Photo Dump!

2 Weeks

Two weeks and Willa is getting bigger and more aware. She is healthy and happy. Things have been very chaotic but are settling a bit. We have been taking Willa out for daily walks around the neighborhood and have been getting regular visits from friends and family. The continued support has been awesome and we are so thankful to all of you.

We went out for our first dining out experience at Portage Bay for breakfast with Sadie. Willa slept the whole time but she seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. We certainly savored the chance to chow pancakes and eggs out for a change. We then walked over to the Locks to look for Salmon (we only saw one!) and had our first experience changing her in a public bathroom. Keren is not a fan of public bathroom changing so that will get some getting used to.

My family Carmen, John, Kathy and Ian came out to visit yesterday. It was a whirlwind of gooey love and lots of picture taking. We went on a long walk to Greenlake and had a lot of good catch-up time. They brought enough new wardrobe for Willa to be appropriately fashionable for many months. Carmen mentioned multiple times that she wanted to take Willa home with her. They are so excited.

So that is all for now. Willa had her first tummy time yesterday, would post the video, except Keren spent the whole time chasing her around with a rag trying to clean out her tushie. This will be a good one to show her when she is 16.

8 Days

Milk face makes mama happy and proud!

The last 2 days have been lovely, as Willa and I are both feeling stronger and healthier. Little W's bilirubin has gone down, which is great, so she is moving the jaundice out of her body. Because of this, she has woken up! We're having many more periods of quiet alert time during the day, and she's better able to suckle, so she's eating more, which makes my heart happy. She was 1oz below her birthweight at one week of life, which the doc says is fantastic, as the goal is to be back at birthweight by 2 weeks old. She's a superstar in my eyes.

Besides going to the doctor, we took our first little family walk...yesterday? Just up to the library a few blocks away to replenish our book and cd supply. Cj also has his first 'new dad wearing brand new baby' experience at the coffee shop by the clinic. Just about every woman in the place came up to him, absolutely cooing over the baby and asking questions. It was so sweet to see his totally proud papa face.

I can't believe it has been a week already. The days and nights blend together in a dozy wash of milk, diapers, and cuddles. We've been getting pretty decent sleep, which seems to keep us coping well and even being able to socialize with our lovely visitors. Cj's keeping me up on the political 3-ring circus and we're now deep into a parenting book our friends recommended called "Nurtureshock," which makes for great reading aloud while pumping, which is otherwise extremely boring. Next pumping activity? Thank you cards! After that? Baby announcements! I'm hoping we can drum up some interest from our artsy friends to help with this...I don't even know, can you make them online?

Now it's the weekend for the working world and we are looking forward to taking Willa on more walks and getting out of the house a bit more while the weather is still so beautiful. We are going to the bookstore today in search of a baby book and ink pad and plan to take her footprints as we completely forgot to ask our midwife or her doctor about this!

Much love,
Keren, Cj and Willa

Breastfeeding

6 Days 

We have passed a tearful, joyful, stressful few days, working with Willa and our caregivers (formal and informal) to help her get started nursing. I'm finding it impressive how terribly vulnerable it feels to be so responsible for our tiny girl and to not be able to give her what she needs. While I'm grateful that there are other ways for her to eat, and that physiologically there is nothing wrong with her and she can drink from a bottle (oh does she like that bottle), it also feels a bit heartbreaking. We are of course worried that she will continue to have trouble nursing once my milk supply is up, since we introduced the bottle, but are getting good support around this and are currently very hopeful.

The back story is that this little peanut came a bit early (full term but still right before 38 weeks) and have since learned that often babies who arrive a few weeks early don't really bring all their breastfeeding skills with them. She seemed to nurse ok in the first 24 hours and then just...got sleepy! She also developed very mild jaundice in the past few days, which apparently makes her even more sleepy, so the deck is stacked against her having to do any real work. And because she wasn't feeding regularly, my milk has not come in! All told, mama's on a round-the-clock pumping schedule and baby's getting supplementation, which is clearly helping her and the right thing to do. But man alive is it hard! Cj made a joke about me being the milk maid and he being the milk man, which I found hilarious on my 15% of brain function. Today she had a weight check and she has regained 5oz in 2 days after an initial loss that got everyone starting to worry. Go little W! I have started having acupuncture, taking milk-making herbs and drinking protein shakes, in addition to eating Bre's awesome oatmeal cookies that help make milk!

The last few days have also taught me some intense new things about friendship and support among mamas and how lucky we really are to have so many giving and supportive people around when Cj and I have been so scared and overwhelmed. One of these dear friends said something to me this morning along the lines of how odd it feels when something that's supposed to be so natural doesn't come naturally. We're definitely caught in this bizarre in-between space and hoping to move beyond soon. Cj would like to know what other things we didn't anticipate about parenting that he can study up on now :)

3.5 days old

Little Willa's arrival has totally rocked our world, in the best possible way. We are dorky, doting parents who spend most of our time staring at her, learning to nurse and soothe her, or just:

Though in addition, Cj managed to fix our broken kitchen sink yesterday with the help of my brother-in-law, Brian, which is awesome. We've been having a challenging time establishing breastfeeding and are hoping the tides will turn when my milk comes in...today? Please? Cj and I are doing better just supporting each other and communicating through very little sleep in the middle of the night than I ever knew was possible. I think it's the love goggles.

Little W has had a chance to meet a few friends and family and generally sleeps her way through these visits, and though she can't tell you, we know how lucky she is to have all of you in her life. And we are enormously grateful for the food, the laughter, the gifts, the well wishes, and just for the chance to share our beloved daughter with you.

More to come!

Willa's Birth

Oh my goodness, we can hardly believe our little girl is here! I keep looking at her and thinking "oh, you!" Right now she's asleep on her dad who has so diligently fed me, diapered her, walked and rocked her in another room so that I could nap, and tended to our neglected kitties and chickens. On this, her second day of life, we thought we'd update you all (amazing, beloved friends and family!) on how she came into the world.

It all started with Frankenweenie in 3-D at the IMAX thanks to Mary and Guillaume!

This may not be what you were imagining. But hang in there! Wednesday afternoon after attending a baby shower at CJ's work, I let him know that I was not feeling up to hanging around and touring their new building and took myself home. I had seen my sister that morning and my mom came over in the afternoon. Both of them said it looked like Whoosie had dropped lower and noted that I was looking and behaving differently. CJ came home and we decided that instead of just hanging out, we would go on our IMAX date, which was totally fun and ridiculous. And I'm so glad we did! That night, I woke up at 3am and went to the kitchen to have a snack and noticed that my water was leaking! Since the water was clear, I decided in great disbelief to just nap on the couch and wait to wake anyone up till the morning. Around 7:30am, Cj woke up (I did not wake him!!) and I told him I thought my water was broken. His exact response? "Holy shit, holy shit!" We then called our amazing midwife Sam who asked me many questions and basically encouraged me to hang in there and see if things got started on their own, not knowing if I was ruptured or just leaking. Cj went into work for a few hours and I got to work doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and basically hyper-nesting. Cj came home and mom and dad came by with tons of food and good wishes and then left us. Around noon we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and I was very glad we didn't go too far because the rest of my water started to go while we were out! We hustled back home with no doubt that Whoosie was going to make an entrance sooner than anticipated. 

Still, the next few hours were spent in frenzied calm, taking care of things around the house, calling work,  and moving furniture around to prepare. Bre came over around 2:30 with more food and knitting. We all decided to watch Downton Abbey as my contractions started picking up. I wandered the house while they watched, popping in for dramatic moments and generally feeling very much myself. Cj was timing contractions and probably getting frustrated with me because I kept saying "uh...I think that one just ended." In hindsight, I see that meant I wasn't in active labor yet. 

Fast forward a few hours later, and I was feeling pretty consistently uncomfortable so Cj decided to call Sam. She came at 7:30pm and checked me and while I was almost completely effaced, I was only 1.5 centimeters dilated! Needless to say, I was disappointed and realized I was in for a longer, harder journey than I had imagined. She left us for a while until Cj called her back around 10:30pm as it appeared I was entering into transition. Over the next 2 hours I dilated the last few centimeters and basically went completely out of my mind and into my body. I ended up pushing for a little under and hour and baby Willa was born at 1:30am in our bed to  much fanfare and incredible relief on my part. We had planned a water birth and I certainly spent time in the tub those last few hours of contractions, but it ended up not being the right place for the birth in the end. It was funny because her umbilical cord was fairly short so I couldn't pull her up to see her little face because we waited to cut the cord until it stopped pulsing - and it just kept on pulsing! I will have to check with Sam, but I'm pretty sure it was at least 8 or 9 minutes. Cj got to check her out and reported to me on her features and fingers and we waited 5 minutes or so just to spend a little time with our baby before checking the sex and finding out she's a girl! (Just like mama thought). As Cj reported earlier, she weighed 7 lbs even and was 20 inches long, with some really sweet little fat rolls on her arms and thighs. I realize if she had waited to her due date she would have been closer to 8.5 lbs!!

Sam was incredible, staying until after 4am to care for me and Willa, help start breastfeeding, and provide Cj and I with teaching to help us for the next few days at home. Little Willa appears to be perfectly healthy and took a nice long 4-5 hour snooze her first night in the world. Unfortunately, this mama heeded no advice about sleeping during this time as well, because I just could not stop staring at her! She makes tiny little singing noises sometimes in her sleep (perhaps it's just nose mucus, but so cute) and has so many little faces already.

 Willa Piper Holt, newly born and rosy pink!

After just a few hours together on the outside, we all fell pretty madly in love. She's a calm little soul with a little bit of curly dark hair and the deep blue eyes of a newly born babe. She also has the most incredible daddy, who was a truly remarkable support to me in labor and has been caring for us so tenderly and selflessly these past 2 days. We are so lucky and so grateful to all of you for your love and support.

Willa Piper Holt

Born 1:30am on 10/12/2012 at our home. She was 20 inches and exactly 7 pounds. She is absolutely perfect in every way and we are thrilled to have her in the world. Now, we need to sleep...

We love you all and thanks again for all of your thoughts and wishes. We will share more on the birth story later but generally it went very well, Keren rocked and we feel super lucky in every way.

CJ, Keren and Willa

1

Keren is a rock star!

She is doing so well! The contractions have intensified. The midwife is here and everything is looking fine so far. More to come...

Contraction Computations

Timing contractions is strangely satisfying. They are getting more intense and more frequent. No midwife yet but getting close. Downton Abbey is helping pass the time and a nice distraction.

Love you all and thanks so much for all of your support!
CJ and Keren

Napping

No news. Keren is napping and contractions are light years apart. Getting good rest in preparation for the events ahead!

Whoosie is en-route!

Keren woke me up this morning "Good morning love. My water broke!" I was a little surprised to say the least. As it happens, it was only a partial break. The rest of it broke later in the morning when we decided to take a little walk. Contractions are now being timed and arrival seems to be imminent. Emily brought some wonderful food for lunch and dinner. Employers, families and friends have been notified. Tub has been set up and materials laid out. Whoosie is one lucky baby to get all of this hoopla for his/her welcoming. 

Will try to keep you all posted as we go.

Yay!

Brief update at 37 weeks

This past week was spent working during the day and being super social in the evenings. We're trying to cram a lot in these last few weeks of being a twosome. It has been lovely: dinner with friends, theater with Gemma the theater buff (Disco Pigs!), bowling and sleepover with the nieces, and making a belly cast with my mom. I am now well into my 37th week and feeling very excited about being full-term, though talking to Whoosie all the time about hanging in another week or two (or three, but then, really, I will be oh so ready). I have started having some pre-labor signs today, which is exciting, but I have been reminded that this does not mean labor is imminent so I'm just...trying to take it all in stride. Dinner tonight was pretty hilarious and cliche about-to-be new parent fodder. Cj read aloud to me from his new fatherhood prep book that our sweet friend Guillaume lent him last night while I interrupted him from time to time with ruminations about the things we still "need" to get for the baby, preparations to make at work, chimneys to be cleaned, deep dust-bunny excavation to be done, and the like. I find myself saying silly things like, "I can't have the baby before our baby showers this weekend! I can't have the baby before we take our infant CPR class next week!" Aaah, babycakes.

On the practical end of things, we a great prenatal visit today - all of my test results have been negative and little Whoosie and I are reveling in good health these last few weeks of supreme swollen-ness. Cj and I are going to go to the late night swim at Evans pool tonight for an hour of blissful weightlessness (or, you know, exercise).

We love you very much!