a month

My baby boy is a month old! I can't say it's flown by, but it sure is crazy to see him growing before my eyes.

He's such a little sweetheart--I can already tell because I'm the mom and I know these things. He likes making dolphin sounds, growling, rolling his eyes at us, and thinking he's a lot older than he is (like trying to hold his head up when he's 2 days old). He now has the hairline of a 60-year-old and his chicken legs are filling out a little!

see hows he's balding..and getting fat?

Name and Blessing

On Sunday we were able to have Clark's baby blessing in Jacob's parent's ward. I was really glad we got to have so many friends and family there instead of doing it in California where we know nobody. We had a little lunch after at his parent's house. It was all perfect.

I got ready and everything! I was a little worried my baby wouldn't recognize me sans glasses, greasy ponytail, and crusty T-shirt.

And while I'm (sort of) on the topic of names, I'll share how the babe got his name. It started with a pretty long list which got narrowed down for months until we were down to 2 or 3 favorites. We got Clark from his Grandma's maiden name. We thought we would keep a few names in mind and then decide which suited him best when we saw him. Good idea in theory. Not in practice.

When we saw him neither of us had slept for 24 hours, I was drugged, and he didn't come looking like a certain name. Duhh. I don't know why I was expecting it to just come to us when we saw him, because it totally didn't. I said I would pick the middle name if Jacob picked the first. I held up my end, but he didn't want that much responsibility, so we did a lot of "You choose." "No, you choose." "Mom, you pick." Finally I said "ok pick a number!" No really, we named our child by picking a number.

But I think it suites him..now (at first anything we called him felt weird). And I don't know if we could have picked a better namesake. Jacob's grandma is one of the most genuinely kind and selfless people I've ever met, and thanks to her, we've had a place to stay for almost free the past three years.

So that's how Clark became Clark. And then it was brought to our attention that he could also be CJ which doesn't really fit at the moment, but maybe someday he'll be glad to have the option?

The After Party

Continued from here.

For my whole life, whenever I thought about giving birth, I only imagined it up to the part where I get the baby. All the labor stuff made me a little nervous, but then once they hand you the baby it's happily ever after. Wrong. I was so wrong. One too many romantic comedies or episodes of "A Baby Story" I guess.

Much to my surprise, birthing baby was the easy part. Then there was shaking uncontrollably, a fever and chills, wearing a diaper (which goes along with a whole world of unpleasant stuff that I won't get into), painful failed attempts to breastfeed, and passing out when the nurses tried to take me to the bathroom--I guess I had lost a bit too much blood right at first. Most of all I was more exhausted than I'd ever been in my life. All I wanted to do was sleep, but nurses kept coming in to check my whatever and push really hard on my stomach. Hi, I just had a baby.. that hurts! And then it took me about a week before I could walk without hunching over and feeling like I was going to pass out.

But the really worst part was probably the emotional roller coaster they call "baby blues". It's such a happy, exciting time but also really scary and overwhelming. Add crazy hormonal imbalance, and it's a mess. I would burst into tears over the tiniest things and sometimes for absolutely no reason at all. I wasn't at all interested in anything that I usually love (food, reality TV, Pinterest). And the very worst of all was every evening when the anxiety would hit. Even though I was dead tired those first few nights, I couldn't sleep because of the awful, unshakable anxiety. If you've ever had a moment where you're scared for your life, and your heart's beating out of your chest, that's how I felt ALL. NIGHT. LONG. But each day it got a little better, and I cried a little less. I'm incredibly grateful that it was temporary and didn't develop into full-blown PPD. I  have a lot more empathy now for anyone who deals with that or any kind of anxiety/depression.

So now it sounds like it was all just the worst experience ever. Parts of it were. But there were moments in that first really, really hard week that were the best ever. Like falling asleep to general conference with my baby boy curled up on my chest. Or seeing Jacob instantly become the best dad ever. Or when he would sit right by my hospital bed during those long anxiety-filled nights, hold my hand, and tell me we could take turns staying awake if it would help me feel better. And all of this making me realize that God knows me so well that he gave me a husband who is more perfect for me than I ever could have known. Seriously, if I wasn't married to someone so helpful and involved, I would have lost it! I also would have lost it without my mom there the first week to be my slave, answer my worried-new-mom questions, and get me out of the house, even though I had to use one of the motorized shopping carts for old folks.

At first I felt a little guilty for not being euphoric every moment of every day. It felt like every new mom in the world felt that way while I kept thinking "Is this really the rest of my life?"  "Will I ever get dressed again?" "Will I ever sleep again?" And while I'm beyond grateful, I think it's OK to feel overwhelmed and even sad sometimes. This is a huge change and so physically and emotionally draining.

Luckily, things are already so much better. We are starting to get into a groove that works for us, and I'm becoming a tiny bit more confident every day. The crazy postpartum hormones are waning, we're all getting more sleep, and I've even showered and gotten dressed a few times. The good moments are definitely outweighing the bad, and we love our little guy more than anything.

we are...

officially college graduates! We are such party poopers, but we were really glad to be sitting on the couch watching commencement rather than being there in real life. I'm sure Clark appreciated that too.

It's still hard to believe that I won't be going back to BYU in August. Or EVER (maybe). I have really loved going there and having Jacob with me every step of the way. Time to start real life I guess.

Labor and Delivery

I've been putting off writing about the whole experience of going into labor and giving birth because I know it's going to take a while, and free time is very precious these days! But I know I'm going to want to remember all the details someday so I should write about it before I forget everything.

So Wednesday March 28 was my due date which came and went as I expected it to. We kept telling the baby to wait and come on Thursday or Friday since my mom was flying in on Thursday; we didn't want him to come before then, but we also didn't want her to have to be waiting around for a week. Well, I guess the kid is pretty obedient.

On Thursday morning I had my weekly checkup with the OB. I was about 3 cm dilated, but had been for weeks so nothing too promising.  She said she could strip my membranes (ya, it's about as pleasant as it sounds) which can sometimes get things moving, and I figured it was worth a shot. Right after my appointment Jacob and I went to pick my mom up from the airport. I noticed that my contractions were a little more painful/intense than Braxton Hicks, but I knew that could go on for days or that I might just be "crampy" from the membrane-stripping business.

For the rest of the day I tried to get stuff done, but kept getting distracted by the contractions, timing them, and hoping they would get closer together. No such luck. I was determined to go into for real labor so I made my mom go on a pretty long uphill walk to campus with me. That seemed to make the contractions a little more intense.

That night we went to bed around 10:30. By 11, I was waking up every time I had a contraction but tried to sleep through it. As soon as sleep was impossible, I went into the bathroom to start timing them on the "Contraction Ap" Jacob downloaded onto our tablet. I REALLY didn't want to be one of those people that goes to the hospital and gets sent home, so I waited for an hour until the pain was getting pretty intense about every 3 minutes. I had to take a bath about halfway through to calm myself down (is this really happening?!) and try to ease the pain.

At 12:45 I woke up Jacob and told him I thought maybe we should go to the hospital but I wasn't quite sure.  I called my mom and asked if the pain should be absolutely unbearable if I was actually in labor and she said no, so we decided to just go for it.

1:20 AM we arrived at the hospital where, to my dismay, I was told I would have to be monitored for an hour to see if I was really in labor before I got admitted. The nurse later told me she thought for sure she'd be sending me home because I was so "stoic".Me? Ha. Anyhow, that was the longest hour ever. I tried to stay distracted by playing Draw Something and sucking on ice cubes, but every few minutes I had to just stop and take deep breaths until the contraction passed. Not helpful-- Mom and Jacob watching the monitor and saying "Woah! That's a big one!" every time I had an especially painful one. Uh yes, I can feel it!

not a happy camper

So by 2:30 I had made progress (to 5 cm, I think) and was admitted! She asked if I would want the epidural right away. I absolutely did. That was the part I had been most scared of, but at this point I was so over the labor pains. Jacob had to leave the room for this part since he doesn't do well with needles, but my mom stayed with me and talked to me the whole time to keep me from getting nervous. And what do you know? It was completely painless!  After that, we all tried to get some sleep. I made very little progress in the next hour which was discouraging. But then sometime between 4 and 5 my water broke, and things took off from there. I was too excited to sleep after that.

Around 7 AM I was fully dilated so they called my doctor. She arrived around 7:20 and it was time to start pushing. I was so ready to meet this little guy and so determined to get him out without giving him a cone head! After being up all night, I didn't have much energy left but I used every bit of it to push. I had no idea if I was doing anything at all since I couldn't feel it, but everyone just kept encouraging me, and we got that guy out in 20 minutes. I  was sure seeing a child come out of me would be the most miraculous, tender moment ever, but it was really just so weird.

BUT it was sweet to get to hold him after he was all cleaned off especially since he stopped crying right when they gave him to me. And I felt so grateful for how smoothly everything went and for my healthy, beautiful baby.

"E.T. phone home"

To be continued...

Baby Announcement

We got our friend from work to take some pictures of Clark and quickly threw together an announcement to be sent off with our graduation announcement (heavens no, we're not paying for double stamps).

We just couldn't decide between these two, so we printed off some of both. I know people want to see his precious face, but who can resist a little curled up ball baby (or "pod" as Jacob calls it)?

3/30/12

Baby Clark has arrived!

He is practically perfect in every way, if I do say so myself.

One of these days I'll have to share all the juicy details of his arrival, but for now I'm just trying to rest and adjust and let my body get over the trauma before I attempt to go to the last few weeks of classes and graduate. Yikes.