6 years...

Six years ago today, a friend of mine was killed in a drunk driving car accident. We weren't best friends or anything but we did talk a lot and she did help me through a VERY rough period my senior year of high school. She was such a bright, sweet, honest young woman and she was very intelligent and was going to go far in life and it was all taken from her on July 11, 2004. I miss her so much and although we weren't BFFs or anything, her death hit me hard. She was also an only child, so I know her parents are crushed. I hope you're resting in peace Danielle, and I still miss you and think of you often. You and your wonderful family are in my prayers today, well everyday but today especially.

On a happier note, kinda, I've been researching the HcG diet basically every waking moment that I have been on the computer. I have been finding a lot of testimonials and blogs about it. The more I read, the more excited I get for my shots to get here, so the more nervous and anxious about it I get. I am so worried about the diet failing and not working for me, and I am also nervous that I will gain a whole bunch of weight, or all of the weight I lose back. Those are my big concerns. In a perfect world, I'd lose about 80 lbs at least, and the HcG diet could jumpstart that for me, and then I could exercise and eat right and maintain it. It just seems too good to be true for me.

I swear I had much more to say but I have an almost 7 month old fussing and playing with my feet.

Pictures!

Sitting pretty in her 4th of July outfit

Being a goofball

The look she gives the camera is great

HAHA! The Leah face

Notice the foot placement. :)

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Warning for who ever may read this: I am in a very down mood.

I know not everything in life goes as planned, but still. I wasn't supposed to get postpartum depression. I wasn't supposed to gain as much weight as I did. I wasn't supposed to be unable to breastfeed for longer than a few weeks. I wasn't supposed to use formula, or disposable diapers. For some reason, this week, I got really down again and I am hating it. I don't know if it was the return of my period (sorry, way TMI) or what it was but it occured to me that my baby will only eat more, and the larger size diapers come in lesser quantities per box, so you have to buy more, and we will seemingly go broke. Even if I wanted to find a job, the economy is horrible so there are like 10,000 people, probably literally, applying to the same jobs. I also don't yet have a degree so I wouldn't stand out. I don't know what it is. But I am tired of feeling like a fat slob in a messy house, because at this exact moment I am far too drained to get up and clean it. I guess it's not TOO bad, but bad enough for the moment.

I know I shouldn't feel this way, but that doesn't help. I am very blessed to have a happy baby (unless she's fighting her nap...a daily occurance) and a supportive and loving husband, but I still feel so alone and sad right now. I also feel guilty because so many women out there cannot have children or have to resort to miserably long processes to have them, and here I am, not the happiest person like I should be or thought I would be. I still have so much guilt about breastfeeding. Maybe I could've pumped, maybe I could've just fought through what I was going through at the time I gave it up, but I didn't and I know formula probably isn't as bad as the extreme lactivists think it is, but I hate having to buy something my body was making on it's own. I'd love to try to get it back, but I'm pretty sure it's not possible. I thought about trying to take supplements to get my supply back, but it's almost totally gone, sadly. I do know that she can still latch on because I tried and let her for a little bit, but I have no idea what she got out of me, if anything.

On another note, when my daughter is fighting her naps, it seems like she's PHYSICALLY fighting her nap. She bats at me and hits me. I hope she doesn't mean to.

HELP

Ok, if any parent reads this, how on earth do I get my 3 month old crabby baby to nap? She fights it to no end, and as we speak she is in her crib crying. She's napped today no more than an hour total and it's almost 3. I know she's tired because she's screaming right now, which she does when she's hungry or tired but she just ate, so she's tired. I am trying SO hard to just let her cry until she falls asleep but I feel so guilty. Last time I let her win her battle with naps, at around 5:30 she was SCREAMING to no end. So, she's going to have to just nap. I worry that she will not smile at me anymore and be mad at me. I know I've asked for this but I need more help. I've tried almost everything...rocking her, the football hold, sitting with her, the pacifier which I know she spit out.....help.

Yippee!

My child is napping! I hope it lasts. I'm afraid to go downstairs because she'll be up as soon as I do, and I have a cut on the bottom of my foot that makes walking hard.

Happy birthday princess <3

28 weeks pregnant, looking oompa loompa-ish

Oh how I love this face

My face before I got pregnant, and before it gained 20 pounds

Before going to get induced, 70 pounds later. I am only posting this to remind myself of why I need to diet and exercise REALLY BAD. I really do look like an oompa loompa here, since I'm all of 5'4.

Rome was not built in a day.

My house is a disaster area. Maybe not to some, but it is to me since I've become a complete neat freak. I clean my kitchen, and by clean I mean scrub the counters, at least every other day but it still manages to get messy daily. I have dogs, who I love but would like to get rid of to be quite honest, and they manage to track in dirt and hair and other gross things. I need to vacuum daily but I have a 2 story house and a 3 month old so needless to say, that doesn't happen. Not even close.

What I need to do is do a room each day but it is so much harder than it seems. Being a stay at home mom of a 3 month old is so not easy, not that I expected it to be, but I won't lie...it's harder than I thought. She does not like to take naps, as she is whimpering in her crib right now fighting it, but babycenter.com says that 3 month old babies need to get about 5 hours of sleep during the day. My little nugget takes a few 45 minute naps during the day, and that's just not enough time to clean, or work out which is something I'd love to have the time for. Ha. I know it'll probably, hopefully, become easier as she gets older and maybe takes a couple nice LONG naps during the day like other babies I know, but for now I am ready to tear my hair out at the thought of being in my gross house. There are so many little things I need to do and who knows when I will have the time for them, see one of my other blogs below for my list I made myself. I don't know if it's on the list, but I need to pull out my stove and clean the sides of it (so gross) and also, put new shelf paper in my cabinets.

Also, I need some suggestions on how to get my baby to stop fighting sleep so much and start napping during the day more. She's in her crib babbling and whining, not crying, as we speak because her eyes were getting droopy. I think when I'm done here I'll go rub her tummy and put her pacifier back in, and then see if she goes to sleep or not.

Leah...

...was not named after Leah on Jon and Kate. I've been asked that too many times now.

Anyhow, here are some photos of my princess, because she is beautiful.

Not hating tummy time anymore!

One of my little nugget's first professional pictures

=)

Projects

I keep inventing household projects in my head but sadly, I lack the time, energy, and motivation to start, let alone complete any of them. So, I will list them here so I can read them and remind myself of them.

• Place framed pictures around the house. This should be fairly easy since I am picking up pictures this weekend from Leah's first professional portraits
• Get a new kennel for my dogs, put it in the dining room, and rearrange the dining room table/dog food bowls
• Get the end tables and coffee table for my living room
• Fake houseplant or houseplants for my kitchen
• Get a basket thingy for the random bits of mail that my husband leaves on the counter, and for other things
• New kitchen towels, since my dog was kind enough to destroy my decorative ones
• Reorganize Leah's closet and box up the clothes she has already grown out of
• Get a dining room rug
• Get an ikea bookshelf
• Get a new DVD holder that fits in my living room
• Get a temperpedic mattress. Those things are amazing.
• Get nightstands. I miss having them and I will never take them for granted once I get them EVER AGAIN.
• NEW SHOWERHEADS. I hate ours, and having detachable ones would make it easier to wash my dogs

And some projects for the long term....

• Get someone to repaint ALL of the rooms in my house and repair all of the random little holes and whatnot that the previous owners left
• Get new flooring that is similar to the ones we already have. Ours have scatches and whatnot and pieces of missing floorboards that my husband neglected to repair and have since broken even more.
• New water softener. Either ours doesn't work, or my husband just doesn't maintain it.

Ok. That's that. Maybe I can scratch them off of the list once they're completed. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to help, feel free.

Torticollis

A week and a half ago Leah had her 2 month check up. She's still only 10lbs 2oz (as of that day) and 21 inches long. My little girl is so tiny. She doesn't have tall parents but for being born right at 40 weeks, she's little. Her doctor didn't seem too concerned about that but he was concerned that her head is a little flat, and she has a shortened neck muscle, a condition called torticollis. On Friday, Leah went to a pediatric orthopedic specialist who confirmed this, and suggested physical therapy so as of right now I am waiting for the place to call me so I can make her appointment. Luckily, her case is super mild and shouldn't need surgery. I feel so bad for her regardless. I've been stretching her neck muscles out a bit, but she doesn't really like it of course. So I'm hoping all she will need is the physical therapy, and that she won't be in a helmet.

Being a first time mom kind of sucks! Babies should really come with a manual. I had no idea that parents should start tummy time at birth basically to strengthen those muscles, not that this could have prevented, at least I don't think, but doctors make it sound like a baby on the tummy is asking for SIDS. I think if anything, it could have prevented her from having a flat head. Here's some pics...

At the airport on 2/12/10, she's 2 months old! I look awful and tired.

She loves her bath, and having water poured over her head. She's funny.

My smiley girl sitting on the couch

Dipping her feet in the sand

Just a few weeks old. I LOVE LOVE this picture

She loves being propped up in a sitting position

How I found her in the crib one morning :)

My love!

It's time.

It's time for me to stop feeling sorry for myself. Yes, I am continuing to suffer from postpartum depression. Yes it is hard, yes some days are far better than others, and yes, once again, it is HARD. It is hard to put on a happy face, muster up energy when I'd rather stay in bed all day, and it is hard to care for a baby who depends entirely on me, but still, I need to do something productive to help myself.

First, I guess I need to give up the guilt for not continuing to breastfeed. This is the hardest part for me because I was EXTREMELY BLESSED with a little angel baby who latched on perfectly. The reason I stopped was because I felt myself sinking deeply into a depression and I was literally feeding her every 45 minutes so it was like I never stopped. I had very little time to eat, drink, and sleep. It was physically and emotionally draining me. So, I caved and gave her a bottle of formula and it was heartbreaking for me to see her face while she took the bottle, and wonder why her mommy wasn't feeding her. It still breaks my heart to wonder if she thinks or thought that. The good news is she still latches on and I think I still make milk. I think every few hours throughout the day I might latch her on, because I think that even if she just gets a sip of milk every day it will be good for her. And it will be good for me to know that I am helping her in a way.

Days like today make me feel like a terrible mother. I just feel no emotion sometimes, now being one of them. I look at her and think gee what a cute baby, but I don't feel some super euphoric loving bond with her. I don't know if during my pregnancy I had some super high expectations of a perfect loving bond after a perfect labor, but what I got was a baby I couldn't even hold for a few hours since I was shaking so hard, after a hard labor and major abdominal surgery. And I cried today, pretty hard. Not everyone is blessed with a baby. Many women are infertile and never get to experience what I did. I would shoot anyone who tried to take my daughter from me, but there are some pretty bad times that I just feel like I want to get in my car and drive as far away as I can go. Today, I had to go to my OB to have her fill out a paper and it got me very emotional to see all the pregnant happy women in there. I miss being pregnant.

Now, I need to get out of this. It's completely not fair to myself or to my little baby. First, I am going to change my diet to a much more nutritious one, and start to exercise a little bit, even if it's just me taking her out on a walk. When I think about this, it's hard because with a 2 month old (almost) baby, my energy is very low but I need to make a conscious effort to improve my life and my well being, if not for me then for Leah, who deserves nothing in the world but the best of everything. I have friends who have babies and are literally on their own due to deployed husbands, and for God's sake there was just a huge earthquake in Haiti. And here I am, with a roof over my head and a fantastic husband and daughter and I cry. A lot.

It's going to take a constant effort on my part for me to climb my way out of this hole, but it will be worth it once I do. All I hope for is that I continue to progress and get better, and that I can hopefully somewhat avoid sinking as far as I have. I just don't understand because I was honestly doing so well for a while and I don't know what happened that made me feel bad again. It could be that my life revolves around a baby and I don't get a whole lot of help from my husband since he's in school, my lack of adult interaction, it could be any number of things really. I just need to realize that I can't wish this away, hope it away, or even pray it away.

I need to be more proactive when I feel like this, but it really is hard when I just feel like giving up.

Health care or lack thereof

I am so sick of seeing these commercials for affordable health care plans for every individual. Being home all day, I see like 10 a day. I don't even watch that much TV.

As of the new year, my husband's insurance changed and decided to no longer cover dependents. Lovely. So, I set off on a quest to get my baby and I some health insurance. We applied, and found out this past Friday that she was approved but I was denied due to a preexisting condition. I was, and still am, livid. The condition is not that serious, and I'm not even on thousands of dollars worth of medication for it. So I applied at a couple other companies, did the over the phone answering of ridiculous medical questions, and now I have to wait for the decision. It's a hard thing to wait for. I suppose I could just pay cash for my annual checkup and the ONE medication I have to take consistently, but what if I get really really sick? You never know what can happen and it's not a fun thing to have hanging over my head. So, that's that. All I can do is hope and pray that I get accepted, even if it is at a higher premium which I'm sure it will be. I could go on a tangent about the political aspect, and how insurance companies are corporations that could not possibly care less about the individuals, but I won't.

On another topic, I feel like a bad mom today. For some reason I don't feel loving enough. After Leah ate, I tried to talk to her and play with her a bit, and do "flying baby", her new favorite activity where I hold her up so she looks down on me and smiles, and drops drool on my face but that's ok...nothing worked and she was a little fussy. So I set her in the swing and turned it on, and she's fine. What on earth will I do when she outgrows it? I'm sure that won't be for a while since she's tiny and this thing has a playtray, meaning it's probably going to be used for a while, but I just worry that I'm taking the easy way out and not addressing the real issue as to why she's being a little fussy. She's also sucking on her hand right now, her new favorite thing to do. Sometimes I wonder if she knows I'm her mom, and if she loves me or not. It's jsut hard for me to sit at home with her all day. It's not always easy to entertain a 2 month old, case in point...she is fussing.

So that's my fun news for the day. It sucks but I refuse to feel bad for myself.

PS- just saw another insurance commercial.

My cute little muffin

I love this baby girl more than anything. In fact, I miss her and she's just in bed.

This blog...

...is mostly for myself and the few people I have given the address to, but if you happen to be reading this, and you're a perfectionist neat freak who also exercises, and a mother, how do you find the time for everything?

I have a 2 story house, which I love and hate at the same time. I despise walking laundry and other stuff up and down the stairs, and I feel like it is next to impossible to keep my upstairs clean. It's hard to clean downstairs with an almost 2 month old baby to entertain and cuddle, so the upstairs gets so trashed and it stresses me out. Also, I would love to find time to work out and hopefully lose the 800 pounds I've gained.

That's all I have to say I guess...time for bed!

Routines

I love having a routine. When my husband was in Iraq, my routine was to wake up for the 5am phone call (which I was blessed with almost daily towards the end of his deployment), go back to sleep until it was time to get up for work, go to work, come home, send him an email, then watch TV or whatever until it was bed time, or I'd go hang out with friends since I was so lonely. Before the baby was born, it was wake up whenever, eat, take a nap (I was 8 months pregnant when I got laid off), laundry or something, TV, play around on facebook, watch TV. Now, I am trying to get Leah to adapt to a routine but it's very hard. I got her to know the difference between days and nights, got her to sleep in her crib, but today was horrible when I tried to get her to nap in her crib. I feed her before her naps so I did that in her room as opposed to the living room, and this mornign she napped for about 30 minutes and that was after being fed, screaming, me going in there to rub her tummy twice, and her getting her paci. Then I took her out grocery shopping with me, and she stayed awake and grinned until we left Vons to go home, which is about a 5 minute drive. So, I let her sleep in the carseat inside while I unloaded the car and then tried to put her in her crib, when she woke up and decided not to nap. Then...I took her downstairs and she played on her playmat for a good while. At 3 I fed her, and tried again to get her to nap but my dogs heard something and decided to bark LOUDLY. She screamed...so I gave in and picked her up, let her finish her bottle that she hadn't finished, burped her successfully and tried again. She cried, went to sleep, and cried some more so I set a time limit until I went and got her and she went to sleep and has been to sleep for about 15 minutes. It's almost 5 and I am afraid to get up and make dinner. I don't want her to wake up because she HAS to be tired after getting up at 630, and only taking maybe an hour combined nap until this point. She'll probably wake up by 6 or so, if not sooner because she's in her crib, to eat.


Who knew that it would be so hard to get a baby to nap in their crib? I don't know if she just likes to be around me during the day, or what, but goodness. I just hope this doesn't interfere with her sleep tonight. Her nightly routine is a bath, then she gets fed and goes to bed but not right after her bath. I'm trying to get to that point.

Doing better...and better

As my baby gets older, I'm doing much better. I didn't realize how many people in my life were concerned about me but it's getting easier and I feel much better. I finally feel bonded, somewhat with my baby. I still have issues that are there but the point is, I feel much better. Postpartum depression is seriously evil. You expect to feel just happy as can be since you have a brand new baby, who is so cute yet so dependent on you, and then it hits and you feel guilty, disappointed, sad, inadequate....among many other things.

Anyhow, I want to join 24 hour fitness. It's close to my house, kinda, and I can drop Leah off with my mom while I work out. Yesterday I did pilates, and I'm kind of sore but not too sore. I can download a free 7 day pass to 24 hour fitness so I might look into that once I figure out how much I would have to pay a month to go there. I really like LVAC but it's always packed, and it's kind of far away to just work out. I need to start losing the almost 100 pounds I gained during the pregnancy. By almost 100 I mean 60, but that's beside the point. I used to be between 115-120 pounds, and I'd love to be back there. I stand very tall at about 5'4 so hopefully I can pull off being small like that again.

Anyways, that's my update for now.

My new job

Today I realized why so many women who previously had jobs don't go back to work after they have babies. This is a lot of work and it is so rewarding. I don't think many other jobs can offer this feeling of importance and accomplishment. My daughter slept the better part of the day so I cleaned and did my whole kitchen, vacuumed, and did the floors. Now, she's wide awake. Everyone tells me not to wake a sleeping baby, that waking them during their naps during the day is actually bad for their night time sleep, and I hope that's true because I just let her sleep. We will see.

Wow...I just wrote a blog about exciting it is to be able to clean while a baby sleeps.