it's a sister thing.
I never realized how much weight I’ve gained until I saw this picture of me pre-pregnancy! You can read more baby news and other Micaela and Kent news at kentandmicaela.com (although probably only baby news for awhile!)
Before (on my first day of teaching in February, apparently I felt the need to document myself that day – totally not preggo):
After (at my baby shower at about 36 weeks pregnant):
I was 40w5d pregnant when Hailey was born and today Hailey is 40 weeks 5 days old. It’s Inside Outside day, meaning Hailey has been outside of my belly for as long as she was inside (well as of 7:10pm).
It’s pretty amazing how much she has grown, in what seems like such a short period of time. I think 40w5d weeks was longer when she was still in my belly because of the anticipation of what gender she would be, and just waiting to learn everything about her. However caring for a baby is much more work then growing a baby (as I’m sure you can all imagine).
Me right before leaving for the hospital, Hailey was born about 7 hours later
New to the world.
Today (messy house and all)!
She’s such a happy baby lately and does the most adorable things that kill me every second of the day. Her newest obsession is to flick her tounge in and out like a lizard, and it curls up at the end so cute and I love when she figures something out and looks to me for praise. Yay baby!
In other news, because not everyone cares about babies, have you checked out these other blogs also participating in NaBloPoMo?
I’m pretty sure that as babies we were all born with psychic powers and as we got older we lost those powers.
I’m sure everyone has heard that when babies are newborns, babies know when you are stressed and they are crying. There are stories of people putting on headphones while carrying a crying baby, going into their own zone with the music and the baby calms down. Also who hasn’t heard a story of a toddler pointing to a woman’s belly saying baby, only to find out later that the woman was pregnant, or saying twins and pointing to a belly and again later finding out that there are twins!
These babies are not psychic because we know the moms are pregnant, but Micaela happens to only be showing a little bit and yet Hailey seemed to know there was a baby in there!
Check out these cute photos:
(sidenote: I promise Hailey does not wear this shirt every day, she only wears it on game days and because she looks extra cute those days I took a lot of photos)
Here’s another photo of a psychic baby, this is a photo of my friend’s baby playing with the baby in the belly of my co-worker!
We certainly have some smart babies!
I wouldn’t say that I’m a very gushy person, so this list is pretty hard to write- if it made the cut then at one point in Hailey’s 5 months of life she liked it.
I love Manhattan toys. They are the best toys out there that I have found so far. They are bright and colourful and are great for the developing mind of a baby. We have 3 so far, and if I had enough money to buy every toy on that website, I probably would. But alas Hailey will have to do with the 3 that we have. These would be great shower presents for the new baby.
a) Skwinkle b) NooBoo Symphonic Stacker (TOTALLY COOL it makes sounds as you pull each toy off) Pretty much the Cadillac of stackers. c) Winkel – Hailey was playing with this even before she knew how to play. There are so many places to hold on to she always ended up with it in her hand.
Hailey is a baby who loves to be swaddled. We first swaddled Hailey in the hospital because we were told it helped her sleep better and keep her warm and so we just kept swaddling her. We got a SwaddleMe as a present and loved it. Blankets just didn’t work very well for swaddling, we never got it right on the first try, and in the middle of the night I really didn’t want to be folding a blanket over and over. Hailey is addicted to her SwaddleMe. So much so that it’s almost a problem to get her to sleep without it. When we go places even for the day I always have to pack the SwaddleMe so that she will nap. She’s starting to outgrow the large now (in length, not width at all, these things are made for really fat babies apparently) so now we have to decide if we will kick the swaddle habit or find something else.
3. Graco Sweetpeace Soothing Centre
At first the swing was not a hit for us. We would put Hailey in it when she was calm and she would start crying, so we figured she hated it, that it was a waste of money and hopefully the next baby would like it. One day mom babysat Hailey and she put Hailey in the swing and when we got home she said “Hailey really likes that swing thing.” I made her walk with me to the swing and point to it so that I knew it was the actual swing (that we thought Hailey hated) she was talking about. From then on Hailey loved the swing. When we were moving and Hailey could tell I was stressed the only place she would sleep was the swing, and so I fell in love with it.
4. Bumbo
Bumbos are super cool, they give the baby a new vantage point to view the world from, and give the mom a break so they don’t have to sit next to the baby holding her up. Hailey loves her bumbo and so does everyone else that sees it. Another great great shower present. It is something the non-mother doesn’t really know about, but once they have one they will love it.
Other general things we like are- born free bottles, her exersaucer, jolly jumper and bouncy chair.
Since my boyfriend dragged my across the country a couple years ago, and the rest of the girls are scattered all across Ontario, it is rare for us all to be together at once, and very special as well. In the beginning of May we threw a birthday party for our parents and the girls and I decided it would be best if I was there as well. We also decided it would be best if it was kept a surprise for my parents, so when I nonchalantly rang the doorbell at the Farm the day of the party my Mom was absolutely flabbergasted! We had a great party and it was fun to surprise my Mom and Dad, if only for the weekend.
Luckily we had the opportunity to take some unofficial family photos with the most adorable, perfect, cuddly, magical, beautiful baby in the whole wide world. After all, we ARE “Fiveblondes plus a baby” now.
This is pretty much how I looked all weekend.
But how could you not want to squeeze her until the end of time if she is this cute?
Sigh, the end.
Leaving the hospital
Hailey is one month old, where did the time go. So much has changed in the past month, it’s hard to imagine my life before baby Hailey. Many emotions have been experienced, some positive and some negative but I’d have to say the positive outweigh the negative by far.
Hailey stretching after being unswaddled after a nap
Before Hailey was born I had not held very many babies, now it feels so natural. It’s amazing how quickly you can get used to incorporating a new life into your life.
I love everything about her. Her cute nose, ears, lips, fingers (which are getting chubby), her big feet (yes she takes after mama), and well just everything!
I haven’t posted much about life with a baby, I guess I’ve been preoccupied.
My day goes a little something like this.
I won’t write out the rest of the day because it is very repetitive but I feed her every 3 hours (which takes about 45 min), we have some activity time and then Hailey naps while I get stuff done around the house, do some of the never ending laundry (this girl can easily go through 4 burp clothes in 1 day! She’s a spit up queen), or try to convince myself to take a nap. It’s fairly exhausting and Scott and I normally end up crashing on the couch at 9pm feeling exhausted (with one more 10pm feeding to go after that).
And just when I tell Scott that I think I’ve gotten the hang of this baby thing, Hailey goes and throws a loop in our day- She has her first cold. She started getting congested on Saturday and wouldn’t you know it, by Saturday night she was sneezing and coughing like crazy. She woke us up every 2 hours on Saturday with her coughing, making me feel so devastated for her. I think we’ve finally gotten over the worst of the cold, it certainly has not been fun. It’s also really thrown off her schedule making life a little unpredictable right now.
At Hailey's baby shower
I know she’s grown a lot in this past month (at birth she was 7lbs 15oz and on last Wednesday Feb 17 she was at 9lbs 10oz-she’s probably at a 2 lb weight gain now) but I don’t really notice it that much, probably because I’m with her every moment of her life. She still fits into her (borrowed, thanks Harry!) newborn clothes but they are almost reaching their stretching max point. She’s still not broad enough in the shoulders for her 0-3 onesies so they look large on her but I still put her in them, just because she looks so darn cute.
As for my recovery over the past month I seem to have bounced back pretty well. I have about 7lbs on top of my pre-pregnancy weight (I ended up gaining just over 30 lbs), but I fit back into all my clothes already so I think most of that weight lies in the chest region. I have a lot of back pain so I plan to book a massage with my favourite massage therapist when she gets back from her wedding!
Over the month I thought of many things I would write in her 1 month post, but surprise surprise I have mommy brain and can’t remember what I had planned. So I’ll leave it at that, and will add a few more photos for your viewing pleasure.
Playing with Aunt Lauren
How Hailey spends most of her day
My little baby girl is a soother snob.
Babies often need to suck to soothe themselves, and because I’m obviously not going to feed Hailey 24/7, we really want her to take a soother. So far she’s a total snob and will not take any.
We’ve tried:
She’s only sort of taken one, the Playtex Binky. We are going to keep trying it so hopefully someday she will take it. Here’s a photo from just about the only time she took it:
She prefers this:
And it can get pretty annoying very fast to sit around with a baby sucking on your finger.
Anyone else have a baby that doesn’t like soothers? Which worked for you?
Nope, not baby having nightmares, mommy having nightmares!
Ever since Hailey was born I have been having one reoccurring and really weird nightmare. It can happen at any time of the night and or day, whenever I am sleeping. I’m think it is the result of being overtired.
Here’s how it plays out.
I am sleeping, but think I am feeding Hailey. I half wake up and think that I feel her leg and then try to find the rest of her body, because in my mind I was feeding her but we both fell asleep and now I can’t find her! I will literally throw away all pillows and blankets to find the baby and then wake up allt he way to realize that I was dreaming and I wasn’t actually feeding her.
Everytime I’m sleeping and wake up this is how I am woken up. It gives me such anxiety.
Last night I was treated to a new nightmare. I dreamed that I had been feeding Hailey and put her down to sleep in the living room but then I woke up and there was blankets and spit-up all over her face, so I freaked out and jumped off the couch. Except I actually did this: I jumped out of my BED and thought in my sleepy state that I was in the living room and started freaking out because I couldn’t find the light switch and my baby was suffocating but I couldn’t see her to find her! I ran into my dresser, had no idea where I was and almost fell over. This woke Scott up and I’m pretty sure he thought I was crazy. It took me a bit to realize that I was a) actually in my bedroom and b) Hailey was sleeping soundly in her cradle at the foot of our bed.
(A sleeping Hailey at 5 days old)
Any other moms have this happen to them?
This marks my first post as an aunt annnnd an employed teacher!
That’s right, on Friday I got a letter in the mail offering me a job with the school board. I did a happy dance around my apartment, threw my kitten up in the air a few times, went to a meeting and signed some papers, and once I get the second half of my tuberculosis test done on Thursday, I can start teaching! Providing, I guess, that I don’t have tuberculosis, which will bring on a whole new set of problems. But my shot seems to be healing nicely so I think I’ll be okay.
So, yayyy! Problem solved. I am so relieved that I get to do what I want to do and that I won’t have to apply to any jobs that I don’t actually want, ever, ever, ever again!
Then on Saturday night, Erica and I were at the Hilton in Toronto for our awesome cousin Lara’s bachelorette party and I got a call from Leah who said, “Katelyn had the baby! It’s a girl!” I was shocked, number one because I was sure Rasperry was a boy, and number two because I didn’t get the memo that no one was going to find out when Katelyn went into labour. I thought I’d have some time to prepare! I’m SO HAPPY to add another girl to the family. Lara and our other cousin Lindsay ran out into the hall to join Erica and I and we did a tiny little celebration for Katelyn, Scott, and Hailey, then of course went back to celebrating Lara! Her bridal party did an amazing job of planning the perfect bachelorette for Lara which you can hear about from her point of view on her blog.
On Sunday Kent, Erica, and I made the two hour trip back to London to meet Hailey. I wanted to hold her but I have this belief (and I still stand by it) that my chances of dropping someone’s newborn increase 100% if I hold it, and really, that would ruin my day a whole bunch. Along with some other peoples. Not that I have shaky hands or am prone to dropping things but you know, it happens to the best of us. For instance tonight I dropped my keys before unlocking my door. But I could tell Katelyn was getting slightly insulted when she started asking me why I didn’t want to hold Hailey, so I sucked it up and very carefully held that cute little bundle of perfection. I love her! I miss her a whole bunch already and lucky Kent now gets to deal with every fifth sentence out of my mouth being something like, “hold the kitten and pretend it’s your baby.” For the record, he pretended to breastfeed and Levi attacked his hands. It wasn’t very realistic.
First of all Thank You for all the wonderful messages that were left on the “It’s a Girl!” post. We ended up staying another night at the hospital and came home yesterday at lunch. We had a difficult and long first night, but so far today is going much better. I’m hoping Hailey will let Scott and me get some sleep tonight.
I should tell you quickly about our name choice! Scott has always had a favourite girls name and I always had a favourite boys name, so we knew quickly that those would be our choices for first names. Rhea is a family name- my Oma’s name! Hailey was due on her wedding anniversary (though didn’t arrive then) and I have just always loved the name Rhea. Plus I love how they sound together… Hailey Rhea. If she had been a boy she would have been Benjamin Gregory- we’ll have to save that for our first boy, unless we are blessed like my parents with all girls! Only time will tell but for now we’ll just concentrate on cute little Hailey.
The cats are still on edge about this new baby. Chase is so concerned everytime Hailey makes any sort of noise, it’s amusing to watch him react. Coco just sort of stays away.
Labour and Delivery was amazing and surprisingly quick (so I hear for it being my first), I’ll have to write a post about that later this week, after I gain the energy. I need to write it all down soon though, before I forget any moment.
I would say that the most amazing moment was right after she was delivered and I got to reach down to grab her to bring her up to me and the doctor says “What do we have mom?” and I got to announce that it was a girl! We were very happily surprised and love her so much.
So there’s just a quick little into post for you, I’ll make sure to post again soon!
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