molly is one month old!

wow! i can't believe it has already been one month since molly arrived! i think that contributing to the feeling that this first month flew by was the fact that we didn't get out of the hospital until she was almost one week old. but that aside...it still feels fast. with isabelle i remember thinking that time was moving SO slowly. people would say things about how fast the time goes by and i would roll my eyes or make some comment about time dragging on for me. i just felt like isabelle was never going to get bigger. of course now it feels like she grew up overnight.....but back then it was a different story. i am sure that taking care of two babies also contributes to the feeling of life going by very quickly, after all my days are largely spent changing diapers, feeding kids, cleaning kids, and doing laundry! i thought i was busy before having isabelle...WRONG.

back to molly.....she is one month old today and had her one month check up at the dr. she weighs 8 lbs and 15 oz and is 21 inches long. this puts her in the 40th percentile for weight and 50th for height. because she is gaining weight like such a champ i can also let her sleep longer at night. she is already quite the sleeper, but now i can let her sleep longer which means i can sleep longer! WHOO HOO! i think God blessed me with a sleepy baby so that i would not go insane from lack of sleep. thank goodness for the little things!

aspirations of a mom....

being a mom is a tough job. in fact, much harder than i previously thought. i don't think it matters that i am home full time either. i think working moms have it pretty tough also. as a mom, i think about whether or not i am doing a good job. did i play with molly enough, make enough silly faces, give her enough stimulation? did i read with isabelle enough, play outside enough, teach her enough new things? after all, i don't want to cause permanent damage to my kids. i don't want to screw them up to the point where one day they will look back and blame me or jason for how they turned out as adults? rather i would like them to thank us for how they turned out! and sadly, i don't think you can truly judge your parenting until your kids are grown. yes, there are milestones along the way that you can get some idea of whether or not you totally suck, but really the goal of parenting is to produce a good adult, right? and contributing to my paranoia is the fact that i am surrounded by moms that seem to have it all going on. these moms that seem to have it all going on, make me aspire to become a better mom. so here are my aspirations, my goals in motherhood. needless to say, the list could go on and on forever, so i will limit myself to only a few things today!

1. i aspire to be the mom that cooks breakfast every morning. not fixes a bowl of cereal, not instant oatmeal, or toast, but breakfast. eggs, bacon (turkey bacon of course), pancakes, french toast, something hot, something filling, something that will leave an impression. notice i don't say i want to make a good lunch everyday or even dinner every night (jason can help with that!). just breakfast. something about that first meal of the day. breakfast just seems more important somehow.

2. i aspire to be the mom who is totally fit and healthy. the mom who works out everyday and still has time to accomplish all the other things that moms must do. i don't want to be the mom who works out everyday, but her house is a mess, or her kids spend hours in the gym daycare, or she doesn't get dinner on the table until 8. i want to be the mom who isn't overweight, works out and eats healthy. the eating healthy part will only take a few changes so i shouldn't have too much trouble with that...it is the daily workout time i seem to be struggling with.

3. i would like to be an early riser. i have wanted to be an early bird for years now, i just can't seem to do it. i want to get up early, read my bible, maybe get in that workout i mentioned above, shower and get breakfast ready! i want to have my day planned out before it starts and get things accomplished before the girls wake up. as it stands now, i am more of a night owl. isabelle and molly are early risers. you can see the problem.

4. i want to be good at something. not mediocre, but good, really good at something. scrapbooking, maybe knitting or learning to sew, cooking, baking, photography, SOMETHING. and not something dorky, like organization or money management or time management, something fun, something creative, something my girls will appreciate and want to learn from me.

lastly (for now)...
5. i aspire to be the mom who has it all together. the mom who manages to get it all done, and gets it done well. the mom whose house is always clean, whose kids are always dressed like they are on their way to a photo shoot, whose job is always going well and whose family is always making ends meet. the mom whose kids are well behaved in public, the mom who always has extra time for herself to relax or spend time with the hubby. i want to be that mom, you know, the perfect mom who always looks good, has stylish clothes and hair, smells good, has rockin' makeup and whose kids and husband think she is a goddess. that mom. i am sure you all know her. i know about 10.

so there it is...my list of aspirations for motherhood. something tells me it is a little unrealistic. but again, there are those moms i know that seem to pull it all off. so it must be possible, right?

first week home....

well, we have been home for a week now. doesn't seem possible that it has already been a week...especially because i still feel like such a rookie when it comes to taking care of a newborn. i keep thinking that at any moment it is all going to come back to me....hopefully it will come soon! isabelle is adjusting....sort of. besides consistently getting in trouble for sitting in molly's carseat, or bouncy seat, or trying to get in her cradle, or use her pacifier....other than that we are doing great...hehe. she has gotten back into her regular routine which is nice and i am sure the other things will resolve themselves in time. molly is doing great! we had a doctor appointment today and she weighed in at 7 lbs and 9 oz. that is 5 1/2 oz. more than what she weighed on friday! and her jaundice is looking better. i am so glad that things are starting to look more like normal where we are all concerned. i have not gone crazy yet, taking care of two under two, which i was a little worried about. my day does seem like an endless rotation of feeding babies, cleaning babies, changing diapers, and doing laundry and dishes.....so that is a little frustrating, especially when i would really like to get my business going again and have some adult interaction at some point. we did manage to make it to church this past weekend and despite one lady who apparently thought i still looked nine months pregnant....(she patted my stomach!), it was a great evening. i think at some point i will be able to return the endless amounts of phone calls, and write thank you notes that are growing overdue....but i am not sure when. more than anything i am so grateful to have my girls home, healthy and mostly happy. i am so blessed to have such a great family and great support system that have been so helpful these past few days...like my sister who spent over an hour with us at the doctor, and my mom who came by with food and let me take a shower before she left! things are going to be crazy, but i am pretty sure (as my sister reminds me my grandma used to say all the time) "these are the best days of my life."

Good Golly Miss Molly!

Well, we have made it home. finally! And more than anything I want to be able to document our stay and Molly's long journey from delivery, to special care, to nicu, to the pediatric floor to home so that one day we can boast in her testimony over what God has done not only for her and for us, but also hopefully for the nurses, doctors and other parents we met during our stay. Molly was born on Wednesday, March 31st at about 8 am. Jason and I weren't expecting my csection to start until nine, but we were early and I was so glad because I was miserably uncomfortable that morning. The csection went mostly well with just a few things that weren't so awesome (like my blood pressure dropping and getting to throw up during this delivery just like with Isabelle!). Molly looked beautiful and I must say that I knew all along it was a girl. I am glad I was right! Immediately it was apparent that she was having trouble breathing and she was put on oxygen right away, but we were told that it was normal because she was a csection baby. She was taken to the special care nursery and placed under an oxygen hood and we were told she may be there for a couple of hours before she was able to get the fluid out of her lungs. A couple of hours turned into four, then six and then eight hours and eventually 24 hours in the special care nursery. I was unable to see her for some length of time because of my surgery...though I can't remember how long. It wasn't until 24 hours later that Jason or I were able to hold her for the first time. Holding her was amazing and sad at the same time because the only reason we were able to hold her was because she was being transferred to the nicu. She was still not breathing properly and the oxygen hood was not working to solve the problem. Upon getting to the nicu, Molly was placed on a cpap machine very similar to the machines adults use for sleep apnea. During this time we were not allowed to hold her and I had still been unable to feed her. We also had another agonizing decision to make about what family members would be allowed in the nicu to visit Molly. Only four people other than Jason and I were allowed access to the nicu. There were no substitutions so even though my dad left town on Saturday, we could not have put him on the list and then switched to someone else later. When you have a father in law, mother in law, sister, mom, dad, step-mom, brothers, etc that have all been looking forward to meeting your new baby it is very difficult to choose who to exclude especially given our emotional state of mind at the time. Molly was on the cpap machine for about 24 hours before being moved to high flow oxygen and then a regular nasal canula over the next 48 hours. she also started light therapy to resolve some jaundice which was actually one of the only things we could find a little humor in because she looked like she was tanning with some sun shades on! By Saturday evening at 11pm, Molly was breathing well enough to come off of oxygen and some of her iv's and begin to start eating. I was only allowed to give her small amounts from a bottle at first and the feedings were difficult. We had many amazing nicu nurses and one in particular lobbied for me to be able to try to nurse. Something I learned was that it requires a lot of energy for a baby to nurse and so they do not want what they referred to as "sick babies" to expend too much energy to eat, rather to be able to eat easily in order to gain weight. Luckily for me, Sheryl was an advocate for me and without her I am sure I never would have even been allowed to try to nurse Molly. While we were desperate to leave on Sunday, the neonatologist wanted Molly off of oxygen for 24 hours before he would release her. I even considered leaving against medical advice because I knew Molly was well, but was persuaded to stay after we were told they would be moving her to the pediatric floor so that even though I had to be released from the hospital, I could stay with Molly in her room and have a bed to sleep on instead of sleeping on a couch in the nicu. My amazing husband had been sleeping on that couch every night, even during the blue light and also stayed with Molly and I in her pediatric room. Then on Monday we were finally able to bring her home. We still have a long way to go in terms of getting her feedings established and she is going to have to gain some weight pretty quickly, but it is so much easier to work on nursing and getting a schedule established at home where you don't have nurses and doctors monitoring your every move and every minute spent feeding. They had very strict guidelines about her feedings that we basically had to follow in order to be released. This whole situation has really forced Jason and I to have faith I didn't know we had. We picked out scriptures and taped them to Molly's nicu bed. I must have recited those scriptures a hundred times and prayed them over molly just as many. While many of our nurses were in support of being positive and believing what God says about healing, faith, prayer and our lives, we did have a nurse and a doctor that laughed at us and our beliefs. They gave us gloom and doom, worst case scenarios that would have scared the crap out of us and discouraged us if not for the fact we know what God says in his word and we choose to believe that word is true. It was somewhat fitting for us that Easter weekend was taking place during our stay since we know specifically that 'by his wounds we are healed.' Molly proved to all of them that what we knew, and what we believed, and what we said was true, not what they predicted. I hope those scriptures and our beliefs influenced them and will someday make a difference. For sure this has been the greatest trial of faith for me and I can't imagine being in a place like the nicu without being able to believe in God's promises for our lives. So we are home now, trying to get adjusted, trying to make up for lost time with Isabelle and trying to remember what life with a newborn is like. You wouldn't think we would have forgotten much in 16 months, but we have! We appreciate our friends and family who have been overwhelmingly supportive and who have agreed with us in prayer during this time. I have so many nurses to thank it is ridiculous. I also have to mention that I have the greatest husband and my girls have the greatest father anyone could ask for. Jason was my rock during this whole time and endured more than his fair share of emotional outbursts! He also was the one who had to witness Molly being stuck 7 times trying to start an iv before they finally tried in her head, which is where her iv ended up. He is amazing. So if you have read this much, you know most of the story and I pray will never be able to relate. I look forward to posting about Molly's milestones, Isabelle's adventures as a big sister and our life as a FAMILY OF FOUR!