Cow Tipping (1 month) March 11, 2007

Here is Fi’s 1 month picture next to her cow. She’s practicing up on her cow-tipping (keeping her roots, right Auntie Val?)….although she is the one tipping over…..she’ll get it right =)

The Baby Label March 9, 2007

I have become one of those people that before you’re a parent you swear you will never ever be. And I am trying to fight myself on it every step of the way but it is such a hard thing to overcome.

Since all of this is new to me everything that goes on in our lives these days I wonder if it’s “normal”. Now for those of you who know me, normal is not something that I’ve ever been described as. And honestly “normal” is not a word that I would want to ever be described as. But I find myself wondering every day if we are normal.

Fiona cries a lot. Every new parent thinks their baby cries a lot…yes? She doesn’t cry when she’s sleeping or eating, but if she’s not doing one of those two things she is most likely crying. She also wants to be held ALL the time. She can be sound asleep and if we put her down we have about 15 minutes max before she wakes up and realizes the injustice that has been put upon her and begins to protest. This is where I start to ask, “is this normal?”. I look up things on line…..a place where you can find a wealth of knowledge, more often then not more then you actually should know. There are all sorts of sites for babies and families that give wildly different philosophies on child raising, what you should and shouldn’t do, and what “normal” behavior is.

From these sites I’ve determined that Fiona is not a colicky baby. One site said it best by saying, “If you’re wondering if your child has colic, then they don’t”. After reading stories from parents whose child cried NON STOP for three to six hours every single night I was able to determine that this was not us. But another site out there described Fiona to a “T”. According to this site Fiona falls into the category of a “High needs baby” .

Hmmmm. Suddenly I’ve labeled my 1 month old girl. How did that happen? In some ways I was seeking it, craving to know if her behavior is “normal” or not, using that knowledge to relieve my mind. {{now as a side note here….i may sound crazy, i know. There is still a functioning piece of my brain that screams KAREN….this is just a phase….you know your daughter is not going to be 16 years old and crying all of her waking hours….this will be gone and she will have changed into another phase any day now and you will be obsessing about it. Just relax and enjoy her for who she is and stop trying to figure her out…it is a fruitless venture}} But I don’t want to label my child…and my God…especially not at a whopping 4 weeks old. How does your brain do this to you? How did I get here? Why can’t I just leave it be. And now here I am blabbing about it on my blog even =)

Is it just human nature to categorize things even people? I suppose we categorize people every day, even strangers. That guy is a weirdo, oh she must be rich, they could be my friends, i would never hang with those people. We put everyone in buckets…and now my coping mechanism is trying to bucket my baby? eeee gads.

So I am fighting it. I don’t want to be one of those parents. I suppose I will still continue to wonder, but I will stick to labels like; beautiful, prescious, smart, or maybe just Fiona.

One in a row….whooooo ? March 9, 2007

Well, maybe we celebrated a tad bit early….yes, we had a day with two successful bottle feedings….and yes, we have yet to replicate that =) Apparently, unbeknown to us…..we are NOT in charge! We will keep trying. Today I gave it a go and thought to myself, O.K., you’re just going to sit here until she get’s worn down and takes it. And so we did, we sat and cried and cried ( i almost cried ) and we sucked for a bit which made us mad and we cried more. Then she fell fast asleep….the kind of sleep where no mortal can wake her. She won. You can’t feed an absolutely sleeping baby. Of course she woke up just 30 minutes later starving and screaming for food….so we’ll try again and again and again…..Can I get long term disability leave because my baby is stubborn ? =)

Bottle BABY! March 7, 2007

well….whew. It only took a few days…which in baby world is VERY LITTLE TIME!!! I don’t know how long it will last….but yesterday we got Fiona to take the bottle….once from me during the day and once from Greg last night. WHEW!!!

The bottle means a lot of things:

•Greg can make her happy when she’s hungry….which is most of her waken time right now
•I can leave the house for more then a hour or two at a time
•I have an option to breast feeding in public (still daunting to me)
•Of course the big picture…some day I can go back to work and grandparents can take care of her
•um…uh….I can have BEER AND WINE and all of those other things I’ve avoided for months and months =)

Thanks for all the tips and support….patience was the big thing….that and I bought about 8 different types of bottles/nipples and I think finally found one that didn’t freak her out and piss her off too much =)

Our little girl is growing up =)

Hitting The Bottle March 4, 2007

So we have decided to start using the breast pump now….partially so that I can get into the swing of things and get used to using it and the timing of it all and partially so that Greg and grandparents can start feeding Fiona and we can all get prepared for when I go back to work. They say at 3 weeks is the perfect time because breast feeding is pretty well established by then so there won’t be any “nipple confusion” ( just one more term I’ve learned in this experience that I would have never imagined I would spend so much time thinking about =)

So today I pumped for the first time. We made a small bottle. And when it was time to feed Greg stepped up to give it a go. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! said Fiona.

hmmm. now what? we keep trying…a different time of day, a different bottle…..any suggestions from the mothers in my audience who have done this before? Fiona goes from 0 to 100 in about 10 seconds. One minute she is sleeping,,,,then she stirs,,,,then she cries….there is very little inbetween just awake content time…oh gee, I may be getting hungry, yes, here are your cues to feed me, yes now I’m awake and i’d like to eat please……no….she is sleeping or crying or eating…..there is no warm up period…which makes the bottle a little more difficult to put in her mouth…once she’s crying it’s all over.

I’ll let you all know how it goes =)

Welcome Baby Booher! March 4, 2007

Just wanted to welcome little baby Jackson Knowles Booher to the world! 19 inches long….7.5 lbs….born at 3:43 p.m. Feb. 27th. His mom Ellie and I have a funny story. Ellie and I work together in the marketing department at Cascade…ellie is in PR….we both went to the Dr. the same day to find out that we were indeed pregnant and things were far enough along and going well to tell….not only did we go on the same day….we went to the same office….at the same exact time….and while I was seeing Dr. Bob Levine….Ellie was seeing his wife, a Dr. herself in the same group. Dr. Bob’s wife happened to be working out of the upstairs office that day or Ellie and I would have found one another in the same waiting room …. can you imagine the surprise??? We went back to work that day and I decided to make my announcement….and right after I said, “I’m pregnant…grin grin grinnnnn” Ellie said, “Yah? Me too!” It was the craziest thing! It was so great having Ellie there the entire time comparing notes and passing on information….and just the plain moral support. We were quite the couple to pass in the hallway and more then once we scared people out of the lunch room by our conversation topics =)

And now we are both in this new phase together. It’s so great to have someone to stumble through this with (well I know, I have Greg! but this is different =) Little Fiona and little Jackson can hang out and stare at each other and their moms can get some much needed chit chat time together!

See All of Our Photos March 2, 2007

Check out the link to the left under “Our Photos”…this will take you www.myphotoalbum.com and to our photo album….or you can go to www.thegoldings.myphotoalbum.com and check out the album. I’ll update it regularly with all of our new images so if you need your Fiona fix (and some day there will probably be pets and bikes and such on there too) then you can just go there instead of wading through the blog =) Enjoy!

Fresh Air March 2, 2007

Aaaaaah….the sun is out. Well, at our house anyway. Lot’s of places around Seattle were covered in snow today…not Bellevue, we have sunny blue skies! Today G-3 (grandpa and grandma golding) came over to visit. They come over every other day or so to give me a chance to nap or do whatever I want to do for a hour or two and they get to hold Fiona while I’m doing it =)

Today I went for a walk. I took Zoe with me….she was THRILLED. She has been doing great with the baby, but you can see by the look on her face she’s a little tired of the crying and the staying home.

It was the first time in the longest time that I could really WALK! I tried a little jog….body is not ready for that yet….but a nice brisk walk…this I could handle and man did it feel good! My back wasn’t hurting from a big old belly and when I finished nothing else hurt on me either. The last couple months of my pregnancy even just a mile walk would ware me out to the point of not being able to get off the couch for the rest of the night. But not this time. I felt great. Zoe did too. It was like old times.

This makes me realize even more, it’s time to fly the coop. Leave the house. I’m not a home body….I’ve never been one….I go….I get outside….I move….and for the last three weeks I’ve felt pretty house bound. For obvious reasons of course. But now I need to go.

It’s scary. Each new thing is a whole new set of skills to learn. I’ve barely got being home with a baby down…now I need to go into public with a baby? I have to remember everything I need to bring. I need to decide what do I put her in? Do I leave her in her car seat? Put her in the carrier? What is going to keep her from crying the longest? What do I do if she starts to cry and I can’t stop it? I will have to feed her in public. Change her in public.

Now….if I was reading this just a few weeks ago I would think…oh come on. I see people out in public all the time with babies. If she cries, she cries. No one cares, and if they do so what? I see people breast feeding all the time in public…and I’ll most likely be even more discreet. And if it bothers someone….so what? etc. etc. But now…now that it’s me….I worry. I know, I know…I need to let the worry go….but I worry.

So tomorrow will be the day. I don’t know where we’ll go yet. And it probably won’t be for long. But goll-darn-it (i’m practicing my kid friendly vocab) we’re going to go. We are goers. We do. We move.

Look out world…here we come

2 Weeks March 1, 2007

Here she is at 2 weeks (well and a couple days). I’ve been trying to find something to take her picture up against so that we can see how she grows…we don’t have any big stuffed animals and Zoe won’t hold still enough =) But her auntie Val got her this cow as a gift (so she would remember her roots in enumclaw =) and so this will be our measuring stick…for a while at least =) I’ll up date it monthly (if I’m good)

Week One March 1, 2007

So, slowly I’ll get us caught up….

I have to say…the first week…or maybe week-and-a-half….was hard. Really hard. Hard in a way that I didn’t expect. Everyone talks about how absolutely wonderful newborns are….and they really are….but I think most people forget what it’s like that first week.

Suddenly there we were…parents. With this little tiny person who we barely knew and who barely knew us. Yes, we’ve spent 10 months together, but everything was my way =) She went where I went and when I went….we spent time together yes….but now here she is in front of us.

I was tired….and more then being tired I was SORE. I was so excited to not be pregnant anymore, to have my back stop hurting and my body stop aching…and now I have a whole new set of pains to deal with. All I want to do is care for this little bundle of joy, respond to her every cry. But just getting off the couch was a 15 minute ordeal. Sitting up in bed hour after hour to feed her was “rubbing me the wrong way”…pun intended =) I would find myself crying at the smallest little things. And I was scared.

Scared? Scared of what? Didn’t I know what I was getting myself into 10 months ago. Well…yes….but what if…what if….what if. What worried me more was that I had this overwhelming feeling of anxiety. We had visitors every day, and though I was excited that they would be coming over, the minute they got there all I wanted was for them to leave…it made my anxiety even worse.

Finally…once again…I dug out my book on all things baby. I had the blues! What a relief to read that this is normal…that 80% of new mothers experience it…and most important…that it goes away in 1 to 2 weeks. I had heard tons about Post Partum Depression….but the blues always seemed lumped into that. This was new information. Greg was great. I was able to talk to him about how I was feeling. I was a little worried that I would scare him =) but it was such a relief to get this off my chest and for him to respond so calmly …reassuring me that it would be all right.

Now…just 2 1/2 weeks later…things are much better. My anxiety is all but gone…it rears it’s ugly head now and again….but for the most part is gone. I’m settling in. My soreness is just barely there, and continues to get better. Fiona and I are getting to know each other, we’re figuring things out together.

I am relieved. It is still hard….very very hard =) …. but the blues are gone and everything is just rosie….fiona rosie