La Casa de Rosasharona

Iris seems to have jumped straight into adolescence: she has acne, dry flaky skin, and greasy hair all at the same time. We keep posting oh-too-cute pictures of her everywhere, but there is the random bad photo that doesn’t make the cut. Below are a few (if this blog continues to exist when Iris is older, she will hate me for this post haha!):

And here is her flaky skin with pimples and the greasy hair (hard to see the pimples in this pic)…

*note: as seen through our video monitor…crib is travel size crib so no she is not a giant baby (although at nearly 10 lbs, my back and arms think she’s huge!)

Or rather, mommy made it to February!!!

It’s hard to read a newborn sometimes, but some of Iris’ facial expressions are DEFINITELY easy to decipher. For example, this is her poo face:

When I see that face, I know that a poo is a-comin’! And sure enough about 5 seconds after Mike took these pictures, she had a little explosion in her diaper…

BTW, for those of you who have kids: don’t you absolutely hate it when you are changing a diaper and poo/pee gets ALL OVER THE PLACE. Today we had cheese-colored poo all over her leg and on her socks - talk about messy! Oh and don’t even get me started when I have to do THREE DIAPER CHANGES IN A ROW because she can’t stop excreting waste!

And this is her I’m-so-cute-I-can-get-away-with-anything-face:

Thanks to Seth, Alli, Mel and Noah for the Flip video camera! So easy to create and share videos…

I survived the first week of motherhood!

It’s 7am in the morning and I am currently typing with Iris hanging off my left breast at the same time! I have no choice but to multitask because I feel like all I do all day is feed this kid! I feed her about 8 times a day (which comes to about every 3 hours), but each feeding takes about an hour or sometimes two depending on how deeply she falls asleep halfway through the feeding or whether she takes a massive poop in the middle of feeding. The biggest obstacle I had to overcome the last week was the engorgement phase around day 3/4 - oh man, I totally wanted to give up breastfeeding right then and there. My boobs got so huge and painful and Iris was being VERY difficult when trying to latch on. The hand pump was my best friend. But things are much better now.

Otherwise, Iris is such a good baby. She eats, she sleeps, she poops, she pees. No colic (knock on wood!). She is such a cutie-pie. She makes the funniest faces! She is also very strong: she breaks out of her swaddle every time - no problem! No wonder I couldn’t sleep when she night-punched me right in the gut during the last few weeks of pregnancy.

So that’s my life as of now: milk slave and part-time human being. Nothing too exciting here. I will try and post some pictures the next time around.

Side note: I am EXTREMELY sad that Conan O’Brien is ending his gig on the Tonight Show. His show got me through the horrible first trimester (this was when he was still hosting the Late Night show). I would watch the previous night’s show on Hulu and his humor would take my mind off the nausea and help me fall asleep every single night. I hope that another network picks him up to do a show because I am in withdrawal mode right now!

Hello again friends!

I am back home after 5 days in the hospital, and I am so glad to be out of there! Iris Elizabeth was born 1/15/10 and is helathy and wonderfully delicious.

Here’s the labor story:
Last Thursday I went in for a OB appointment to do a BPP (biophysical profile) to check if Iris was still doing well in utero. Everything was fine except that I was having contractions (that I couldn’t feel) about 4-5 minutes apart and her heartbeat had slight decelerations after each one. The OB sent me directly to the hopsital at that point (go directly to the hospital, do not collect $200!) and Mike and I were admitted pretty quickly. They hooked me and the baby up to a monitor to see what was going on and lo and behold, everything was fine - no decels. However, they did not like the fact that I was 41 weeks and that they did see the decels at the office.

So we agreed to do an induction and pitocin was started. I was still 1-2 cm and 50% effaced when I got admitted, but they felt that this was enough to pit me. The pit ran for about 4 hours, menstrual crampiness started regularly, but no progress was made. I was still the same after the 4 hours. They then stopped the pit and started a cervidil and kept me overnight.

In the morning (this would be now Friday morning), they checked me and I had made a little progress…2.5 cm and 90% effaced and -4 station…so they started pit again and broke my water. Immediately after my water was broken, I went from having pretty painful menstrual cramping to EXTREMELY pain cramping…hoo boy wow. I asked for the epidural at that point, but the epidural only was effective on my left side. They laid me on my right side so the epi could get to my right side by gravity and that helped somewhat. About 6 hours into the second round of pit, the epidural wore off completely on my right side and I was crying in pain. They then checked me again and I was still 3 cm and 90% effaced at -3 station! They waited another hour and still no progress. At that point, the doc was suggesting a c-section because the labor was offically considered “failure to progress”. I don’t know if this is a true medical term or what but I was in so much pain I could care less. I was totally against the idea of a c-section going in and I started bawling even more after I heard that I needed to get a c-section. The doc basically explained that the baby’s head was in the right posistion (plus there was still room around the head in my pelvis) but her body could be twisted in a way that was rendering the contractions useless.

After a whirlwind of re-doing the epidural and prepping me for the c-section I was wheeled into the OR and they cut me up. It was all done and over in 30 minutes. The doc reported that his instincts were correct - Iris’ body was twisted sideways (hard to explain this without pictures) and also she was a 9 lb, 3 oz. baby! I probalby would have ended up with a c-section after a long labor anyway. Recovery has been hard but I am making it. I am feeling overwhelmed and scared, but overjoyed by this new little one. I think she looks a lot like me and a little like Mike. But her face changes after every nap and in every photo she looks like a different person. We have abandoned the crib because she LOVES sleeping in her car seat. We love her to death!

Next post: breastfeeding adventures…arrrrgh!!!

I must have been around 5 years old when I went over to my neighbor’s house to play with their daughter, and her mom (I remember her name was Jennifer, but oddly I can’t remember the little girl’s name!) made some cooked carrots with melted mozzerella cheese of some sort and I instantly LOVED it! I remember skipping back home and telling my mom ALL about these carrots…how they were made with yummy BUTTER (I used to get the words “butter” and “cheese” mixed up). So my mom made buttered carrots and I was sorely disappointed.

The end.

And waiting. It’s pure torture!

Also, I am getting new stretch marks BY THE MINUTE. I now have a large corona of glossy brown beauties surrounding my belly button…I was doing so well and BAM. Here we are with stretch marks…and they all developed within the last few weeks. I can feel a few more forming as I write…

So the OB and I have a plan for now. If I don’t go into labor this week, Thursday morning I will have a BPP (biophysical profile) to check if the baby is doing well. If anything does not look right, I will be induced that same day. Otherwise, I have the option of waiting just a few more days to see if I can get started on my own. But the docs in my practice do not want to wait too much longer beyond 41 weeks (which would be this Friday). Gah, I do NOT want to be induced because the chance of having a C-section goes up if I am induced when my body is not ready! But on the other hand, mentally I am ready to be done being a human incubator.

I’ve been trying to walk as much as I can by visiting various stores in the vicinity…Target, every single damn grocery store in our neighborhood, Rite Aid, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Kohl’s, the mall, etc. Everywhere I go, people ask me when I am due and when I tell them I am overdue, they give me a sad face and empathize with me. LOL. (It’s always a sad face!) Yeah, that’s right, feel sorry for me cuz you should…being 10 months pregnant sucks big monkey balls. At least when the baby is here and I ‘m sleep deprived and uncomfortable, there will be a cute little someone to make it all worth it.

Four more days until due date.

I am going stir-crazy being indoors (due to the snow and ice) and being restricted to a 20-min drive radius. I stopped working after the 23rd because it was getting hard for me to catch my breath standing for hours at a time. Also, I found myself not caring for my patients becuase I was so focused on myself at work. I tried to make it to the 30th, I really did.

So here I am, like a big lump on my couch, waiting for things to happen. Bored to death. And why is it snowing so much on Long Island??? It didn’t snow nearly this much last year…or maybe it’s because I have a fear of not being able to reach the hospital that every little snowfall seems a little too excessive?

Mike has been off for the last week and a half and is going back into the clinic tomorrow. I’m sad that I can’t have him around the house to do stuff for me during the day haha. Yesterday we rearranged all of our living room furniture to make it a little more spacious-looking. And by “we” I mean Mike did the arranging and I told him where to put stuff. Anyway, Mike is hoping I go into labor tonight so that he doesn’t have to go into clinic tomorrow haha.

I feel like I am going to be pregnant forever!!!!! ARRRRRrrrgh. *sniff, sniff*