Oh I have been slacking...

Macie is now ten months old!!! I cannot even believe it. She claps when she's excited, she copies sounds, she recognizes special people in her life, she says da-da, she crawls and pulls herself up to stand against furniture, she eats a variety of foods, and she is still breast feeding!! I am so proud that we have made it so far... Even if it feels like I'm nursing a monkey right now. She is healthy, happy, and growing too fast. She's just a joy and we love her so much! However it would be nice if her two top teeth would cut through... They make her turn into oscar the grouch.

As far as my post-partum health is concerned, I'm doing pretty well. I'm actually very pleased with where my weight is at... I'm sitting right at 150lbs which is five pounds from my goal weight. I just need to tone up a bit and things will be great. I've found that even though I'm back to my pre-baby/high school weight, things look nothing like they used to which brings me to the realization that weight really is just a stupid number on a scale and means nothing if you're still unhappy with how you feel and look. Whatever though! I'm happy with where I'm at. It's a huge deal for me. I have not weighed less than 160lbs in almost six years. That's a long time! Those pants I saved from when I first married Jeff... Yeah they fit now! I can wear them comfortably. I saved those jeans not only because they cost a pretty penny and reminded me of how good I felt about my body when I wore them, but I saved them as a motivation tool. I am so happy to be back in my old jeans... They're like that old friend you haven't seen or heard from in years but continually thought about in their absence..  And when you reunite with said old pal, it's a magical thing. Warm fuzzies... You get my drift. It's freakin awesome and you want to tell everyone to look at your jeans and then they think you've lost your flipping mind. Whatevs. So there you have it. My body is far from perfect, but I'm at a healthy weight that I'm no longer embarrassed of, and clothes are starting to fit and unfit... Clothes I held onto forever are beginning to look good on me, but the ones that took their place for six years are beginning to fall off... Which is both a blessing and a problem. Only a problem because life is more expensive than it was when I could just go buy new things whenever I needed them. Again... Whatevs. My little clothes fit! I'll take a smaller wardrobe for the time being.

In regard to how I lost that last ten pounds... 1) breast feeding exclusively (I think has helped anyway)
2) my dr thinks I have Ménière's disease... Google it. I'm now on a low salt, no caffeine, boring diet that helps my symptoms immensely. 3) I'm taking water pills for said disease in order to help combat water retention in my middle ears which cause the bulk of these very unfortunate symptoms.
Sooo yeah. Out of an unfortunate discovery came the fortunate result that I love to call,"this crappy situation got me back in my sexy pants!" Now hopefully my sexy pants can help me continue feeling sexy with the sexy new hearing aids I'm saving for. :-/ whatev.

Anyhow, that's all that's new here...just living the dream, praising my father in heaven for His many blessings, and doing my best to be the best wife and mom I can be. Just enjoying every moment I have while my babies are small. Sooo dear friends, I hope you're all enjoying this fabulous start to summer. I know we are! Going to pack it full of outdoor time and hopefully a camping trip or two. Joey is all enrolled in his home school program, so I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my teaching materials so I can get a head start with this. I'll update on our home school journey too.

Anyway. Thanks for reading friends! God bless you!!

7 months... oh my goodness!

This is just crazy. Time is flying by so incredibly fast. I know I say that every time, but seriously. I feel like I blink and there went my whole day.

Macie is 7 months old today! She weighs 15 lbs 6 oz and she's 25.5 inches long. Growing steadily! She is still breastfeeding exclusively, and I just offered her some mashed banana this afternoon. It wasn't really a hit. I know she'll accept solids when she's ready. For now, a little bit at a time. I'm totally okay with that. The last thing I want is for my milk supply to dry up if we dive right into solids and regular meals. We've come so far. Further than I've ever gone with breastfeeding. This girl has not had a drop of formula, and probably never will! I am so proud of that. (Not that formula is a bad thing... It's a very valuable option for women who struggle with supply issues or cannot nurse their babies for whatever reason).

As far as development goes, she's scooting herself all around. She's not all-out crawling yet, but she's very mobile. She goes right to Joey's train tracks. Apparently the wooden tracks make great teethers. She loves to chew on them, much to Joey's frustration. He is very patient with her though. A lot more patient with her than with Annabelle. Most of the time he moves his tracks and she keeps following until he gives up and moves on to something else. Silly girl! Macie loves her siblings, just not when she first wakes up. She's not a morning person at all. Just like her parents!

That's about all I can think of right now... Macie is just a joy to have in our family. I cannot imagine life without her sweet face. She's the perfect addition, and the perfect third child. We love her so dearly! Everyone who has had the chance to love on her is just smitten with her. Precious baby girl!

 Her very favorite place to be. She loves when I put her in the moby wrap. Why I never had one with Joey and Annie, I don't know. 

Precious smile, and those adorable dimples!

As far as the big kids are concerned, they are growing at a rapid pace too. Joey is almost officially enrolled in kindergarten. *tear* He is also very excited to possibly play football this fall. How freaking cute that will be!! Annabelle is turning into such a sweet little lady. She is fully potty trained, including naps and almost every morning she wakes up with a dry pull-up. It is so awesome! Very weird to have two independent children. They both dress themselves if I leave outfits out for them to put on. It's really nice! Only one child to diaper, and dress. They still very clearly need help with some things, but it's nice to not have to spoon feed them... they're even able to help me around the house a little bit! Pretty soon it will be time to assign chores!! Sweeeeeeet!!! 

 Sooooooo close!!

 Beautiful little girl!!

My handsome little boy. He's turning into a wonderful little man!

6 months!

I cannot even believe that Macie is half-way to her first birthday. It's unreal! I am so enjoying every moment and I cherish every day with my kids, because I feel like these days are flying by. I'm doing my best to be sure that I enjoy them. Spend more time playing and laughing with them, because those are the things I hope they will remember about their childhood.

As of now, Macie is trying really hard to start crawling. Very soon... Very soon I'll be working hard at teaching the kids to keep little things off the floor and out of her reach. Praise the Lord that winter is ending and we won't need to use our wood stove! 

Macie has also found her feet, she's learned to roll as a form of mobility, she reaches for and grabs toys (they go right to her mouth of course), she yells, coos, copies facial expressions, she's learning to sit with minimal help, and she is fascinated with her surroundings. She loves to look outside and now really enjoys being in the moby wrap. At the moment she is also working on those two first bottom teeth.. Won't be long until they come thru! 

We are still currently breast feeding exclusively... And by exclusively I mean that she literally won't take a bottle and all our bottles and old sippy cups are headed for the goodwill since Annie no longer needs them either. Crazy! We still haven't started solid foods. Honestly I'm holding out as long as I can so she can maximize the benefits of breast milk for as long as possible. I'm waiting instead until she crawls and can sit unsupported. I'm so concerned that starting her on solids will cause my supply to take a big dip. It's very sensitive and I really want to make it to one year before weaning... We will see though. In the mean time, she's benefiting perfectly from me, and she's gaining weight at a good healthy pace so I'm not concerned at all. She's already in 9 month clothes and will probably be in 12 month clothes well before summer. 

As for me... 6 months post partum. I'm still pretty much at the same spot I've been in... I'm 2 pounds from my pre pregnancy weight. Not bad, but I'd really love to lose at least 15 pounds to get back to a healthy weight. Definitely no more than 20 lbs. I'm not currently going out of my way to lose weight. I decided to wait until Macie is weaning, and until I've recovered from an impending hand surgery this summer... I am still praying about this surgery and if I want to go thru with it. During pregnancy I developed a condition called: dequervains tenosynovitis. Not sure how to explain it except for that it's extremely painful right at the base of my thumb. After two failed cortisone shots and physical therapy, I'm weighing my options. It's difficult to do a lot of simple things like holding heavy pots and pans, picking up the kids, turning door knobs... you get the idea. It's painful. Anyway, we'll see where that goes. Maybe I'll get super lucky and it will go away!

Thanks for reading, dear friends! God bless!

Macie is 5 months old!!

Okay, this is a little bit late. But yes! My little pumpkin is 5 months old now and I just can't believe it. I seriously feel like I just brought her home. It's crazy.

She's growing and developing perfectly, as she should be. At her last check up (about a month ago) she was 13 lbs 14 oz and 24 inches long. 17 days later, she had packed on another pound weighing in at 14 lbs 15 oz. By now she's probably over 15 lbs. SO crazy to me!!

As far as development goes, she's rolling both ways (sometimes in an attempt to get to something), she scoots herself around in order to see things and play with toys. She grabs at toys, puts them in her mouth, and enjoys feeling different textures. She also put her hand on my face ON PURPOSE the other day. Seriously never fails to melt my heart. I absolutely love this girl. She's super chatty too! Macie loves to talk to anyone willing to listen. She coos at everything, and she especially loves her brother. She's not sleeping through the night yet... she still wakes up every two-three hours or so to nurse. To be expected I suppose.

At the moment, she sits with support and she's also made attempts at getting her knees underneath her. I can tell she just wants to be mobile. SLOW DOWN. I'm all for her waiting as long as possible.

Post-partum wise... things are going okay. I made it through most of insanity... I had some results but not nearly what I had hoped for. I'm 99% sure that it's because I'm breastfeeding. Anyhow, I've stopped it due to the pressure the workouts put on my bad wrist. It gets very very painful. In the meantime I just go on the treadmill and do ab workouts instead. Hopefully I can pick it back up again after Macie weans.

Anyway... that's about it for now. I'll post some pics a little later! God bless, my dear friends!!

Breast feeding... What NOT to do.

So, just to start off, I am no expert on this topic by any means, but after three babies and two failed attempts with breast feeding I have finally figured out why it failed to work for us. It was truly just lack of knowledge about breast feeding, and lack of knowledge about the way my body makes milk. Plain and simple.

This is my theory about why it didn't work out with Joey. As many of you know, he required immediate medical attention due to the fact that he was not breathing. He inhaled a lot of fluid, and somehow ended up with a crap ton of air in his abdomen. On day two, the nurse took him to the nursery where he had a chest X-ray and was monitored closely. He had tubes in his nose, monitors on his feet, IV in his hand... It wasn't fun. Needless to say, I didn't get to nurse him right away, nor did it happen very consistently over the first few days. I was so stressed out. Not only was my baby struggling, I had a mess of issues related to the epidural I had received. 

When we finally got home, I was still freaked out, the nurse told me not to pump because then my body would make too much milk, and did I mention I was scared out of my mind to go to sleep? I worried he would stop breathing. 

Two weeks passed and I thought I was going to lose it. Joe wanted to eat for over an hour at a time and then twenty minutes after he would eat, he would want to eat again. Stressssssss. We discovered my milk had dried up. This was basically body's response to stress, lack of consistency in the beginning, oh and I introduced bottles at 6 days old because I needed Jeff to be able to feed him. Needless to say he was on formula at two weeks old and I was heart broken. 

When Annie was born, it started a bit better. I had a better idea of how things needed to go. After an awesome unmedicated birth, she nursed within 5 minutes. It was great! Then we got home and I was soooooooo sick. She caught it too. It. Was. Ugly. I felt like my lungs were packed with wet sand. It was hard to breathe, I felt awful, and I was exhausted. Cue stress. Well, I hadn't planned on introducing a bottle until she was a month old. That didn't happen. She was about a week old and needed to use a bottle because nursing was too hard when she could hardly breathe. After an ER visit, some meds, and about two weeks she improved. My milk supply suffered. She started nursing in a similar pattern to the one Joey had when he was about two weeks old. I was tired. I needed a break. I ended up introducing formula just for the sake of getting a break and some rest. Well, she really took to the formula and developed a preference for the bottle over the breast. Annie never really nursed for comfort either... At least I really don't think she did. She never nursed for very long. Only until she was satisfied and then she was done. She never even wanted to be held for very long either. As soon as she was done eating and she was ready to sleep, she wanted me to put her in her bed. Seriously. From the time she was about two weeks old, she had a preference for sleeping in her own space. Very different from my Joey and Macie for sure. She's still that way... to this day. Miss independent. I still breastfed part time up until she was about 4 and a half months old. At that point it was obvious that things weren't working. Breast feeding literally has a use it or lose it policy.

Now... here's how I learned everything I have about breast feeding and how my body in particular works with nursing. I had another successful natural delivery and we breastfed soon after birth. Macie was a little bit of a slacker initially, but she caught on quickly. After five weeks or so, I paid a visit to the lactation consultant at Evergreen, and she helped us work on our latch. Macie has a high palette so that made things a bit difficult (for me mostly). She helped me sooo much. I have to credit her help to our success. Anyway... since everything went so much more smoothly with Macie, I was able to nurse exclusively for her first few weeks. She was about a month old when I gave her a bottle, and it was not even something I had intended to do. I had just pumped and she woke up and decided to nurse RIGHT after. SO I just gave it to her. It worked out fine. She went right back to nursing without an issue.

I realized that postponing bottle use really helped my body to build a proper supply. Being that I have two older children, I didn't have a lot of time to pump in order to increase my supply and have a reserve. Needless to say, my body literally just makes enough for Macie's demands, and not much more for storage. That's really okay with me as I don't really leave her very much yet. If I have enough time in advance, I'm able to get a bottle pumped for her to have while I'm gone. I just have to limit my time away.

Having been so stressed during the first few weeks of Joey and Annie's newborn days, I remembered just how sensitive my supply was to stress. Needless to say, I've kept that in mind and have done my best to keep my stress levels down. Now, that is nearly impossible to do when you have three kids 4 and under, and still need to maintain my home, keep food on the table, and be sure everyone's needs are met. BUT... I did find that with my husband's help, help from family, and learning to say "no," I've been able to cope and the stress of daily life hasn't had an effect on breast feeding.

So... here we are! Macie is five months old now and we are still going strong. I'm hoping to make it to one year... that's my goal for us. Hopefully when she starts solids my supply won't dip too much. I'm planning to pump during the times she's not nursing. We'll see how it goes. This is all new to me... I've never made it this far. I have to say though, I firmly believe that my success partly stems from how awesome her birth was. It truly went exactly how I wanted it to go... it was different than I had originally planned, but ultimately it was everything I wanted. I was overwhelmed by the love and support of those I'm closest to, (well most of the ones I'm closest to) as well as awesome nurses and a great doc, and it was perfectly calm and peaceful. No stress! That made a huge difference I think.

A lot of this probably just seems like common sense to a lot of moms, but seriously, it took a lot of trial and error (obviously) for me to figure all of that out... Unfortunately. I do know I can't be the only mom in the world to have had trouble like this. Breast feeding is harder than it looks. I never did a lot of research on the topic because I figured it was stupid proof since women have done it for so many years. Wrong. It's time consuming (not really in a bad way), exhausting at times, and it requires a lot of patience. One other thing I learned about breast feeding, is it's so super important to know the typical times during baby's development in which they go on growth spurts. They often want to eat more, eat more often, and are mildly fussy... At least that's how it's gone with me. These things can sometimes be misinterpreted as a dip in supply. Not so! It's baby's way of stimulating your body to make more to nourish their growing little body.

Ultimately, I'm just thankful I figured out how my body works and responds to stress. I've learned so much about myself. It's truly been a blessing to be able to have this experience with Macie.

My purpose in sharing my experience is solely to give a heads up to other moms and expectant moms. It's good to hear other people's experiences... Personally I like learning from other peoples experiences so as to save myself from trouble later. Anyway, there you have it. Not that you asked. I just felt compelled to share. Hope it was helpful! God bless!

4 months

Things have been going pretty well lately. I'm kind of starting to find some balance. I've had trouble sleeping lately (not baby related) (purely just insomnia) so that's been a challenge. But thankfully Jeff has been kind enough to let me sleep in when he gets home from work, while he feeds the kids breakfast and tidys the kitchen. God bless my sweet husband!! 

Other than that, things are going pretty well on the home front. I seldom leave the house these days it seems like. But it's just as well. I enjoy being at home with my kids. They bring so much joy to my life. It's truly a blessing to be so exhausted and behind on pretty much everything! Ha! It's all I can do to squeeze my workouts in. I'm sincerely doing my best. It's taken me longer than it should to compete month one of insanity. I've noticed small results, but I'm still going with it. Hopefully month two will yield more results. I've lost over an inch everywhere. I'm suspecting that breast feeding has caused my body to hold onto the left over fat from pregnancy. I read Online that some women didn't see drastic results until after weaning. Anyway, I am still at it and eating very clean. 

As for miss Macie, she's growing and changing faster than I'd like, but it's seriously such a joy and a huge blessing to watch her grow. She rolls over every now and again, and she is currently working on rolling from back to tummy. She rolls onto her side to look at toys, and she now grabs things like her leap frog puppy "violet" (which is a super cool learning you btw, as it can easily be customized online and even says her name!). She also loves her bunny rattle security blanket thing. At the moment, she's currently starting the teething process. She drools constantly and she chews on everything. Hopefully her first tooth will take it's time appearing... I love my bald toothless baby smiles! As of yet, I don't have a definitive weight and length on her, but according to our home scale she weighs about 13.4 pounds. Growing perfectly as she should be! She's such a sweetie. She's very chatty, and especially loves when her brother, grandpa, and her uncles talk to her. She definitely has a sweet personality. Also, we are STILL breast feeding!!! I am so thrilled about that! Both my big kids were primarily formula fed at this point in their development, so this is a huge success for us. It has saved us so much money so far too! 

As for my big kids, they are doing very well with their transition. Joey adores Macie, and he loves to hold her and help with her. I sure hope he maintains a good relationship with both girls into adulthood. Annie is still a little iffy with Macie. She loves her, but there's definitely a little competition I've noticed. I'm planning to organize some date days where I can take Joey and Annie out individually for a special day together to kind of help take the edge off the attention competition. On another note, Annie is almost potty trained!! This has been wonderful!! Having just the baby in diapers has been seriously amazing. She still wears them for naps and bedtime, but she hasn't had an accident during the day for the last few days. Victory!! Anyway. That's about it on the home front news. Hope everyone had a merry Christmas and you are all having a good new year!! God bless!!

12 weeks old!!

Yet again I'm shocked to be posting yet another update. Macie is now 12 weeks old!! She is very alert, she's actively trying to check things out and she loves it when I sit and talk to her. She's very entertained by the chaos that is our home. I recently discovered that she falls asleep the easiest when the tv is going. I think she likes the noise. If it's too quiet she seems to wake up more. 

Anyway, Macie is perfect in her development. She rolled over this last week which was exciting!! I caught her in the act when i came back to the room after getting something in the kitchen. I was able to get some pics of her rolling over! So fun. These milestones never get old! :) I sure do love her and her siblings are loving her so so much. Especially Joey. He is absolutely in love with Macie. It's been so much fun!! I'm finally starting to get things down a bit. I still have my rough days. It is what it is. All of it is a blessing though!!

As far as my postpartum health... I've been at a stand still with my weight loss. I'm a little irritated because my new birth control pill caused me to gain back a couple pounds, so I'm working hard to get rid of it and some. I have been eating very clean, including a lot of lean protein. I also started insanity.... Oh Heavenly Father help me through this. The title really says it all. I'm hoping and praying I can get through it and be so glad it did it. I really want to be comfortable in my own skin again. So we will see how it goes. I will post *cringe* before and after photos to document any noticeable change. 

Anyway, all is pretty well on this home front. I'm currently tending to two sick kiddos and trying to kill the sickness that was kindly shared with me too. Hopefully it's short lived. This is the second year in a row that I've been sick right before thanksgiving... Last year I managed to catch pertussis... Which, if you've never had it, be thankful for that!! It. Is. Miserable. So I'm thankful I'm not as sick as last year for sure. 

I do hope everyone enjoys their thanksgiving festivities!!! I know we will... If I can still walk next week anyway. Haha. But really..... 

Here are some pics of Macie baby!!