Pour some sugar on me....

Back on June 1st, Megan did the cutest thing: I was feeding her and started singing the chorus to the famous Def Leppard song. All of a sudden, she stopped eating, looked at me, and flashed the biggest smile I'd ever seen. Then she went back to eating, I went back to singing, and she did the same thing again. I love that she is interacting with us more. In that moment I knew my cup runneth over!... in the name of love!!!

Just keep Singing...just keep singing...

So, I sing to Megan...a lot. For those that know me, this is not surprising. We sing about getting up in the morning; we sing getting in the carseat; we sing changing the diaper; we sing taking a bath; we sing playing the notes on the piano; we sing when we're trying to nap; we sing! I bet my grandmother would be proud.

Retraining

The hardest part has been retraining myself. I've always been a procrastinator. I would wait until the last minute to do anything, and then I would throw myself into the task and finish without interruption. These days I can't do that. I no longer have hours to finish reading a book, or hours to organize my photographs, or hours to workout. It's a work in progress, but I realize if I don't retrain how I do things, then nothing will ever get done, and I will lose myself in parenting. I can already feel it happening.

Just to feel like myself, I will take drives around the neighborhoods with the windows down listening and singing along to my favorite music. I'll go down random streets just to enjoy the architecture and landscape of the beautiful houses. I know that parenting is a sacrifice, but I wonder how much of myself needs to fall by the wayside. Obviously the joys of motherhood cannot be matched. Megan, from inception to now, has made me happier than I ever could have expected. But I have moments when I wonder if I'll ever have a balance between my life and hers. Will the lines always be this blurred? Is this the sacrifice that everyone speaks of?

15 week Milestones

Megan is 15 weeks old, and I have to say that it was "easiest" when she was just a couple of weeks old. I wish I knew then to revel in those hours of sleep; to revel in those long chunks of time when I could do whatever I wanted; to revel in feeling a bit like my old self. These days, Megan is awake longer and crankier when she hasn't napped enough. The days of me having at least an hour a day to myself are few and far between. Honestly, it can drive a girl crazy. Today is a rare occurrence: I'm home while Megan is napping in her swing which means she's not napping in the car or at a restaurant...which means I can actually sit down and reflect on the last couple of months.


Megan Milestones:
Megan is now holding and reaching toys with both hands. She loves to look at her hands and clasp them together as if she is praying...so adorable. She loves taking baths and has figured out that splashing water with her feet gets quite a reaction from mom. She is practicing the basic speech patterns of 'ba,' 'ooh,' and 'ahh.' We love to have conversations with her. She loves to blow spit bubbles and make noises like a motor-boat. When she was 13 weeks, she giggled for the first time :-) We had a particularly rough day, and I like to think that giggling was her gift to me...something to say, "Hey mom, it's going to be alright. We'll get through this with little moments like these." Ever since then, we've found that kissing her neck and blowing scherberts on her belly usually result in a couple of giggles. Megan has been sleeping like a champ. Our bedtime routine consists of 5oz of milk, a swaddle, a turtle night-light, a sound machine, and a kiss goodnight. She sleeps from about 9pm-3am. We can usually count on at least 6 hours of sleep at once. Then she wakes up, we feed her again, and she sleeps for another 4 or 5 hours. It will be great when we can drop the middle of the night feeding.  It doesn't seem like it will ever happen, but I hear it does :-)

C-Section

Getting prepped for surgery

NICU team suctioning out the meconium

My uterus :-)

Trav after the surgery

Seeing Megs for first time

Getting a c-section was definitely not the plan. I could go on and on about how I wanted Megan's birth to go differently, but at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was having a happy and healthy baby. I came to that realization at about 7pm on March 8. The decision was ours.  We could have chosen to continue laboring and hope that I would dilate, but by that point I was scared about Megan getting an infection from the meconium. 

Overall, the c-section was a scary experience. I wish I could think of a better word or feeling to describe what was swimming around in my head when they wheeled me into the operating room. I felt alone and out-of-control. I saw Megan once before they took her to "transition." I didn't see her again for another four hours. It was excruciating and probably the worst part about all of it. I don't want to belabor the issue. I'm just thankful that we both came of the surgery fine.