Shawna’s Whimsical Weblog

We went to the doctor for Liana’s 6 month check-up last week. She weighed in at a mere 12 lb 9 oz (3%). She is now 25 1/4 in long (33%) and her head circumference is 24%. The doctor reassured me that she looks great and that breastfed babies tend to be on the lighter side. I have to remind myself that she does have some shorter genes as both grandmothers hover around 5 feet tall. She received her vaccines like a champ and we were on our way. She continues to sleep roughly 12 hours per night 6:30 PM to 6:30 AM. Life is good in that regard.

I’m 6 months old!

Solid food
Liana seemed to be hungry at times after feeding so we started to introduce rice cereal about 2 weeks ago. She doesn’t gobble up the food like Marshall did. We have tried avocado, a carrot, parsnip and rutabaga mix, banana and peach/banana to date. Peach/banana was a little too sour(?) for her tastes. I will likely make up some applesauce from my mom’s apple tree later this week. Since I have some time during the day, I’m going to try and continue to make her food rather than rely on jarred foods.

Carry me!
Lately in the evening hours and even sometimes during the day, Liana will cry when put down even for a short time. Tim has been very good about carrying her around in the bjorn in the evening hours. I am hoping that this is a phase. It’s a little disconcerting how attached to me she is. She is very aware of my whereabouts and begins to fuss when I leave the room. I can only hope it is caused in part by her teething (we can see the 2 bumps in her lower gum). One of the activities she never seems to tire of is chewing on Marshall’s mega blocks. I’m crossing my fingers that there isn’t anything toxic leaching out of those. Liana does enjoy bouncing in her door bouncer and is mildly entertained by her exersaucer. However, she is not a fan of the bumbo, her kick ‘n play chair or mechanical swing (which we have since given back). Park swings are a different story - in those you can view the world from higher up, which is part of the joy in being carried around.

Baby Cobra
Liana spends a good amount of time in “Baby Cobra” pose. She can’t sit up unsupported yet She now sits unsupported (updated 8/15/10) and she can slowly inch places while on her tummy through kicking wildly. She’s an expert at spinning around in a circle to see what is within reach. I’m constantly reviewing what Marshall has brought near her. He loves having a playmate and will bring her her toys (as well as some of his own). When on her playmat or in her bouncer, he will often stand up books or stuffed animals around the periphery so she can look at them. I call these “Marshall-enhanced” play spaces.

Happy 6th Anniversary!

We went on our traditional anniversary date last Saturday. We had my mom come over to babysit early, so that we could go shoot a few holes of disc golf. Tim and I consider our first “date” to be a round of golf we shot with Pope and Angela back in February 2001. I think it’s been about 4 years since we’ve visited Morley Field. It was nice to find that the course and clientele look and feel pretty much the way we left them. Then it was off to the Marston House Garden for a photo shoot and Park Manor for a delicious dinner. Tim finds their short ribs sumptuous and I enjoyed their bacon-wrapped scallops.

Liana went her 4 month check-up last Tuesday. Here are the vitals:

Height: 24 in (36%)
Weight 11 lbs, 6 oz (7%)
Head Circumference (48%)

As you can see, there hasn’t been much weight gain in the past 2 months (a mere 1 1/2 lbs). Consequently, there hasn’t really been much weight loss on my part either. However, Liana is a very strong baby. She can hold herself very erect and likes to kick and stand supported. She has been sleeping through the night for over a month now. I wake her up around 10:30 PM to feed her still. Mostly because I worry about her weight gain, but also because I worry she might wake up at 4:30 AM in the morning looking to eat. I will eventually have to stop waking her up to feed. Maybe I will try and see what happens next weekend.

Trip back to Muggyville, er… Beltsville
Tim had training in Beltsville, MD from June 2nd-4th. We decided to take advantage of the free hotel and airfare, for a trip to see Tim’s parents and sister’s family. I was very excited to meet Marshall and Liana’s only cousin, Elliott, who was born just 6 weeks after Liana. I took Marshall on a Southwest flight and Tim took Liana on his United flight. My flight was far less miserable (with the aid of a borrowed portable DVD players) than Tim’s 6-hour delayed flight. Liana apparently cried a third of the time and didn’t want to nap.

While Tim was at training we spent our time playing at Aunt Molly’s house. We also made trips to the Air and Space Museum, Natural History Museum and Krispy Kreme for National Donut Day. Marshall was far more excited about riding the Metro and escalators than anything the museums could provide. The trip was very enjoyable, in spite of the fact that we couldn’t spend much time outside (too hot/humid). As an after-trip bonus, I look forward to seeing the family pictures we had done one evening by a professional photographer.

Grunion I
Marshall starts swim class again tomorrow. I would say he’s made a lot of progress in his swimming. Last month I had signed him up for the shortened beginning swim class at our Community Pool (Grunion I). Before class began he had basically decided he didn’t like swimming. Any time we would offer to take him to a pool, he said he didn’t want to go. I didn’t expect swim class to go over very well. But that was before Marshall met Anthony, patient and fun swim instructor extraordinaire. While Marshall refused to do a back float, Anthony was able to convince Marshall to do a very basic doggy paddle, blow bubbles in the water and jump into the pool while holding his hand. Sadly, we have no way of knowing if Marshall will once again have Anthony for his instructor again. Swim instructors are given their assignments weeks after the initial online sign-up date. The program is so popular, you have to sign-up on the first day or you will find the classes have been filled.

Marshall swimming with his man-crush, Anthony

Baby Steps in the Garden
This year we managed to clear out the weeds and actually plant some things in the backyard rather than just clear space for new weeds next spring. I planted strawberries, corn, watermelons, potatoes and one cucumber (once 4 cucumbers, but i killed the other 3). Thus far, we have harvested a dozen strawberries; we won’t know if any of the other plants bear produce until later this summer. Marshall originally helped me tend to the marigolds and nasturiums he wanted to plant, but the watering fell to me after the first couple of weeks. Tim continues his quest to kill off the weeds (and most of the plants) in the side yard. After removing the remaining palms, he is now after the Birds of paradise and African irises. They are being removed because they are riddled with weedy grass. Unfortunately, a lot of the Agapanthus is also being removed, since the roots are just too intertwined. This weekend’s project has been removing the hundreds of rose slugs that have infested our large rose bush. Apparently I should have been looking for them in May, and our poor bush is looking pretty skeletonized at this point.

From Tim’s Desk:
Part of the issue with a 3.5 YO is that we have a hard time understanding what’s going on inside his head. It’s tricky, because he acts like a little human in a lot of ways. He can offer opinions on things and prefer one thing over another. However, he doesn’t always understand the underlying concept of the topic at hand. The abstract is simply unavailable until further notice. Causality doesn’t have any significant meaning to someone who grasps neither the cause nor the effect. In some cases, he acts in statistically predictable ways. In some cases, nobody (including him) knows what’s going on.

We’ve learned that there are many things absent from his capacities at this stage. What’s more shocking are the things for which he has the capacity. Specifically, my son is a savant in toy detection; he seems to have some sort of cortex or lobe dedicated to toy recognition in three dimensional space.

We were recently given a toy that will eventually make its way to Liana. It was going to be a long time before Liana was playing with the thing, so we wanted to keep it out of sight and out of mind. I figured, I can be realistic about this. Marshall isn’t observant enough to notice that his pants are on backwards and his shoes are on the wrong feet; I wasn’t too concerned about him noticing the toy I had stashed away in the garage.

For a bit of reference, this is a picture of the back wall without the toy, taken from about Marshall’s height:

Then we have the “after” picture that includes the toy:

I wasn’t there at the time of the “incident,” but Shawna explained that the conversation went something like this:

Marshall: What is that toy? I want to play with it.

Maybe we should find some way to smuggle toys into terrorist training camps so Marshall can spot them from the satellite photos.

From Tim’s desk:

The day is coming when Marshall is going to demonstratively reflect just what Shawna and I are all about. That is, he will soon do (or say) something that will be an incandescent spotlight into the window of me, for whatever that means, good or bad. One of these days, he’s going to do something and the most obvious conclusion will be, to everyone involved, “he must have picked that up from his dad.”

And oddly enough, I’m not concerned about the cussing. I’m not terrified for when he drops his first F-bomb in school or in front of some of my more conservative peers. I tend to cuss like a sailor, so I expect that Marshall will let it rip at some point. That will happen eventually and he and I will face whatever consequences come. If he gets punished in school, that seems appropriate. If I’m subjected to derisive, judgmental sneers from others because of my lack of profanity filtering, that’s something I’ll just have to handle. Perhaps he’ll use the term in the correct context, which may provide some measure of solace.

In any event, I got a little snapshot of things to come when we were at a restaurant the other night. Marshall was getting to be a handful, so he needed a break from one of his friends. The two of them were reaching critical mass, so separating them seemed to be the best way to cool down what was soon to be a double-barrel meltdown. So, I took Marshall to the bathroom. The plan was to have him do his business so the parents could regroup and prepare for the rest of the dinner. I pick Mal up and hold him up so he can use the urinal which would be too big for him otherwise.

Now, next to us in the other urinal is another… gentleman. (I’ve found that people commonly use a term like “dude” or “guy” to describe some random male. Regardless of age or happenstance, random males usually get described by an extremely casual or generic term. When someone says something like “gentleman,” that’s usually because a term like “dude” or “guy” simply doesn’t paint the right picture and they’re trying to tiptoe around it.)

This gentleman was older. Fifty? Sixty? He had bedraggled white hair on the top of his head and a disheveled beard of the same color. There was a presence about him that said “homeless man,” even if that wasn’t quantifiable by the evidence at hand. I found myself distracted by his pants; they were a pair of ragged jeans that were carved up and split in several places along the front. If you imagine the type of hole a kid might get on the knees of his pants, you can also imagine those types of holes all up and down the front of the pants. It was as if they were worn by someone who had several knees on each leg and chose to crawl on all of them.

The man noticed Marshall and I and made some unnecessary small talk about how he should have used the full size urinal. I dismissed the notion politely, remarking that there was no way to know that we would be there and that no harm was done.

The awkward small talk continued until Marshall blurted out in a giggle, “You look like Santa Claus!”

Now, this gentleman wasn’t rotund and jolly, nor clad in cardinal. Nevertheless, he was an old man with white hair and a long white beard. He made an awkward chuckle and I made an equally awkward expression, caught somewhere between “Yes, I am embarrassed that my son said that” and “Yeah, well, you do look like Santa Claus.” I mumbled something appropriate for the situation and escaped back to my table.

So, I consider this to be a warning: I really need to help Marshall with his delivery.

Liana went in for her 2 month check-up on April 2nd. The doctor says she looks beautiful, she’s measuring at 9 lbs 14 oz (25%) and 22 3/4 in (75%). She received 5 shots and one oral vaccination. She actually took them like a champ and I only gave her one dose of infant Tylenol later in the day. Either the shots or the Tylenol made her sleepy, because she ended up sleeping most of the day and 6 hours that night. Too bad she hasn’t repeated that night performance again.

Let’s go to the scoreboard:
Liana 9 lbs 14 oz (+6 oz in 2 weeks)
Shawna 148 lbs (-1 lb in 2 weeks)

We’ve definitely hit a lull in the weight gain/weight loss symbiosis. Here’s hoping that we’re back on track at the next weigh-in at her 4 month check-up. Seeing as Liana hasn’t really reached the 10 lb marker, I guess I can’t really expect her to be sleeping through the night yet. I am very, very much looking forward to having a uninterrupted night’s sleep. It is hard to maintain basic functionality, let alone do a good job of watching two kids during the day, with my current “fuzzy” brain.

On the upside, Liana is smiling and cooing. It really does make it all worthwhile. Liana is a very mellow baby during the day. She naps well and feeds fairly well. One might say she’d have more meat on her bones if she wasn’t so busy pooping it all away. However, she is a downright fusspot in the evening hours. She tends to cry inconsolably for 1-3 hours. Poor Tim only gets to see a glimmer of the good baby I am treated to during the day when he returns home from work around 4:30 PM.

Shawna: 149 lbs (-15 lbs since post delivery weight 6 weeks ago)
Liana: 9 lbs 8 oz (+2 lbs in 4 weeks)

Everything checked out great at my postpartum appointment today. Even better news is that my heel pain went away a few days after it started up. I think the stretching helped, but I’m guessing the weight loss has been a real factor in it not returning. I’m sure the exercise I am able to get is also helping. I have been going to postnatal yoga once/week and I get a good walk in a few times a week as well. I did sign up to go to the early session of Th night hockey today. I wanted to get in one more session with Deb, before she goes on the “injured reserve” list for the remainder of the year while finishing up her current pregnancy. I have tried very limited running to this point in time (50 ft?). It hurts my lower abs. I don’t expect this session to go very well, but I know I won’t go running on my own. I did sign-up to play hockey this season. I will be missing the first 3 games and I hope that I will be able to join the team for our game on April 4th.

In happy baby-related news, Liana has shown interest in sucking on her hands/fingers this week. I’m hoping she will be able to self-soothe like Marshall did (in sleeping through the night). She also did one 5 hour stretch of sleep 2 nights ago. This is a little early, since she doesn’t weight the recommended 10 lbs yet, but I’m guessing that in 2 weeks and +1 lb we will be hitting that 5 hour stretch with good regularity.

In other happy baby-related news, my sister-in-law gave birth to her first child - Elliott Michael Robert Pipkin this morning at 4:17 AM. He was 8 lbs 9 oz and 20.5″ long with a full head of red hair. Hooray for Molly and Michael and hooray for Marshall and Liana’s first cousin.

I love not being pregnant. I have traded in the third trimester maladies: exhaustion, heartburn, having to pee every few minutes, backaches and swelling into postnatal maladies: exhaustion, difficulty walking (stitches + general trauma), lochia bleeding, and lack of any core muscle strength. However, there is nothing but an upside to not being pregnant. All of these current ailments will pass within a month or two and I never have to be pregnant again.

Last go round, I was able to turn all my pregnancy weight into baby. I’m curious to see if this will happen again. Liana is not a great eater. She falls asleep on the boob a lot and sometimes she’ll be wide awake and still only feed from one side. Let’s start from the beginning. I think I weighed 178 lbs before delivery. I was able to weight myself again on one of the patient beds in the hospital 2 days after Liana was born. I weighed 164 lbs. I think it’s good we don’t own a scale. I think the lack of progress on weight loss would just be discouraging. I have my postpartum check-up on March 18th. I’m hoping that should be a sufficient amount of time to actually see a drop in weight. I did go to my first postnatal yoga class yesterday and should be able to attend on a regular basis.

Liana started at 6 lbs 10 oz. She dropped down to 6 lbs 5 oz 3-4 days after birth, but hopefully has been gaining in weight since then. While she may not be a great eater in my mind, she does pee and poop aplenty. That makes me think that she is eating what her body needs. My milk came in 2 days after birth, instead of 5 days. I’m trying not to be as neurotic about breastfeeding this time around. I won’t be going to weigh her in-between doctor visits at a breastfeeding support group. Her next check-up is this Friday. I’ll update this log then.

2/17/10: @*$#&! I woke up with heel pain in my left foot. If I have plantar fasciitis again, I’m going to be pissed. I have started on stretching, icing and wearing arch support all the time in hopes that I might nip this in the bud. I’ll have to wait a few days before I can really conclude anything.

2/18/10: Happy 35th Birthday Tim!

2/19/10: Liana checked out great at her appointment. She is up to 7 lbs, 8 oz (+1 lb 3 oz in 2 weeks). They typically want the baby gaining 1/2 lb per week. She won’t need to be seen again until her 2 month check-up.

The story on how Liana was born…

I woke up on Groundhog Day 2010 with above average back pain. I thought to myself, “Wow, I must have put on more weight and my back is really starting to feel it.” Tim had already left for work and Marshall was hungry for breakfast at his usual 6:45 AM. It was around 7:30 AM I think I felt my first contraction. Of course the contractions are so mild at first that you could mistake them for something else. I got online to give Tim the head’s up that I might be in labor and busied myself with reading up on the difference between “false labor” and “real labor”.

Within the hour it became clear I was indeed having regular contractions. They were still 16 minutes apart, so I felt like I still had time before having Tim come home. I soon rang my mom, but was sent to voice mail. Uh-oh. Another hour passed and I still haven’t heard back from my mom. At this point in time, Tim decided to leave work and stop by my mom’s house. Contractions continued to be erratic coming in at 4 to 14 minutes. I have them written here on a piece of paper: 9:44, 9:52, 10:09, 10:19, 10:26, 10:30, 10:41, 10:51. At that point in time, Tim arrived home and began to record contractions for me on his Blackberry. My mom had gone for a walk with the dog and had been sidetracked by pulling out some invasive weeds in her local canyon. She would arrive shortly after Tim to watch Marshall when Tim and I headed to the hospital.

I kept thinking, “My water should break any time now.” I called Labor and Delivery around 11 AM and they told us to come on down. I had been walking through the contractions up to this point. The 40 minute car ride to the hospital was not as pleasant. We checked into L&D around 1:30 PM and was finally examined around 2:45 PM by a Dr. Lee. I was only 2 cm dilated and she suggested we go get some lunch and walk around for 2 hours. This seemed like a good idea at the time, even though I had Tim pushing on my back any time a contraction hit as a counter-measure. Spoiler Alert: Back Labor is really, really painful.

I got dressed and we headed downstairs to the cafeteria. I really just wanted a place to do some yoga back stretches (cat and cow poses for the yoginis out there). However, there really wasn’t any place to do them. Tim decided to grab something from the cafeteria and I tried to find a hallway to stretch out on the ground. However, when you are in a hospital, you will get everyone asking you is you are OK if they see you on all fours. “Just in labor!”, I’d say. “I’m OK!”, I’d say. Finally I decided that these contractions were getting stronger and closer and we best head back to check-in, although it had only been 45 minutes.

Back in L&D, I was really becoming rather agitated about my increased discomfort. Dr. Lee examined me again to find I had moved from 2 cm to 3 cm. When you hit 3 cm, you are considered to have been moved from “passive” labor to “active” labor. And boy howdy did that labor seem “active” in the next 2 hours while I waited on an epidural. I can basically remember screaming for a minute every 3-5 minutes. By the time the anesthesiologists showed up, I think I was getting a little hoarse. Part of the delay was due to the fact that my blood had in fact turned to syrup and the nurse DonnaMarie couldn’t get the proper suction to draw it. I also had the chills and was shaking a lot. But after what seemed an eternity, Emily would insert that lovely needle that would put the lower half of my body into a state of pins and needles and all was good with the world. Tim fed me ice chips which still somehow managed to give me heartburn. I thought about all the food I’d be able to eat once the baby was born.

Dr. Gross and Dr. Wilson would be my delivering doctors. They didn’t check on my dilation until 8:30 PM at which point they said, “Hey you’re 10 cm and at +2, want to have a baby?” Huh. My water still hadn’t broken, so they did that for me. Then after 3 sets of 3 pushes, Liana was born at 8:53 PM. It’s funny how quickly everything goes at the end. I tore along my previous scar tissue from Marshall’s delivery (not uncommon), but not nearly as bad as a surgical cut. It took me twice as long to sew me back-up as to push Liana out.

Liana was 6 lbs and 10 oz. She measured in at 20.6 inches in length with a 34 cm head circumference. She was pretty blue on delivery which was dismaying to me, but apparently not out of the range of normal since she got an 8 out of 9 on her two Apgar tests. Having not been up all night, I was not completely delirious on meeting my daughter. I was moved to tears on how beautiful she was and how happy I was to finally meet her.

We spent two nights in the hospital. Basically these were fairly tedious days filled with doctor and nurse visits. We would have been happy to go home sooner, but I am fully happy to be able to live in a place where they want to make sure there are no problems in the 24 hours after delivery for the mom and the baby.

That’s a little pregnancy humor for you. I thought I should check-in one more time with a status update before the big day. I’m 36 weeks today. The baby “dropped” about a week ago. This means heartburn hasn’t been as bad. Actually, other than minor back pain, I am doing pretty well. This is a far cry different on a “miserable-o-meter” scale than the first two trimesters. Yes, there is minor swelling in the legs and hands, but nothing like what I saw while being pregnant during the hot summer with Marshall. I’m guessing I’ve gained close to 40 lbs, likely because the only real exercise I get is yoga once per week.

Yesterday, Deborah hosted a very nice baby shower for me with the help of Mimy, Jen and Jeannine. It was great to have an afternoon of noshing and chatting with the girls, without having to worry about watching the kids. I will be returning the “baby shower” favor in March when I help host a shower for Jeannine. We have the nursery ready to go and I only have a few items I need to pick-up from the store to be officially ready. It seems forever ago that Marshall was born and I have started to re-read “On Becoming Babywise” to re-familiarize myself with the parent-determined feeding method.

My last official day at work is Jan 29th. I have to say that moving from a part-time worker to a full-time mom may actually be the scariest part of welcoming baby #2. Having worked in some capacity since the age of 17, this is a disconcerting change of identity. Many moms out there are probably rolling their eyes at me, wishing they could be fortunate enough to stay home full-time. I know it’s not a permanent retirement, but I’m not sure what sort of job I will be qualified for when I return to the workforce in 3-4 years. My task for the next few weeks will be to pour everything I know about LMA North America’s technical systems into my replacement’s brain. Even in the end, my boss Troy has been great with being flexible with my schedule. Thanks Troy and thanks LMA. It’s been a fun and educational 8 years.