that’s as good as giving my inner second grader a shiny gold star.
I left the office an hour and 45 minutes after arriving with a big smile on my face.
Patience is a virtue. One of my favorite teachers in high school, Bob Haynes, used to tell me that when I would get frustrated when I couldn’t do something when I wanted to or just the way I wanted to and it used to drive me crazy.
As I’ve gotten older it’s become something of a mantra for me and I can tell that I’m going to need to remind myself of the importance of patience often as I progress from pregnancy to parenthood.
So, here’s hoping I’m virtuous!

Things that don’t fit

krishill — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:34:25 +0000

Every day is an adventure getting ready to leave the house.
Today, for example, I’m wearing a maternity tank top under a polo shirt I really like that is just too darn short to wear otherwise. I also am wearing sandals instead of shoes. For now.
That’s because being pregnant, I mean really pregnant, lots of things don’t fit me at the moment.
My newer pair of Doc Martens don’t fit my feet, even though they don’t look or feel swollen, it’s a squeeze. Last week I put them on with the intent of sucking it up and just wearing them because it was raining. I didn’t make it out of the house with them on. I gave up and slipped on my Birkenstocks.
On Sunday I decided to order a pair of Doc Martens slip on shoes that were on sale direct from the company’s online store, www.dmusastore.com. I ordered them a size larger than I normally wear so we’ll see if I can even wear them after I have the baby.
Another example of what doesn’t fit: pretty much everything in my T-shirt drawer. I wear, when I’m not working, oversized T-shirts that are emblazoned with college or professional team mascot logos. I’m a tomboy and I’ve always been most comfortable in jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of sneakers. If it’s cold, I throw on a hoodie, usually also with some kind of sports team logo on it.
Some of my sweatshirts fit. For now.
What doesn’t fit, though, is my fall jacket — a 100 weight Polartec North Face fleece jacket that I live in from mid-September to mid-November. I also can’t wear my fire engine red North Face rain jacket, either. They’re super snug over my baby belly and I’ve still got a few more weeks to go so they’re back in the closet already.
Instead, I’m wearing my winter jacket, a heavier weight North Face fleece jacket that is so big I can put two heavy layers on underneath. Of course, this week with it being in the mid to upper 60s, I only wear it in the morning when it’s chilly.
As of last week I had gained about 11 pounds which is all related to the baby. So, while my shirts and jackets as well as close toed shoes don’t fit so great, my pants fit pretty well. I still have to wear a belt or cinch the drawstring on pants to keep them from falling off my rear end. It’s such a dichotomy.
It will be interesting to see how my body behaves after I give birth. Since this is all new to me, I can’t even begin to predict beyond that my shirts should start to fit again … eventually.
My mother in law actually envies the fact I can still see my feet. When she was pregnant with my husband, she said, she didn’t see her feet for three months.
While I can see them I sure as heck can’t reach them to tie shoe laces! So, yeah, I’m still working around the baby tummy. Heh.
Tomorrow I get to go see the obstetrician again. We shall see how the little one behaves this time when they put me on the fetal monitor. At least I know, looking at my blood sugar logs for the past week, I won’t be getting lectured about that so it’s nice to have something to look forward to tomorrow.