*Sigh*

Everyone tells me we are doing a great job with Elisa, and that it's not my fault she came early. So why do I still feel like I'm ruining my kid somehow and have this overwhelming feeling of failure whenever I think about her coming early? Is this just typical, new mom guilt? Or is this somewhat exaggerated by her traumatic, early delivery? I feel like I should be doing more with her, rather than trying to get so much stuff done around the house. I feel like I should be more involved in trying to get her to play or do other things instead of sitting here holding her while typing on the computer. Is this just the way it will be for the rest of my life, now? Constantly walking a tight rope, praying that I'm not ruining her?

Pooting

I was forwarded this e-mail today that brought back a whole host of memories and I just had to share.

As a background, so you understand why this is so amusing, when Elisa was about 5 weeks old and learning to feed from the bottle, we noticed a very peculiar character trait. Elisa was NOT a lady. She could fart and belch with the best of them. In fact, I had sent a random text to a friend of mine, simply stating that "my daughter farts like a man." I don't know if this friend has yet to recover from falling off his chair from that one. Anyway, we noticed this one day while changing her diaper, and I lifted her little legs and she let...one...RIP. It was loud enough to echo across the hall. My mother and I died laughing. (The NICU is a very stressful place...you learn to find humor where you can and as childish as this was, it was the funniest thing we had seen in a while.) I decided I wanted to play Jingle Bells with her poots as they were loud enough and long enough to do so. We even coined a song:

"I'm a little pooter,
Short and stout,
Here is my pooter,
Here is my snout" or something like that.

Along with this propensity to poot, she was figuring out this whole suck, swallow, breathe skill. She was figuring it out so well, in fact, that she decided she did NOT want to stop for anything, not even to burp. So she'd be sucking, swallow, suck suck, swallow BUUUUUUURP, suck suck swallow. And it was the loudest belch I've heard to this day.

Now that she's out of the hospital and is home, she still enjoys her poots. I can hear her at night, over the monitor, trying to get a particularly large one out. She moans, she groans, she bears down, you hear PFFFFFFFFFFFT and then she gives a particularly loud sigh of satisfaction, complete with "ahhhhhhh." She immediately goes back to sleep. I can't tell you how many times I've almost fallen off the bed in laughter listening to this. She will even lift her little leg herself and let one rip as you are holding her during the day.

Elisa is SO not a lady.

So, this will be Elisa in several years:

Maxine's Starbuck's Saga

I was in Starbucks yesterday when I suddenly realized I desperately needed to fart. The music was really, really loud, so I timed my farts with the beat. After a couple of songs, I started to feel better. I finished my Latte and then noticed that everybody was staring at me. Then I suddenly remembered that I was listening to my iPod.

So...should I save this story for her wedding day?

I love you baby! You have provided nothing but endless entertainment for your short 3 months of life, and I wouldn't trade it for the world!

3 months old

Yup, we are three months.

I realize I've been remiss on my updating. You'll have to forgive me, but as I'm sure a lot of you know, trying to get anything done with a newborn is near impossible.

We are doing well. Elisa is up to 7 lbs and is currently killing her mother by being involved in another growth spurt. She has developed reflux, which is common for preemies. Meaning I now have to hold her up for 45-60 minutes after every feed. And when she is cluster feeding, like now, that means I pretty much don't move.

So anyway, here are some pictures from my failed attempt to get some photos of her with the bear her Uncle Mike bought her.

I'm official now!

Had I gone full term, today was d-day! So happy shoulda been birthday,
Elisa!!

It's going to be a long night

And it started off so well! Andrew and I have talked about getting Elisa on a "schedule" and getting her to bed earlier so we could get to bed earlier, and finally today...enough talk! We did it and it worked beautifully! We fed her at 7, held her up for a while, bathed her, massaged her and put her to bed. All, miraculously, with little to no spit up! That was a big deal as I've recently begun to suspect she has reflux and has been consistently spitting up for hours and hours after her feeds. She was in bed by 9:10 and Andrew and I settled down for some child free time. Well, then 10 pm came.

I had to feed her one last time before she was "officially" down for the night. So I went in to get her at 10 and she was sleeping peacefully. Well, I picked her up anyway and vomit explosion! She projectile vomited all over me! Yes, mom, I did get over my ick factor. So I brought her over to her changing table to check her temperature and lo and behold, she spit up again. Checked her diaper and temperature (slightly low but not enough to worry about) and then went to swaddle her again when she spit up AGAIN. This time all over her sleeve and collar. Then I attempted to feed her and she spit up a few more times and belched a bit. At this point I gave up on feeding her and just held her. And decided, she's not getting put down tonight. So, I will be up all night, figuring out how to entertain myself and seeing how comfy the recliner is in her room. I have an inkling that the answer is going to be not very.

Thankfully I already had a pedi appt scheduled for tomorrow. I'll be making lots of use out of it this time.

Productivity!

Well it's been a busy a few weeks. What with Christmas and New Years celebrations and preparing for Andrew's return to school, it feels like I've hardly gotten anything done! Not to mention that just getting a shower on most days feels like an accomplishment. And anymore, Elisa insists on being held during the day time. I can get her to settle at night and sleep with the darkness, but when it's light, she only wants to sleep on one of us. If you put her down, she instantly starts fussing. I feel incredibly unproductive any more and it's entirely against my nature to be unproductive. So I did something about it.



I made a moby wrap. 2 for the price of, well, one? The name brand goes for around $40 bucks and I got two for $15! So I wondered around yesterday and some today with her in it and seemed to appease her. But I'm not so sure about it yet. While she feels pretty secure in it, when you get too active with bending and lifting, her head has a tendency to slip out. After that happened a few times, she went to daddy as I was too afraid to keep carrying her around. But the productivity paid off.

Some wonderful friends of mine set up my nursery for me while I was in Arizona in the way I was going to. But after a few weeks of living in it that way, it became apparent it wasn't going to work. I didn't have enough storage for everything I had and I still am getting more! So, for a grand total of $60 I gave myself a closet makeover!



So far it's working fabulously. We'll continue to live with it and see if I need to improve on anything else in there but I feel excellent for getting it taken care of. I hope I can continue the productivity. Now, if I could only convince Elisa of the merits of sleeping ALL night! :-D

Guess What!?

We're home! Literally home! And please don't hate me for not updating this for the longest time. It's been a long road here with much to do.

So what happened? Well, we had initially thought we would be released from the hospital on the 11th, but we had some issues with eating and gaining weight after the eye exam and shots and other busy days earlier that week. So we had to wait and see if she could get back on track with her eating and begin gaining weight again. Over that weekend, she began to again take her full bottles and packing on the pounds, although she wasn't gaining as much as they really wanted her to. Still, they felt good that she would be released on the 14th. I didn't plan for it, lol. I knew anything could happen between now and then and after getting my hopes up previously, I didn't want to feel that disappointment again. Sunday, Dec 13th, overnight, she had to pass one final test before we knew if she could go home. That was the car seat test. Still, our primary night nurse felt so confident that she would pass that she was almost in tears as I said good night to her. She knew it would be her last night to work with Elisa and loved her. Long and short...she passed! So I arrived at the hospital on the 14th and we walked out the door by noon!

We previously had tickets home for the 18th so we spent the week in Phoenix at a local hotel. Unfortunately, one of our host family became ill on the 14th and we just couldn't risk staying there with her. :( We were so disappointed because they had been wonderful and we were looking forward to spending that week with them.

Elisa handled her first plane ride like a champ. We kept quiet on my return home because we had planned to surprise Andrew's parents. They came down Saturday the 19th to find Elisa and I home already. They thought they were going to go to the airport with Andrew to pick us all up. Instead they walked into the nursery and there we were. It was sooo much fun!!

So really other than posting a few pictures of her on Christmas day, there's not much that's been going on. We've been adjusting to our new "normal." Andrew and I are learning to live with each other again, lol. 2 months is a LONG time to be apart. But I am sooo thrilled to be home and am enjoying my time immensely.





Oh, and by the way, we are two months old today!! Her personality comes out more each day.