The Doc

Does anyone else have the hardest time deciding when/if to take your baby to the doctor? The last few weeks have been filled with sick baby drama.


Visit #1 (three weeks ago): Melody had a fever for four days, a bad cold, and wasn't sleeping well. So I bit the bullet and took her into the doctor. Diagnosis: it's just a cold. Mom got to take the walk of shame out of the office feeling like a paranoid first mom.


Visit #2 (Yesterday): Melody had a fever for four days, a runny nose, a congested cough and wasn't sleeping at all. Despite feeling like I would take the walk of shame again for the second time in three weeks I went to the doctor. Diagnosis: Double ear infection and RSV (I didn't even realize babies her age could still be affected by RSV).


Lesson learned: As much I hate going to the doctor, I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.

The Semi-Annual Update

Ok, I wish the title of this post was not a joke, but given my blogging history I don't think it's a stretch... but that is about to change. I got a new computer this week (whoopee!), meaning I don't have to wait around to use David's computer which is always at class or being used to study. 

Since my last post, David had his first clinical, we had Halloween, Melody's Birthday, and Christmas. Lots of photos to catch you all up on, but I will just post a few highlights.

Melody picking our pumpkin for Halloween.

 

We celebrated Melody's first birthday at the end of November. Her favorite part of the party was getting dirty in her birthday cake.

This girl loves her new chair. She mostly uses it to climb onto something more dangerous.

My most recent picture of our almost 15 month old.

Count on more posts to come. I am trying to set a realistic goal of one post every two weeks. I gotta ease myself into the blogging world!

Walking

Picture Overload

What a great six months it has been! Yes we still have a blog, and yes we are horrible about updating it. Since Melody was born much has changed.

I went back to work full time after 12 weeks of maternity leave. It was a tough adjustment. Luckily we had a wonderful resource for childcare and a friend from our ward watched Melody while I worked. Working full time was not the ideal situation for our family so I worked out a situation with my work where I am now working part time from home. We feel so blessed for that opportunity.

David finished his second (and hardest of the program) semester in May and is now in summer school. He is pretty burned out at this point, but clinicals start in August and we are both very excited, as we will be going to Boise for the first clinical.

And dear Melody has been with us for a whole six months now. It's amazing how much they change in that little time. Just when we think we are used to her routine, she changes it up. We thought we had solid foods down, then it was like she forgot how to eat and we had to start all over. We thought her nap routine was set but that changes on a weekly basis. It keeps us on our toes.

Here are some highlights of Melody in the last six months:

Just one of the many faces she gives us. This is her "I'm not to sure about all the pictures you're about to see..." face.

Bath time is fun, especially with Dad as the mohawk specialist.

She loves Saturdays just about as much as we do. A good excuse to hang out in bed letting it all hang out.

She hates her Bumbo.

Blessing Day

Okay this was staged, but she generally assumes this position as Mom and Dad get ready for the day.

She has mad fort building skills. Dad is very excited about this.

Another one of her great faces. She is meeting her cute cousins for the first time.

Melody loved the time she spent with Dad during Spring Break.

Our happy girl.

First attempt at solid food = success

Second attempt at solid food = failure

This is a result of parent neglect. We thought she was playing and turned around to her completely out. I guess she gave up on us putting her to bed that night.

Easter picture with her cousin Hailey.

Movie night with Hailey

Don't be fooled, right after the picture she dropped the bottle and spilled all over herself.

Trying to crawl.

David and I were really bored one night and this was the result. At the time it was very funny.

Helping Mom cook dinner.

Most recent photo at six months. Stats: 25 inches, 16 pounds, 10 ounces.

Happy Memorial Day!

She's Here!

Melody Christine Main was born last Tuesday November 24th at 7:27 pm and we are so happy to finally have her here! She was a healthy 8 lbs 3 oz, and was 20 inches long. Melody was due November 19th so we chose to have her induced on the morning of the 24th. I had mixed feelings about being induced, but if we had her any later my dad would not have been able to come with my mom to see her. It was ideal timing because he and my little brother had time off for the Thanksgiving holiday and were able to come see us for a few days. We went to the hospital Monday night and the doctor gave me a medicine to make my body "ripe" for induction, whatever that means. I was only dilated to 1.5cm and not effaced, so they did this to make the induction run smoother. David and I spent the night in the hospital and I was having steady mild contractions all night, but nothing that was helping me progress. At 8 that morning they started the pitocin and at 9:45 when I was dilated 3cm the doctor came in and broke my water. After that things really started progressing. With my water broken and the pitocin going strong, I was having contractions every 1 1/2 minutes and they were STRONG. I was soon begging for an epidural and within an hour I was in heaven. There is no better feeling than when the epidural starts working and the computer shows contractions that you have no idea are happening. From there I dilated about 1cm an hour and by 5pm I was at a 10. It's surprising how fast the day went by. Previously when I heard of people being in labor 10+ hours I thought it would be unbearable, but it really went by so quickly. At this point I thought I was in the clear. Everyone I had talked to said pushing was the best part because it's quick and you can barely feel it anyway. Well this is where things got much worse for me. As we started the delivery I started feeling the contractions, but wasn't too concerned because it was helping me push. After about half an hour I was exhausted. The nurse would only let me push for 3 out of 4 contractions to help moderate the baby's heart rate, meaning there was one contraction I had to suffer through, feel everything, and not push even though I was dying to do so. I soon received more epidural because my pushing was becoming ineffective with the pain of the contractions I was fighting. Somewhere around 45 minutes into pushing I started losing touch with reality. I couldn't open my eyes, and was so exhausted I would fall asleep in between pushing. I was so oblivious to the world around me. I kept asking when it would be over but no one could tell me. They could see the tip of her head from the beginning, so after an hour and a half I was feeling hopeless with no sign of progress. My biggest fear going into the hospital was an emergency C-section but I was so out of it I would not have protested at that point. Finally after two hours of pushing, she was born. I didn't feel her come out so when they asked if I wanted to hold her, my response was, I have to deliver her first then yes I would like to hold her. To my surprise they quickly pulled her up and there she was on my chest eyes wide open. It was surreal. David cut the cord and they moved her to clean her up. It was then that my doctor explained why the delivery was so difficult. She came out facing up rather than down, which made it much harder for the forehead to pass the pubic bone. When she was born her forehead had a bump the size of a golf ball. As you can see in the picture below, she was pretty happy to enter the world.


We spent two days in the hospital, including Thanksgiving day. My parents came to the hospital on Thanksgiving and we had a semi-delicious cafeteria Thanksgiving dinner. My mom stayed until the following Tuesday and helped with the cooking, cleaning, and everything else. I am now working on this mom thing by myself and can guarantee that I will not be able to maintain the degree of cleanliness we attained while my mom was here. David has been busy finishing up his first semester at school. Our timing could not have been worse with his school schedule. Five more finals to go, then he has five weeks off for Winter break. I am taking a full 12 weeks maternity leave, so we will have a lot of time together to figure this whole parenting thing out. Melody is doing well, sleeping almost all the time and eating like crazy. She is already back to her birth weight plus some and given her appetite will likely be a chunky baby soon enough. I can't wait. We will keep you all updated with how things are going and hopefully post more pictures. Here are a few we have taken so far.

Melody and Me in the hospital.

Melody's first ride in her carseat. She looks so little in that big carseat.

Melody's favorite place to be is her changing table. We get the best faces when she is chillin on the changing table.

Isn't she so stinkin cute?

Avalanche

David and I have been trying to take advantage of the little time we have left of it just being the two of us. We have gone to a couple of Colorado Avalanche games the last few weeks and I have actually enjoyed them. The first game we went to was apparently against their biggest rival, the Red Wings, and it was crazy! I have never seen so many fans for the away team so it got pretty intense just in the stands between the two sets of fans. We had some pretty obnoxious fans sitting behind us, making the most ridiculous comments. I could tell David's blood was boiling because of them and at one point I thought he was going to turn around and punch them. It all ended well though with the Avs winning 3-1. Toward the end of the game they eventually were escorted out of the arena after throwing their beer after we scored the third goal. They had it coming so we laughed. Anyway, it has been a lot of fun and who knew I could like hockey so much. Here are a couple of pics.

Sportin' the Avalanche jerseys.

Our friends the Bahrs joined us for the Red Wings game.

Snow Day

When we moved to Denver, I knew we were probably going to experience more extreme winters than I was used to, but never did I expect that we would have two snow days in OCTOBER. Over the last two days we have had over 12 inches of snow. All the school districts were closed and David's school even closed its campus. Unfortunately snow days don't exist at work so I have had to brave the drive downtown for work. Luckily David has some experience with this weather, and knows my anxiety while driving in the snow is about as high as when I fly (which involves saying my last goodbyes) so he has dropped me off and picked me up from work the last two days. Today was ridiculous! I have never seen the freeways so packed with snow. You could have gone hookybobbing on the interstate. Let's hope it doesn't snow like this when baby girl decides to arrive. Here's the damage at our place:




In other news I should mention that if you have a security system in your house with automatic motion detectors do not leave a balloon in the motion sensitive area. We learned this the hard way last night. Our alarm went off at 5 o'clock this morning so of course we locked ourselves in our bathroom and waited for the police to show up. That's a pretty weird feeling. After searching all entrances and seeing no sign of break in or any footprints in the snow, the police determined it must be something in our house. Needless to say we were pretty relieved/embarrassed when everyone realized that a baby shower balloon in our family room caused the motion sensor to go off. Well at least now we know that the system works, right?