I love fall!!!

Things have been a little rough around here lately...getting use to our routine with Itty Bitty, crappy commute to work, doctors appointments, blah blah blah. But one thing that is super exciting is that it officially feels like fall! This is my favorite time of year!

This weekend was my nephew's 1st birthday! I can't believe he is already 1! Happy birthday Baby Lucas! The day before his birthday my mom said "can you believe this time last year I only had one grandchild, now I have 4!" Our family has done a lot of growing this year! The holidays are going to be so exciting this year! Anyway...here is a picture of Itty Bitty and me getting ready for the birthday party!

After the birthday party we met up with some of my co-workers and their families and we all went on a hay ride out into a pumpkin patch to get pumpkins! It was a lot of fun! And super cheap! We got an 11 pound pumpkin for $1.87! Itty Bitty slept pretty much through the whole thing.

So this whole breastfeeding business is starting to suck...

I know it is really good for my baby and that is really the only reason I have lasted this long. Itty bitty is 14 weeks old today and she has only had breast milk. I've been back at work for 2 weeks now and I have really been struggling to find time to pump and when I do I don't seem to get all that much. So I drop her off at daycare about 8am and I usually nurse her before leaving, I try and go back on my lunch break and nurse her (but lets face it, I rarely get a lunch break) and then I pick her up about 6:30 (thank goodness she loves her babysitter...and it doesn't hurt that she is one of my best friends and her kids love itty bitty too!). During this time she seriously eats 20 - 22 ounces! Isn't that like a crazy amount?! It seems like it, maybe that is because I am actually only pumping about 10 - 12 ounces during this time. Yup, that's right about half of what she actually needs. I suck. Thank goodness I tried insanely hard to build up a freezer stash before going back to work.


I really REALLY thought I would be able to make it a year. But I am feeling so defeated. At this rate I am going to burn through my freezer stash in no time. Fortunately, I can usually end up pumping another 6 - 8 ounces between my pumping sessions when I first wake up and right before I go to bed. I really feel like this is ruling my life. AND...to make matters a little worse, now at night when itty bitty wakes up to eat around 3am she gets super cranky because it doesn't come out as fast and I think partially because she may not actually be able to get as much. This morning she nursed for a good 30 minutes...at 3 o'clock in the morning. Painful and exhausting. Ugh...hopefully I can make it at least another month and then once we start giving her baby food (which I decided to make...I hope I don't regret adding yet another responsibility to my plate) she will need less and I won't feel like completely consumed by this.

But if you're taking bets on how long I will last before giving her some formula...I'll take two weeks.

And then there were three...

I should probably tell the story of how we became a family of three. Considering that Itty Bitty is now three months old, the time is probably right. We got pregnant really easily, which was surprising considering I had been told by doctors that we would likely have a hard time conceiving because I have lupus. Doctors had told me that once we were ready just start charting on a calendar and call them after we had tried for a year. So we got married September 4, 2010 and October 1^st I started charting on the calendar. You can imagine my surprise when I had a positive pregnancy test on October 24^th!

My due date was June 30^th and we soon found out that we were having a little girl! I thought for sure that I would go past my due date, WAY past, but again I was wrong. June 2^nd my husband and I went to the doctor for our regular appointment. My feet were insanely swollen, so swollen that it was actually comical I had started wearing wide width shoes a few weeks before but now it was to the point that if I took them off during the day I could not get them back on! My reflexes were super jumpy and I had begun seeing sparks in my vision. The doctor checked my urine and sure enough my kidney’s were spilling protein so we were sent to the hospital to have my urine checked for 24 hours.

24 hours came and went and then we got the news that I would need to stay in the hospital until I delivered due to preeclampsia. The main concern was that if I was somewhere else I would have a seizure. The goal was then to get me to 38 weeks and then we would induce. The hospital stay really wasn’t bad. The nurses were great and my husband was able to work from my hospital room so I wasn’t alone much, plus the labor and delivery room we stayed in was pretty big. I wasn’t allowed to get up except to use the bathroom and bathe. But eventually after I became a little less of a seizure risk due to overstimulation I was allowed one wheel chair ride around the hospital a day and even got a massage every other day.

Finally we got 38 weeks, June 16^th. We began the induction. I was super nervous and my doctor wanted to start off slow in hopes of reducing the need for a c-section. So we started off with oral cervical softners. Basically that didn’t do much, I had several doses but never dialated past 1. So day 2 started with pitocin in low doses. Again, not much happened. I was having regular enough contractions that they weren’t able to increase my pitocin but the contractions weren’t doing anything and I stayed at a one. I have got to say by the end of day two I was a little frustrated, tired, scared, and just ready to finally have this baby!

Day three things finally got interesting! We started out with pitocin again at 6am and they broke my water at 9am. I had a TON of water I think mainly because I had been on bed rest for so long and had been receiving so much IV fluid for days. I really had wanted to have my baby naturally but obviously with the preeclampsia that whole plan went out the window but I was still going to try to deliver without an epidural. My doctor expressed concern about this plan because she didn’t want me to be in so much pain that it triggered a seizure and ultimately my desire for a healthy baby and a healthy me was stronger than my fear of the epidural.

After having received the epidural things went MUCH quicker, I took a little nap and when I woke up it was time to push. I pushed for an hour and a half before Samantha Grace was born at 5:24pm. It was absolutely amazing and I really enjoyed giving birth, something I NEVER thought I would say. Ultimately a lot of things happened that I wasn’t planning on but we just went with it and didn’t try to control everything and things went better than we could have expected.

When I grow up...

So I am currently on a mission to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I guess the big problem is that I have tried out many different lines of work, many that I actually really liked. But nothing that I ever felt like I could do forever and be really happy.  I currently work at a bank as a service manager, basically I train employees, handle lots of back shop compliance type stuff, work to meet sales goals, that type of stuff. There are some things I love about my job, mainly that I get to help train people for positions that will help them with their careers. But I don’t always feel like I am using my full potential.

I got my bachelors degree in psychology, mainly because I wanted to help people and I somehow thought that this course of study would help me to understand different types of people so that I would be better able to help. I don’t necessarily think that it did, but maybe I’m wrong. Then I went to law school cause I thought that if I had a law degree I could help children. I quickly learned that sometimes the law wasn’t meant to help people and I quickly became depressed and after two years decided that was so not for me.

So what’s next? I really don’t know. I enjoy school, but do I really want to go back? I worked my through college so I have no debt from my undergraduate degree but I have some serious debt from law school (luckily I got out when I did). Plus I have a baby now and I work full time. How much more could I possibly handle without losing my mind. My husband is self employed so my job allows us all to have health insurance, which after spending 18 days in the hospital prior to having itty bitty is obviously a necessity. The biggest thing keeping me from going back to get my maters is mainly that I have no idea what I would study or what I would ultimately do once I finished.

Hopefully I’ll figure out something I want to do or maybe something unexpected will come up. Who knows…until then all suggestions are appreciated. :)

Thanks for joining my adventure!

Hello World! :) This is my first adventure into the world of blogging! I figured since I have a lot to say I ought to search out people to listen! So anyway...introductions are always a little hard but here are the basics about me. I have been married to my wonderful husband for a little over a year now. He is a lawyer, a really good one actually! :) He works primarily from home which is great because we have a 3 month old daughter named Samantha, she is seriously awesome and cute too. I work at a bank and I love my job but I am really trying to figure out what my passion is...basically what I want to be when I grow up (all suggestions welcome). I am probably going to blog about everything from parenting, marriage, work, my crazy family, breastfeeding, food (did I mention that I LOVE to eat?), or basically whatever is on my mind.