Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Georgia June - 1 month


It feels like as soon as Georgia was born time decided to speed up even faster than it seemed to be going while I was pregnant.  The days have absolutely flown by and I know my maternity leave will be up soon and life will again be changing in a big way.  Georgia's first week of life was somewhat of a blur.  We spent 2 days with her in the hospital and then came home only to have Joe going back to work the next day.  I never thought just sitting around at home for hours on end and doing absolutely nothing but nursing and watching Friends reruns could go by so fast.  

Our little perfect peach is a month old already!  She is seriously such a great baby.  We have certainly had some rough nights, but for the most part she sleeps great, wakes herself at night when she's ready to eat, loves being walked around the house, & loves her rock n play.  Her daddy is smitten with her and does a great job of caring for her and helping take some of the work off of me when he can.  She just started to take a bottle and eats like a champ.  

We've taken her on a couple of outings and everyone compliments how beautiful she is.  We had some family photos taken this past weekend and I cannot wait to see them.  Afterwards we took her to lunch at Uptown where of course, she decided she was hungry at the same time mom ordered a glass of wine.  I've had to nurse her twice now at restaurants, but no one seems to mind.  I also took her to August Hill with my mom and my friend Jessica to visit.  All of the employees were so excited to meet her.  I carried her around in my Solly wrap and she slept the entire time.  

Our breastfeeding journey is going really well.  Although it's demanding and a lot of work, it's been some of my favorite moments.  I can soak every detail of her in while she's nursing; her little hands, usually kind of cold on my skin, I just love how she grabs onto my side or my finger or my shirt.  Her little lashes and eyebrows, they're so fair.  And that hair that she's actually managed to keep!  I love to look at her skinny legs and narrow feet, usually lifeless when she's nursing, although sometimes tense and stretched out.  She's seriously the greatest.  

At her 1 month wellness appointment she was 9lbs 6oz (63 %) which is over a pound more than what she weighed at birth (8 lbs 2oz) and almost two pounds more than what she weighed when left the hospital (7lbs 10oz) so she is growing like a weed so far.  She is also 22.5" (98th%)  which is 1.5" more in length than she was at birth (21").  She's got a redish tint to her otherwise dark blonde hair, she's got quite the stork bite on the back of her neck too.  Her eyes are blue and she's very alert and now looking at us in the face and responding to noises.  

This last month has been one like no other.  Being Georgia's mama has been nothing short of amazing.  She has challenged me in ways I have never been challenged and I've loved her in ways I didn't know was possible.  Being a family of 3 (or 5 if you count the furbabies!) is the best.  I love watching Joe love on her, it's the sweetest thing.  I know we are both proud to be her parents and I'm so thankful that the journey that we took to get pregnant led us to her.  

Monday, March 20, 2017

Newborn Photos

We got our newborn photos back of Georgia and they are so perfect!  I just love every one of them!  Joe wasn't able to be at the original photo shoot because of work so we went back this past weekend for some family photos we will be getting back soon, but I couldn't wait to share these!
















Friday, March 10, 2017

Mom Life


Last night Georgia and I were both in tears.  She was hungry, I was tired, and we were both frustrated.  I'm pretty sure I nursed her 5-6 times within 4 hours and nothing seemed to be satisfying her.  It was rough and the hormones definitely don't help the situation but after I finally bit the bullet and let her nurse off my left side which is in excruciating pain from a bad crack, she was satiated and we were both able to finally get some sleep.  My instincts were telling me that she had nursed too much on the right and wasn't getting enough.  I was right, I wish I would've realized it sooner.

Luckily most of our nights have been the opposite of this.  Georgia is a champ at nursing and sleeping.  She's sleeping through the night and I'm waking her to feed about every 3-4 hours.  I've been getting great sleep myself, something I never expected to happen in these early days and I'm taking full advantage because I know those days are probably numbered.  I've been a mom now for 16 days and these 16 days have flown by, even just sitting around doing nothing but staring at her or watching countless reruns of Friends on Netflix, I'm soaking in as much as I possibly can because every day she changes so much.  

You might be wondering how on Earth I have time to type up a blog post, I kinda wonder that myself but she is currently fed and napping in her rock n play so I figured I'd take a quick moment to do an update.  I've been lucky that my parents have been over practically every day which gives me a chance to shower, do a load of laundry, eat an uninterrupted meal, etc. we just really miss Joe and hope that he gets to be done with the outage soon.  We are ready to spend some time as a family of three.  He's actually more exhausted right now than I am!  

I've definitely had my bouts of crying and my moments of frustration but Georgia is seriously a great baby who rarely ever fusses unless she's hungry.  I love getting her dressed in cute outfits every day and putting a little bow on her head, I never imagined I'd actually get to be on this side of our infertility journey and enjoying what it's like to be the mom to a daughter.  Joe said to me the other day, "can you believe we have a baby" and it feels so surreal that we actually do HAVE A BABY.  We are so in love with her & everything about being her parents, the hard times and the good times.  

For those wondering, I am recovering really well from the c-section.  I'm less than 10 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and everything else is healing well.  I've been released to drive, to do yoga, and to walk so I'm hoping we get some warm weather during my weeks off so that we can take some walks outside.  I'm already 2 weeks into my 8 week maternity leave, but I'm taking an additional week of vacation at the end so I won't be going back to work until around the first week of May.  The time is already passing too quickly and it will be over in no time I'm sure.  That being said, I'm off to go tend to my babe.  

Quickly though, for anyone still struggling, or anyone considering donor eggs, embryos, sperm, adoption, or surrogacy, DO IT.  Just do it, don't worry about "what if she/he doesn't look like me", don't worry about the fact that the DNA of your child isn't yours, all of that worry will be nothing but an afterthought and I can tell you it was 100% worth the time, the money, the tears, the frustrations, the losses, the pain, all of it, for THIS girl.  

Mom Life


Last night Georgia and I were both in tears.  She was hungry, I was tired, and we were both frustrated.  I'm pretty sure I nursed her 5-6 times within 4 hours and nothing seemed to be satisfying her.  It was rough and the hormones definitely don't help the situation but after I finally bit the bullet and let her nurse off my left side which is in excruciating pain from a bad crack, she was satiated and we were both able to finally get some sleep.  My instincts were telling me that she had nursed too much on the right and wasn't getting enough.  I was right, I wish I would've realized it sooner.

Luckily most of our nights have been the opposite of this.  Georgia is a champ at nursing and sleeping.  She's sleeping through the night and I'm waking her to feed about every 3-4 hours.  I've been getting great sleep myself, something I never expected to happen in these early days and I'm taking full advantage because I know those days are probably numbered.  I've been a mom now for 16 days and these 16 days have flown by, even just sitting around doing nothing but staring at her or watching countless reruns of Friends on Netflix, I'm soaking in as much as I possibly can because every day she changes so much.  

You might be wondering how on Earth I have time to type up a blog post, I kinda wonder that myself but she is currently fed and napping in her rock n play so I figured I'd take a quick moment to do an update.  I've been lucky that my parents have been over practically every day which gives me a chance to shower, do a load of laundry, eat an uninterrupted meal, etc. we just really miss Joe and hope that he gets to be done with the outage soon.  We are ready to spend some time as a family of three.  He's actually more exhausted right now than I am!  

I've definitely had my bouts of crying and my moments of frustration but Georgia is seriously a great baby who rarely ever fusses unless she's hungry.  I love getting her dressed in cute outfits every day and putting a little bow on her head, I never imagined I'd actually get to be on this side of our infertility journey and enjoying what it's like to be the mom to a daughter.  Joe said to me the other day, "can you believe we have a baby" and it feels so surreal that we actually do HAVE A BABY.  We are so in love with her & everything about being her parents, the hard times and the good times.  

For those wondering, I am recovering really well from the c-section.  I'm less than 10 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and everything else is healing well.  I've been released to drive, to do yoga, and to walk so I'm hoping we get some warm weather during my weeks off so that we can take some walks outside.  I'm already 2 weeks into my 8 week maternity leave, but I'm taking an additional week of vacation at the end so I won't be going back to work until around the first week of May.  The time is already passing too quickly and it will be over in no time I'm sure.  That being said, I'm off to go tend to my babe.  

Quickly though, for anyone still struggling, or anyone considering donor eggs, embryos, sperm, adoption, or surrogacy, DO IT.  Just do it, don't worry about "what if she/he doesn't look like me", don't worry about the fact that the DNA of your child isn't yours, all of that worry will be nothing but an afterthought and I can tell you it was 100% worth the time, the money, the tears, the frustrations, the losses, the pain, all of it, for THIS girl.  

Sunday, March 05, 2017

Nursery Tour

Putting Georgia's nursery together was one of my absolute favorite parts of this journey.  I have always envisioned what my babies nursery would be and I'll be honest, Georgia's turned out a little differently then I had ever planned, but I am so in love with every detail! Some of the pictures below are from our maternity session so the quality is 100% better than the ones that I've taken myself.  I am very amateur with my SLR camera still so bare with my photos please & thank you!  I tried to site as many sources as I could at the bottom.

The things I've gotten the most questions and compliments on are definitely the area rug , the cactus lamp, and the activity gym!  Lots of these pieces were also hand/custom made either as gifts or as items I just really had to have.  The wood slice is one of my favorite pieces.  I actually ended up getting one for Joe's parents for Christmas & one for my donor as a housewarming gift when they moved into their new home.  Great prices, and you cannot go wrong with personalized, handmade pieces.  The turquoise and peach dreamcatcher was also handmade and gifted to us by a friend and she totally nailed it & the colors!I 

I wanted a way to be able to display all the bows and headbands that she will certainly be wearing every day so I thought a jewelry tree would be cute.  I had a different one in mind (a bigger one that I actually have for my own jewelry that is 3 arrows) but I found this smaller gold one at the Dollar Spot at Target and it worked perfectly.  My friends also made me the Georgia arrow bow holder and handmade some of the bows for me for a shower gift!

The cactus lamp was one of the very first things I purchased once we found out it was a girl. There are 3 or 4 versions of that lamp and the mint and pink one happened to be my favorite so once we knew it was a girl I ordered it like the next day!  One of my favorite pieces and it happens to be made out of plastic so it's safe when she starts to get her hands on everything. 

Once we got our maternity pictures back I decided to put a few up around the nursery along with a picture of Amy and I and a picture of baby girl the day she was transferred, not many people can say that they have a picture of themselves as an embryo!  I hope that we can use both of those pictures to teach baby girl about her roots, how hard we worked to conceive her, and what an extraordinary gift that was given to us by Amy.  It's important to us that being a donor egg baby is just second nature to her and we want to start introducing her to that part of her life early on.  I figure having a picture of Amy for her to look at every day is a really great way to start.   


















Nursery Tour

Putting Georgia's nursery together was one of my absolute favorite parts of this journey.  I have always envisioned what my babies nursery would be and I'll be honest, Georgia's turned out a little differently then I had ever planned, but I am so in love with every detail! Some of the pictures below are from our maternity session so the quality is 100% better than the ones that I've taken myself.  I am very amateur with my SLR camera still so bare with my photos please & thank you!  I tried to site as many sources as I could at the bottom.

The things I've gotten the most questions and compliments on are definitely the area rug , the cactus lamp, and the activity gym!  Lots of these pieces were also hand/custom made either as gifts or as items I just really had to have.  The wood slice is one of my favorite pieces.  I actually ended up getting one for Joe's parents for Christmas & one for my donor as a housewarming gift when they moved into their new home.  Great prices, and you cannot go wrong with personalized, handmade pieces.  The turquoise and peach dreamcatcher was also handmade and gifted to us by a friend and she totally nailed it & the colors!I 

I wanted a way to be able to display all the bows and headbands that she will certainly be wearing every day so I thought a jewelry tree would be cute.  I had a different one in mind (a bigger one that I actually have for my own jewelry that is 3 arrows) but I found this smaller gold one at the Dollar Spot at Target and it worked perfectly.  My friends also made me the Georgia arrow bow holder and handmade some of the bows for me for a shower gift!

The cactus lamp was one of the very first things I purchased once we found out it was a girl. There are 3 or 4 versions of that lamp and the mint and pink one happened to be my favorite so once we knew it was a girl I ordered it like the next day!  One of my favorite pieces and it happens to be made out of plastic so it's safe when she starts to get her hands on everything. 

Once we got our maternity pictures back I decided to put a few up around the nursery along with a picture of Amy and I and a picture of baby girl the day she was transferred, not many people can say that they have a picture of themselves as an embryo!  I hope that we can use both of those pictures to teach baby girl about her roots, how hard we worked to conceive her, and what an extraordinary gift that was given to us by Amy.  It's important to us that being a donor egg baby is just second nature to her and we want to start introducing her to that part of her life early on.  I figure having a picture of Amy for her to look at every day is a really great way to start.   


















 
Blog Design by Imagination Designs
Graphic by OctopusArtis