2 Months Old

Dr. Finer commented that Sabrina must have a sixth sense because our normally very easy going baby started crying in the car on the way to the doctor's office and didn't stop until we left the office. Nothing that we did calmed her down for long and her first vaccination shots certainly didn't do the trick either.

In the past month Sabrina has certainly been growing. I remind the other girls just how much growing Sabrina has to do and that growing only happens while the body sleeps so - please let the baby sleep! (Actually Sabrina seems completely impervious to the antics and noise level of her sisters even when she is sleeping right in the middle of it.) Andres won the contest for Master Estimator this month coming in with an exactly correct estimated weight of 11 pounds on the dot. She grew another inch this past month as well and is now stretching out to 22 and 3/4 inches. Her head is just under 15 inches. To summarize: Her weight is now at the 36th percentile a drop from 53rd a month ago, but nothing to worry about, her height is 44th percentile down from 48th (oh no - she's shrinking!) and her head remains right at the 16th percentile.

Sleeping Beauty

Sabrina is a good sleeper. She still spends most of her days sleeping away, but she is giving us a little more smile time in between the naps. The nights are consistent yet, but she does give me a 3 - 5 1/2 hour run of sleep. Sometimes that is all I get and sometimes I get some good napping in with her in the mornings.

A Linked Family

I have been struggling to figure out how to blog about life events in two different blogs. I still don't know what the smart way to merge them is, so for the meantime I have at least included a link on each of the two blogs so that viewers can toggle between them. (Look to the right.)

Mustard- Colored Mustache

I almost always have a camera within arms reach, but there are moments when I don't have the camera with me, or more often when it just wouldn't be prudent to leave my child spewing projectile vomit (for example) in order to take a photo of it. But seriously, some of this "gross" stuff is absolutely astonishing and should be documented.

Shortly after receiving a fresh diaper yesterday (or a fresh canvas as Sabrina seems to think of it) Sabrina had a blow out. She was seated in the bouncy seat waiting for me to gather our things to go and get the girls from school. She was fussing. I thought with surprise that she was still hungry so I started getting myself set up for a feeding. When I picked her up her entire backside was wet. I'm sure that my face reflected the confusion that I felt. It wasn't any particular color, just wet. Huh? I thought that perhaps the bigger diaper than she had on (already moving up from the newborn to size 1) and maybe user error had created a loose diaper that allowed her to pee all over her clothes. I put her face down on the changing table and started peeling back the layers. Yuck! Please keep in mind the mustard yellow color of breastfed baby poo. It was all over. Disgusting. I  attacked with a wipey in each hand. As carefully as possible I tried to roll her onesie in on itself to protect her body from the poo while removing it over her head. I did a miserable job. She had yellow streaks starting at her elbows, over her shoulders, down her back and shockingly when I flipped her over, across her face including a mustard colored mustache. I really wanted to take a photo, but my revulsion at her having poop smeared across her face won out in the end. Nothing that a few more wipes and a bath couldn't take care of.

Mama Karma

Some people are unbelievably lucky in life. They always win raffles, somehow get free tickets to events, and never get a parking ticket. And then there are the people that never catch a break. I'm am definitly NOT in the lucky category, but more specifically I would like to comment on what I think of as my "Mama Karma". I've talked to some other moms out there about this, so if you're a mom I think you'll understand what I'm talking about here. If I am alone with the kids, they will inevitably wake up early in the morning, have all kinds of immediate needs, not take naps and generally run me ragged. If dad is alone with the kids, they'll sleep late, get up quietly, feed themselves, wash the dishes and clean the bathroom and then go lie down for a nap - all without disturbing dad at all.

So today is no different than any other day lately. I'm exhausted. I want a nap. Do you think that I could convince Sabrina to take a nap? Not a chance. For 40 minutes I laid semi-comatose with her wishing with all my heart that she would sleep and allow me to do the same. Then the phone rings. It is my lovely husband. I anticipated his call because his "Husband Karma" is to ALWAYS call when I am napping or trying to (and he knows this too.) So we are talking and Sabrina is kicking away next to me. By the end of our conversation, she has passed out. Yeah! My deepest wish fulfilled. But now my head hurts so much that it is about to explode and I am now so stressed about life things and more than anything else I am no longer semi-comatose but fully (FULLY!) awake. So she sleeps peacefully while I fret and fume and try to sleep to no avail. And frankly I know not to devote too much time trying to sleep at this point. It won't happen so I might as well get up and do something off the To Do list.

Sabrina Lucia

Well the elevated feet and crossed legs didn't work. Sabrina was born the following morning just hours before the Lorelei's graduation ceremony and the school performance. We were fortunate to have the grandparents here to take them and Maria shot some video. Jenna took photos for us, too.

Lindsay, always my go to photographer, took some shots of Sabrina. So far I just have this teaser one, but it is a beaut.

It is now 2 weeks later and Sabrina is an easy baby so far. She just eats and sleeps with very little awake time. Of course she wakes doesn't sleep for long stretches at night yet, but it is mostly manageable. Compared to Emma's eating schedule as a newborn, this is luxurious. Sabrina had her 2 week appointment with Dr. Finer yesterday. She is growing just fine. She eats about 2 oz. at a sitting. I looked back through my journal and found that at this age, Emma was drinking 3 1/2 oz. at a sitting. No wonder Emma gained 2 pounds above her birth weight in the first two weeks! Sabrina now weighs 8 lbs. 6 oz. ( up from 7 - 10) and is 20 1/4 inches long. That puts her smack dab at the 50th percentile for both her height and weight. Her head on the other hand..... at 13 3/4 inches is somewhere in the teens. I guess she's got a tiny head like her mom.

Who does she look like, you might be wondering? At times I see shades of each of the girls at the newborn stage but so far it is hard to tell. At other times I think she looks like no one else. She has a head shaped like Emma (and me), a nose that is straight with no little ski slope to it like mine of the other girls, dark hair like Emma had as a newborn (but of course it fell out and was replaced with blonde hair), curl to her hair - like Lorelei? (hard to say because Lorelei was bald for so long!), slate blue eyes that will inevitably turn brown on me, long fingers, feet and toes and a svelte little body. Wait - I haven't mentioned her perfect ears. Seriously. Her ears are absolutely perfect. I think that they are small like mine, but on the head of a baby it is hard for me to tell what is big and what is small.

Contraction Action!

I may or may not have said this before, but this pregnancy has just been so different in some ways from the other two and that has left me confused at times. With Lorelei and Emma I started having some cramping a day or two before they were born. Contractions started at some point the day before and were in earnest by midnight. I think I went to the hospital with Lorelei at 3:30 in the morning and maybe 2:30 am with Emma. And then they were born around the noon hour that day.

Well this time is different. I started having contractions 10 days ago. I seriously thought that the baby was going to be born on Thursday. But no. Then things calmed down for a few days (thankfully because Andres' parents hadn't yet arrived to care for the girls!) Then the night before the grandparents arrived the contractions kicked up again. That was the start of what has been an entire week of having sleep depriving nights that convince me that the hospital trip is inevitable, followed by a day of sporadic contractions. Finally yesterday morning I called the doctor's office to see if they could see me or tell me something reassuring. They sent me to the hospital for evaluation. Of course I had NO contractions of note while hooked up to the machine, but I was relieved to hear that all was well with the baby and that I was dilated to 2 cm and 50% effaced. I was sent for an ultrasound. All seemed fine except for the fact that she was so low in my pelvis that the technician couldn't really get a measurement of her head. And then I went home. Well, actually then I tool Lorelei to an appointment. Oh, how I was suffering with contractions and back pain. By the time we made it home I didn't think I could walk up the stairs to the apartment. Being stubborn came in handy and I made it. Straight to lie down in bed. I went against the medical community and took 800 mg of ibuprofen (it just felt so much like the worst menstrual cramps ever!) and things calmed down. I felt so much better that I remember thinking that I actually felt "drugged". I slept a few hours last night before the incredible back pain and contractions kicked in again. But nothing regular or particularly close together.

This morning I wasn't sure that I would make it to my 10:45 appointment, but I did. I am now 3 cm and 80% effaced. The baby is coming for sure. My doctor assured me that this labor would be much faster than the other two. It couldn't be I rebutted. I have already been in labor for a week!

Tomorrow is Lorelei's preschool graduation and end of school show. Emma has a special starring role and I would really hate to miss the whole thing, so right now I'm hoping that for having already been a prolonged process, she will wait until at least tomorrow afternoon once the show is over. Keep your fingers crossed. I'll keep my feet elevated and my legs crossed.