Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

This is just a sampling of the millions of pictures I've taken recently.  Life is good.  I'm feeling adjusted mostly to having two kids and feel like I can mostly go where I want to go and do what I want to do during the day.  Sleep, or lack thereof, is the hardest thing right now.  I'm waking up with her twice in the middle of the night to feed her, which compared with what I had to do with Oskar is a piece of cake, but it's still hard for me.  I feel like my perfect amount of sleep to get each night is nine hours so this is challenging for me.  Ivy is great, she's a good eater and a good sleeper.  She doesn't stay content too long if she's awake and not eating but all I have to do is hold her to make her happy.  Each night she has a fussy period for a few hours before she goes to sleep for the night.  It usually lasts a few hours and I'm really not sure what causes it, sometimes it seems like her tummy hurts.  She is starting to react to me and smile!  Her smile is amazing.  Her whole face lights up, it's so precious.  I work very hard to coax those smiles out of her.  She's nearly six weeks now and pure sweetness!

Oh and there is one nursing picture.  Don't be offended.

Ivy's Birth

        I had been having irregular contractions for a few days and on Sunday afternoon though they were still irregular they were coming more often.  They weren’t painful, just uncomfortable.  Then around midnight they started coming more regularly, around 10-15 minutes apart, and were feeling painful.  An hour later, 1 AM, they started coming every 5-7 minutes though the pain was about the same.  I kept track of them for the next two hours as they were coming about every five minutes.  At around 3:30-4 AM they started getting pretty painful where there was radiating burning pain in my back, lower abdomen, hips, and especially upper thighs.  My upper thighs hurt the very worst, like I had been exercising these muscles and now they were burning.  At this point I told Joel I thought we should go in even though I knew it would be too early, I was also scared that maybe I was the one in a million person who stayed home too long and had their baby in the car.  So I texted my friend Claire, who I had asked earlier to watch Oskar when I go to the hospital, and asked her to come sleep at our place so we could go to the hospital.  About a half an hour later we were on our way to the hospital.  

Once at the hospital, around 4:30 AM, they wanted to check my cervix to see how dilated I was.  The first lady checked me and found the baby’s head was very low but she couldn’t reach the cervix.  So she called another lady who jammed her fingers so far up me I thought something was going to rip open.  She finally found the cervix and let me know I was only two centimeters dilated.  I thought they might send me home but they said because I had pre-eclampsia last time they needed to keep me there to monitor my blood pressure plus the fact that the baby’s head was so low, she was getting ready to come out.

They transferred me to the hospital room where I paced around for a few hours trying to keep the contractions coming.  I had read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth before going into labor and in the book it talks a lot about visualizing your body opening and encouraging the baby to come down so while walking around the hospital room I tried to put this into practice.  After a few hours I rested on the bed and ended up falling asleep between contractions.  That is when the contractions started to slow down.

By about 10:30 the contractions had slowed to only six an hour and the labor wasn’t progressing as fast as the doctor and nurses wanted it to so they said they wanted to start me on pitocin.  I had been very against this because I was scared the Pitocin would  slow down labor and the one thing I really really didn’t want to have happen was a stalled labor and consequent C-section.  But if my labor was slowing down anyway I felt like we had to try everything.  The one thing I wanted before they started the Pitocin was an epidural.  I had decided before going into labor that I was totally fine having an epidural and when it came down to it I knew that I could handle labor naturally if I had to, but I really didn’t want to.  So I asked for an epidural before the  Pitocin so when the contractions started I wouldn’t feel them.

At 10:30 they gave me the epidural, which I was scared out of my mind to get.  They made Joel leave the room while they did it so I was just on the bed shaking and trying not to cry.  One thing I realized about myself through this whole process is I’m very scared of things.  The anticipation of something is so much worse for me than the actual thing.

After they gave me the epidural they waited an hour or two before starting the Pitocin because Joel had ran home to give Oskar his medicine and he didn’t want them to do anything without him there.  So an hour or two later he still wasn’t back and they started me on the Pitocin anyway.

After the Pitocin started I was watching the screen monitoring my contractions very closely.  I could see on the screen that I still wasn’t having many contractions and I got very scared that I was going to have to have a C-section.  I was crying a lot and I’m sure the nurse thought I was a crazy person.  Around 1:30 my doctor came in to check me again.  I was dilated to a 9.  It turns out I had no idea how to read the screen for contractions and though I thought I wasn't having any, I was. So he broke my water and told me to get ready to push soon.

Around 2:00 I was fully dilated and started pushing.  I had Joel on one side and the nurse on the other holding my legs and encouraging me.  Total pushing time was about two hours.  During this time the nurse noticed during the contraction and pushing the baby’s heart rate was dropping a little bit.  After two hours of pushing the doctor came into the room along with his nurse, the respiratory therapist, a nurse for the baby, and it seems like a few more people.  The doctor said we needed to get her out because her dropping heart rate and asked if I would rather have an episiotomy or a C-section.  I, of course, chose the episiotomy.  He said they were also going to have to use the vacuum to get her out.  So on the next few contractions he cut me open and I pushed harder than I ever had before.  He managed to get his hand in there and pull her out without using the vacuum, thank goodness.  

At 3:58 PM she was born.  They cleaned her up, cut the cord, and sucked out all the yuck in her lungs.  She was 6 lbs. 7 oz. and 20 in. long.  It was such a relief to get her out and for it all to be over.  I got to hold her and nurse her almost immediately.  Everybody commented on her red hair though Joel and I both thought her hair wasn’t red at all.  After the doctor sewed me up they put me in a wheelchair and took me to my recovery room.  

The next 24 hours was difficult.  Ivy, like most babies I’m sure, had a difficult time latching when I tried to breastfeed her.  I couldn’t pee for a long time so they had to use a catheter to empty my bladder.  My nether regions were sore.  At one point the following morning my vision went very blurry and different parts of my body went numb.  I thought I was going to die, I was very scared.  I’m not sure why it happened, maybe because I hadn’t really slept, ate, or drank in two days but after I took an hour long nap it went away.  It has come back a few times since I’ve been home but laying down usually makes it go away.

The day after Ivy Ruth Ackerman was born we were able to take her home.  It was so nice being at home in our own bed.  Ivy has done very well, she’s a great eater and a great sleeper.  It’s hard waking up every two hours through the night but since it’s only for a few weeks it’s manageable.  We don’t feel like she really looks like anyone at this point though my Mom said she looks like one of her babies.  Oskar is mostly uninterested in her though he has asked to hold her and feed her from his boob a few times. She is so cute and so sweet and we love her so much already.


Here are a few of the pictures taken in the last two weeks:

One of Those Days

Ever had one of those days when you're eight months pregnant and your toddler is sick?  Where your toddler has been sick for about two weeks off and on and you've already been to the Emergency Room and the pediatrician during these two weeks but he just doesn't get better?  Where you've been to the Emergency Room about a dozen times in the last year because of asthma, it's not getting better, and it feels like no one can help your baby.  When you're sick as well and your husband is sick?  You have to be constantly evaluating if you should back to the Emergency Room because he's not breathing well.  Where every time he coughs, which is about a million times a minute, the anxiety surges through your body because this probably means he's starting to retract which probably means we're going to spend another night in the hospital.  Where even though you try your best to get him to eat, he won't.  And when he does he throws it up because of the violent coughing.  No t to mention he hasn't gained weight in about 9 months and is getting more and more underweight every day.  Where you're about to break down in tears because you're going to be adding another baby to this mix soon which means no sleep and more to worry about.  Today is one of those days and somehow expressing all of this makes me feel a little bit better.  We'll get through it, we always do, and I'm grateful it's not anything worse.  But man ... if I didn't have to have one of these days ever again I'd be happy.

Baby Shower

My wonderful friends Joanna and Claire threw me the best baby shower a few weeks ago!  The theme was tiny, because I love tiny things, and it was the cutest baby shower I've ever seen!  All the food was so delicious and everything looked so pretty and perfect, it was amazing.  I'm so glad no one asks me to do baby showers because I would be TERRIBLE.  Paying attention to little details, or big details for that matter, and making things cute is NOT my area of expertise.

Here are the masters!  Poor Joanna was so pregnant but she still was out there working on making my shower so wonderful, bless her heart!

There were quite a few pictures of me opening all the gifts but they were less than attractive so this is the only one that is included.  But I got a ton of cute little girl outfits and accessories, having a girl is going to be fun!

And this was from yet another baseball game we went to.  This time it was Mormon night at Dodger Stadium and Elder Bednar threw the first pitch, not that we were there to see it.  We didn't get to our seats and settled until the 5th inning, which was perfect because I don't think I could have lasted any longer than that.

Oskar's second favorite part of the game was singing Take Me Out to the Ball game during the 7th inning stretch.  His first favorite part is told better by Joel:

OSKAR STEALS HOME! Last night we went to the Dodgers game for Mormon night. It was Oskar's third pro-game. At the end of his first two he cried because he wants to go down on the field and they won't let him. But last night was Fireworks Night, so they let fans onto the field. Except he wanted to "go on the dirt" meaning run on the infield, but the grounds crew had spaced themselves shoulder to shoulder surrounding the infield to block fans from just that. So I devised a game plan. I carried Oskar up close to the infield, and I whispered to him, "When I set you down, you run as fast as you can between the guys and onto the dirt." I looked for some grounds crew that were spaced a little farther apart than the rest and set him down. He ran and made it past the guards! Some fans saw him and started cheering for him. He got about 10 to 15 feet into the infield and one of the staff went to grab him, but he slid under her grab! Safe! (Oskar always slides, no matter how well he hits the ball.) He stood up and she directed him back to me, but he was so happy and was telling everyone "I slid on the dirt!" It was about where shortstop plays, between second and third, where he slid, but for Oskar and me--it was home!

Zoo and Baseball Game

We had a fun week and a half of visitors recently.  Joel's parents came for about five days and stayed with us two nights and my good friend Sarah came for another five or six days.  Oskar loved having extra people in the house and wasn't a great sleeper just because he was so excited to wake up and see his friends.

With Sarah we went to the zoo!  We actually bought passes to the zoo so now we can go whenever we want.  It's a pretty big place so even though we didn't get to see everything this time we can go back and make sure we see everything multiple times.

My favorite animal to see is the hippo and we were lucky enough to be visiting them during lunch so we got to see their HUGE mouths and teeth up close.  Oskar's favorite, at least the one he kept asking to see, was the lion.  Unfortunately when we visited them they were very sleepy and not much fun to look at.  Sarah taught Oskar some fun facts about animals and now if you ask him why flamingos are pink he'll tell you.  Because they eat pink shrimp!

They have a children's area and included in that is a petting zoo.  Mostly there were goats roaming around but there was one huge sheep.  We didn't get to pet him though because he spent the whole time napping in the roped off area where the children weren't supposed to go.  Oskar loved petting and loving on the goats and they were either so used to children or drugged because they didn't mind at all.

Peaches and Oskar

I don't remember what kind of deer this was but it looked so awesome as it was eating leaves off the tree.

Here Oskar was asking Peaches if she was asleep.

We got to go to a baseball game when Joel's parents were in town, it was at Dodger Stadium and they were playing the White Socks.  Oskar did pretty well, he only threw one or two fits and Joel took care of it by taking him to vacant seats and played catch with him.

Oskar's favorite thing from the game were these Hello Kitty bobbleheads that they gave everybody who was at the game.  He calls them his Baseball Kitties.

Grandmother and Pop

Even though we asked multiple people after the game Oskar was not allowed on the field :(

No Risk Used Cars - Billy

Joel did this commercial before we were married I think.  And for some reason recently every time I go on YouTube it comes up and, of course, I have to watch it.  It's a thing of beauty!