Dear Julia, you are 4 weeks old!

Dear Julia, 

I find myself wishing it was Thursday when it is only Monday so I can note your changes. Then this week, I do not have a weekly onesie sticker because it is almost your 1 month birthday so I waited for yesterday for nothing. It is Friday and I do not want to wait until Sunday to tell you that I love you. 

We finished your birth announcement! I could have tweaked it a little more or worked on the boys' expressions to make it more Norman Rockwell feel, but I did not want to overthink it and my boys did not have a long attention span. I had a small window of opportunity and it is good for that. 

You like to look at the ceiling fan, the dangling Micky Mouse on your pack 'n play, and the mobile on your swing that we just got out. 

You went to the beach for the first time! Corrie and Ivy went, so did Elisabeth with Altazara, my patient Serina with Jalen, and Liz with Peyton. I let Dylan and Isaac skip school. Here you are with Reese Walke. 

A lady with two tweens (daughters??) walked by and asked if I was ok b/c I had so many kids. Ha! My 3 older ones were building a sand castle and you were resting under the umbrella by Liz. I could understand if I were chasing your brothers or if one was having a tantrum, but just the idea of 4 kids overwhelmed her. Funny. All of my friends just brought one  of their kids each. They helped. Corrie took Tyler in the water. So nice of her. 

You burp more and sometimes have gas in the evenings. Your burps seem to hurt you but you just make a silent cry. You open your mouth and tense or squirm but only get a little cry out if anything. It is harder to burp you. Not too hard, but I used to just put your head up and you would instantly burp. 

You wake up smiling still. Or maybe hiccuping. Sometimes grunting noisesalert  me to scoop you up. You smile with your eyes rolling back in complete relaxed contentment. 

You still peel a little on your hands after baths. Your head has some peeling too. 

You are awake at lunch and dinner/evening time. But today you fell asleep at 7pm and I picked you up and changed your diaper thinking you were awake til 10pm or midnight like usual but you did not even want to eat. You were asleep! At 10:30, you woke up and I fed you a little but you are sound asleep now! Like in the middle of the night. Asleep. I do not want to put you down. This is our time each night. 

Just yesterday Daddy said "this is the most awake I have seen you." We like your eyes. You have eye lashes now. They are still fine like your hair but your eye lids are no longer so folded in tightly like they were the first couple of days. 

Your legs still collapse and do not have any idea yet that you could push to a standing position when I bounce you on my lap. I love your tiny soft folded legs coming out of pink onesies. 

You like tummy time on my chest. When your neck gets tired you are content resting your head. 

You take a pacifier sometimes. You found your fingers or finger today. 

I left you with Barbie to do a photoshoot. I tried hard not to think about it but it was hard not to since the family had a baby girl only a couple of weeks older than you. And they asked about you. I trust Barbie and had just fed you and you are not a crier so it was easier than it could have been. I did not call on my way to the second location for fear of hearing you cry. Apparently Daddy got home from Dylan's field trip and relieved Barbie fairly quickly. That made me a little more nervous. I am not sure why. Both said that you barely had any defrosted milk and maybe the nipple flow was too fast. They also reported that you were happy but wanted to be held while they stood. Tyler later said "do you want to see me bounce? I boince like this like Daddy does." So I picture Steven could have a new calf muscle routine. He said that he had not even gone to the bathroom since Legoland. Dylan could not hold you even. You slept rhe whole time unless he tried to sit. On my way home I did not know whether to cry or what. I talked to Daddy who was not rushing me as much as I thought he would since he was going to basketball after. I tried calling Barbie then called Kat. Oh I love you and your soft fuzzy hair. I held you. You needed a diaper change of course. Then I nursed you before getting your brothers to clean and go to bed. Barbie had brought dinner!! She is too much. Here is the pic she sent. 

I guess I will go to bed with you now. I wish you would eat more now. I will put you in the bassinet now. Goodnight my Pretty Pretty. 

Love, Mommy

Born Yesterday

May 1st and 2nd 2014

Look at my pretty baby girl with her perfect plump swollen smushy face. I stared at her for quite a while before taking our 3 hour nap on her first day on the outside.

 10:57am

 When we woke up, Steven had already been home and back. That's when I believe we decided on a name for her. It was down to either Daisy or Julia. I was leaning towards Daisy because Tyler and I had been calling her that and I thought it was so cute. But it was not significant at all. Steven said Julia and I went with it.
I took some cute pictures of my baby girl before her bath time.

Nurse Susan gave her a bath, Julia didn't like it much. 

 Yea, we can't get enough of our little baby. We just stared at her. That's all.

 Andre and Barbie brought us Panera for dinner. The food was warm and delicious. Steven's rarely cold but we were a little cold in our room. Clara looks so big for the first time!

 My mom brought the boys to meet their little sister. I wish I had just set up a video camera to capture their first thoughts but Barbie saved the day once again and took lots of pictures for us. She brought little hats and little outfits and is always thinking 5 steps ahead.

 At some point, Tyler said that if the baby is Julia, then Daisy is still in my tummy. Since my tummy still looked like it had a baby in it. It took him a while to get that we changed his "Daisy's" name to Julia.

 Tyler asked if she had any hands. I unswaddled one for him.

 I read the book that Jolyn got for Dylan when he was going to be a big brother for the first time. I pretended it was new for Tyler since they hadn't gotten it off of the book shelf in years.

 The nurses came in and scolded me for not feeding the baby frequently enough. "Baby needs to eat. Baby needs to eat!"

Barbie brought dinner, but she also brought desert, snack pack cookies assortments to share with the kids. See, she thinks of everything!

 We slept that night, I had Steven stay up with the baby for an hour or so because I was so tired. He gave her back to me to nurse and I let her nurse next to me on the bed. Yea, the nurse freaked out on me. She came in "Where is the baby?!" when the bassinet was empty when she came in. The arm rail was up and Julia was safe next to me. They have a huge rule there about no sleeping with the baby b/c once the adult falls asleep, their grasp on the baby is not there and the baby can fall to the floor. She told me about this. Steven knew I would fall asleep with her but he was willing to take that risk too when he handed her over. I was glad it wasn't the first nurse Susan who had the night shift, it was another one, Deanna, I think. She hadn't gone over the rule so I was sleepily thinking that she wouldn't care I guess. Oops! (But I've done it every night since.)

The next day, I took a shower, ate breakfast, ordered lunch, then got discharged! Julia got her ears tested, she failed on one side the first time, but maybe it was b/c she was wide awake and Steven was loud on the phone. She passed the next time. She had an ultrasound done in the room, her pediatrician came in and my midwife came in too. Lactation couldn't get her timing right to see me nurse but I think she okayed us anway, Julia's 02 was checked too. We probably could have been discharged sooner but I was in the shower when nurse Susan came in then she didn't come back when we paged her. She accused us of not paging her but admitted she doesn't get messaged sometimes by the ladies who answer our paging. She wanted to make sure that Julia had really ingested some milk enough hours ago. She said "I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you said before that you weren't sure if anything was coming out the first feedings, do you remember now if you heard her swallowing when she was latched on either of those two times?" Um if that means we can go home now, then yep! My milk was in 1 minute after birth, sure, why not :)

I dressed Julia in her homecoming outfit, an outfit that was Layla's that April gave me. I had purchased the hat from The Children's Place to have for photo props. I've used it a couple of times. It's a little big on Julia and she looks like she has a cone head in some pictures with it. But actually, her head never got the cone look - she wasn't in the birth canal long enough! Somebody said it looks like a C-section baby's head b/c it's not cone shaped at all.

 We had a lot of stuff so Steven went down first with a luggage cart. Susan walked him out and hugged him.

Julia wore the white blanket my grandma made for her. 

 My mom brought the boys over. Tyler of course wanted to hold her.

 Most of my pictures of Tyler and his sister are of Tyler's hair since he kisses her so much.

 Shannon came over. She came a little after my mom came with the boys. She couldn't wait to hold Julia. She wanted to go to the hospital but we were getting released so didn't want to wait for her b/c we needed to be home for our boys, especially Tyler, who I missed so much. He's still my baby boy and was so sad when I left him the first time (at Corrie's) then when my mom took him back away from us at the hospital the night before. I needed to be with my boys.
So Shannon drove all the way to our house. You would think that it was her own baby or that she was adopting her or something, she brought gifts and stayed to hear all about not only the baby, but humored the boys by being interested in their rocks and crystals collections etc. She even asked for a tour of the house. I'm sure that's standard for her b/c she always has something amazing at her house like new cabinets, really cool glass bowl sinks in her bathroom, a painting she commissioned, perfect accents she happened to find at Target, new stairs, etc. AND she just has one boy who is so good and cleans up his toys so her house is always clean. But for us, as of the day before, we weren't expecting visitors and JUST got home from the tiring hospital so the house wasn't exactly clean. And there's nothing new to show off, in fact, we have the same old bed that we got from HER! It was old for her son but now two of  my boys love it. I guess we're at different phases of our lives. Her husband is my successful OB doctor who has to spend some of his money on their house. We're happy that we're getting more mileage out of our couches and beds etc! But she's still so humble and so giving and probably didn't realize that our house isn't exactly show-ready. She's too nice. She was excited to post a photo of her with Julia to Facebook to show her off to her own sisters. So fun.

 Don came over on his way home from his Orlando employment conference for the church and met Shannon. If my mom had stayed with him, she would have just gotten in town from Orlando too, missing the whole birth! Crazy.

Juliane came over and brought over food even though we had just made something. We thought the Crews were going to come over but they decided to wait a day to bring everyone. Juliane brought flowers too. She was excited to have another baby girl in the family for her daughter Gabrielle. Juliane was going to see her new nephew Kyriakos after seeing Julia. 

 Our 4 kids. Wow! That's a couch full!

 Isaac FINALLY asked to hold her after his bath when it was time for him to go up to bed. How could we say no? Maybe it was a stall tactic like asking to get a drink of water, but he decided he liked her. They bonded. He had come over to look at her before but he finally actually wanted to hold her. So sweet.

And that's her first trip in the car, her first visitors, her first time seeing her house, etc! That night would be her second night and I already blogged that. I'll put this back in order some day...