Gas Station Junkie

Addict? Yes.
Favorites right now?

Peach Gummies....DELISH!

Orange Slices

Sour patch kids

Anything gummy. One of my favorite things to do is go to the gas station, load up on our favorites and of course some DDP (diet dr pepper) and watch a movie or show with David. We've done this a lot recently and it makes me a very happy girl :] Love it.

Dreaming

The other day Kyla was at my parents house being babysat...scratch that....loved and adored and she woke up from a dead sleep in what can only being described as a terror. My parents said she was crying a high pitched scream for a few seconds and then she went back to sleep. Bad dream? Its the only thing we can think of. Poor girl..breaks my little heart. So I was mentioning this to David's Aunt and Nana when his Aunt brought up an interesting thought. She said, "She was probably dreaming about her birth, its the only traumatic thing thats happened to her." I don't even know if she meant it the way I took it but it made me think...can you only dream about things that have happened to you or that you've seen and can imagine? I know dreams are weird and things happen that don't make sense in real life and stuff but it seems to me that they all draw from something and babies don't have much to draw from. For instance babies know nothing about kidnappers so could she have a scary dream about being kidnapped? Or is she just dreaming about her terrible week in the NICU or having to leave people she loved and come to earth? Interesting thought right? What do you think?

A few of my Favorite things

A few favorites that Kyla does right now...
-Holds my hand or arm or whatever she can get a hold of when I feed her
-Spreads all her toes as she eats in concentration
-The faces she makes. (the "O" face, the pursed lips, the furrowed brow, the WIDE eyes in the dark, the starving trying to eat your arm, the pouty/bottom lip out face, and of course her smiles)
-When you put her over your shoulder and her little arms wrap right around you. Best hug ever.

Its crazy how much I love this girl. I always heard people say its different when its your own and I never believed them. I thought it would be just as annoying when they would cry or whine for no reason. Now I understand. It doesn't matter if its 5am, well it matters a little, I still would rather be sleeping but I'm not mad at her because I just feel so bad that she's awake with gas bubbles or whatever the case may be. I have new patience that no one (I mean no one) could have predicted. I just love her and want to make her happy so I'll do whatever it is that she needs and maybe more. I love being a mom but I especially love being Kyla's mom.

Least favorite thing she's doing.....Growing up.

Year #4

Can you believe David and I are at year #4 in our marriage? I sure can't. Lately I can't get over how lucky I am to have this amazing guy as my forever. The way he took care of me during labor and since labor proves (in case I didn't know before) he is always going to have my back. If he can have it during such a yucky time I only have good things in store right? :] I know I can rely on him for anything and everything and that he loves me enough to be there in good times and bad. Its such a safe feeling and I think I used to take in for granted. About a year ago I wised up and realized how cool that really is and how lucky I am to be in a relationship where I know that because of the way he talks to me and treats me. Since I've been home from the hospital, he's been so patient with all my crazy hormones. He tells me everyday what a good mom I am. I have gone through times where I'm a wreck of a new mom but he's always there for me to talk to and always makes me feel better. He's my best friend.

My love grows for him each time I see him with Kyla. He is such a good dad. Loves her more then anything, constantly tells her how much he loves her (whats even cuter is when he says, "mom and dad love you so much!" Just throws me in there incase Kyla forgot), and he and I have had such great moments since she's been home laughing at the funny things she does. He is so hands on and you can tell he wouldn't let it be any other way. Kyla couldn't have a better dad.

All I know is that these 4 years have passed quickly but its been great so far and I can't wait for all the future moments with our family.

I know this picture is terrible but it makes me smile so there it is :]

Burping

Who knew that burping could be so exhausting. I definitely didn't. In all the hard things I knew would come with being a parent, burping wasn't one of the things I thought about. Kyla hates to burp...yet she hates to have burps in there that need to come out. She hates to spit up so if possible she chooses to swallow it back down. She's a stubborn lady already. She will fuss and when you start pounding on her little back she screams (like literally screams) and arches her head back in protest of letting anything come out. Then she burps and relaxes her little head into your shoulder or hand. Once she starts crying again you know she's gotta burp again. I swear it takes me 3 hours to burp this child. Sometimes if we don't get it all out she'll be fussy through the day and then at night you can hear with every breath she takes that there is mucus in her throat and we have to spend a lot of time trying to get whatever is in there out. For all you moms out there...did you ever have such issues with burping/spitting up? Did your breast milk ever make your baby "mucusy"? Last question, is it normal to want to do a "touchdown" celebration dance with every burp? haha First thing David and I say when she burps is, "Good job! Way to go." Positive reinforcement can't hurt right? :]

Whats in a Name?

As you've read in the past, David and I had an epic battle...ok more like a disagreement on what to name babygirl. We had always planned Alexis for our first girl but then we found out it was a girl and David changed his little mind. He wanted Chloe. I like the name Chloe and had thrown it out in passing like years ago but really didn't like the sound of it for this child. (Does that mothers intuition start when they're in the womb? I just knew she wasn't a Chloe) So then he stuck with Kaylee which was another one I threw out years ago but just didn't see attached to the babygirl inside my belly. So we went back and forth about Alexis or Kaylee. Everybody weighed in, we would try calling her the different names, but babygirl fit her more then either one of those names I concluded. Babygirl. Thats a good name for the rest of her life right? We kept saying we'd decide when we saw her...but I kept thinking, what if I see her and I think she looks like one name and David still thinks the other. That would so be something that would happen to us! Just when I thought she'd never have a name we got something very important in the mail. My US Weekly magazine. On our drive to Vegas I was flipping through my weekly addiction when I saw a little article that stuck out to me for some reason. Vince Vaughn and his wife were sitting on a park bench with their newborn daughter. Who cares right? Well turns out I cared. His wife's name is Kyla. Hadn't ever heard that name before and I really liked it. I turned to David and said, "What about Kyla?" His exact response back to me was "NO." Then Kateka said, "Thats actually kinda pretty, I like it." Then David came back with, "Wait what was it?" Haha shows you how much we had been bickering about what to name her. We hadn't ever found anything both of us agreed on so anytime the other person brought a name up we just automatically said no first. Once he heard it again he said he kinda liked it. We threw around middle names that would go well with it. David has always wanted a family name as the middle name so I said "what about Kyla Gwen?" Gwen is his moms and his sisters middle name. You wouldn't think Kyla, being the more "modern" name, would sound good with such a classic name like Gwen...but guess what, it does. We went to Zions that day and when we were sitting on the tram we just decided that it sounded so right. It was the first name I could actually see attached to her. We decided not to share because Alexis and Kaylee opinions were out of control and I didn't want to hear it. We still tentatively said we'd look at her first but we were both pretty set on it. One Saturday we decided to do a cute arts and crafts project. Once its on wood blocks there is no turning back :]

Luckily she looks like a Kyla. That was one of the first things that David said to me in the OR and for once we agreed! So judge me, we got our childs name from my gossip mag.

Kyla 2.0

So where did I leave off....Kyla had just been taken to the NICU. I won't go through all the NICU stuff because it changed on a minute to minute basis it seemed like. She was admitted there for 8 days due to high bilirubin levels. Bilirubin can be dangerous in high levels obviously and she was teetering right on the boarder of very high levels. She was under 3 lights and had one underneath her. Thats quite a bit more then the norm jaundice treatment. They concluded that her head was not a subgaleal bleed but just lots of irritation and bruising. The poor girls head hurt so bad for the first couple days. Because she had dead red blood cells breaking down from her head it just caused her bilirubins to keep going up. She had to get her level below a 10 and then only rebound 3 points after not being under the lights for a day in order for us to take her home. On Sunday June 26th her level was a 9.5 so she went off the lights all that day. We were able to give her a bath and hold her all we wanted. Right in the middle of our favorite day as parents so far we got some bad news. Her O2 sats were running kinda low...meaning she wasn't getting as much oxygen as she needed. They told us that the bilirubin lights can make her stuffy and since they had suctioned her out a couple of times they might have irritated the mucus membranes that are so soft still in her nose. That would cause her to not get the breaths she needs on her own and she would need to go on some oxygen. They said it wouldn't stop us from going home, we'd just have to take her home on oxygen. Not our ideal but all we wanted was to take her home. So Monday morning we called in to see if we'd be able to bring our daughter home that day. Our nurse said her bilirubin test was 12 so as long as she passed her carseat test we could! We were thrilled and immediately drove over there. The car seat test for the NICU are seriously more intense then the regular ones. They have to sit in the carseat for an hour and a half and keep there O2 sats above an 85. David and I were only there for the last 45 minutes and I swear we were both close to having a heart attack. Kyla kept dropping to like 88 and then she'd pull herself together and get back in the 90's. We watched the clock tick down until the last second the carseat test was complete...except the nurse wasn't in the room with us. So while we waited for her we continued to panic. All the sudden Kyla dropped to an 84 right as the nurse was walking in. She came back up so quickly that the alarm didn't go off and I don't think the nurse saw it. I still feel like we got away with that. Since we've been home we've been to our pediatrician 3 times and followed up with her bilirubin and oxygen. The bilirubin went up 3 points the day after we brought her home. Our dr told us that it might be binding to my breastmilk and just circulating back through her system so we started supplementing with formula. Now she is not a yellow baby. Big accomplishment :] We started to ween her off the oxygen to see how she'd do. Daily she got a little better but we still had our hiccups. Like when she'd eat and sleep she'd drop lower. One night David and I realized that she had tons of mucus built up in her little body and we spent like 3 hours pounding it out of her. A little bit every 10 minutes or so. We saw our dr the next day and he told us to just take her off the oxygen and watch the monitor for a while. If she was running lower 90's upper 80's he was fine with that and to get rid of it. The oxygen was making her mucusy so it was like a double edged sword. So 7/5 we took her off the oxygen so she was Kyla 1.5 for a while and then 7/8 we trusted her enough to take her off the monitor! Kyla 2.0! Wireless Kyla is amazing. I can't explain how much I love being able to just pick her up and walk around. Oh the little things we take for granted. Well to quote the pediatrician our daughter is perfect. She's got tons of dark hair but it is starting to get lighter on the tips. She makes tons of funny faces including an amazing "O" face and when she's not hungry and you touch her lips she purses her lips and its adorable. She makes David and I laugh constantly. She smiles a lot and she has, no joke, laughed twice since I've had her home. She's changed my entire world and I couldn't be happier.

The Birth Story

This birth story could not be longer so I'm going to try to narrow it down. Saturday June 18th I woke up at 5am to my water breaking. No big gush but lots of little gushes (gross) and there was no confusion over what had just happened to me. I got up and rushed for the bathroom, kinda walked back and forth for a minute and then yelled to David that my water had just broke. His response? "No it didn't." Haha but yes, yes it had. I got in the shower while he kinda put stuff together. I was only 36.5 weeks and I definitely didn't think I'd be having this baby before I went in for my scheduled inducing when I was 38 weeks. I thought to myself in the shower..."I've got to be dilated to like a 2 already! Is that a labor pain? That didn't hurt that bad. This is going to go quickly." On the way out the door to go to the hospital David and I took turns guessing what time she'd actually get here. Guess what I said? 11am. haha David went with 8pm and I was like, "she better be here by then!" So at the hospital they checked to see how dilated I was. Drum roll please......a big fat 0. Seriously? Alright body, who's big idea was it to put yourself into labor without making any progress of your own? Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. They gave me a pill to ripen the cervix. You can take one every 3 hours and it gets things started before they give you the pitocen to really get your contractions going. 6 hours into this I was having what I would say were really bad cramps. Atleast the pill was doing something. However, even though my water broke babygirl did not drop at all. Still totally under my ribs. Every contraction I was having hurt my right rib so bad I couldn't breathe. They gave me some narcotic pain med. Can I even explain how great it was? No. It hit me so fast once she put it in my IV and then I would pass out and be able to sleep for like 45 minutes and then it wore off. She gave me 2 hits of that, which helped a ton but wore off WAY too fast. ;] The resident (lovingly named homeboy by my mother) came back in to check my dilation. I was a 1+. Thats enough to start receiving pitocen. Since my rib was killing so bad I got my epidural at the same time that I got my pitocen. Getting the epidural was actually pretty painful. Not the shot in my back so much but the ball the anesthesiologist made me curl up into. David helped hold me there because it hurt so bad to pull my knees up to my chest. The epidural felt so strange but I didn't have any rib pain anymore and that was nice...but it was replaced by some amazing neck pain. I had a gut feeling that the epidural was the reason for this neck pain but the nurse insisted that it wouldn't cause that. (It went away the second they took the epidural out) I dilated very quickly with the pitocen actually. I went from a 2 to an 8 in a couple hours. Then I hung out at a 9+ for 3 hours. I found out during this time that the only person going to be in the room with David and I while I was pushing was my 1 nurse. Thats it? Thats not how they do it on 16 and pregnant! I had always planned on just me and David being in the room but seeing as I needed someone to hold the leg the nurse wasn't holding and I still wanted someone by my head we asked my mom to stay and be there. I had lots of pressure down there and I felt like I needed to push so bad. Finally homeboy came in and told me he was going to move the rest of the cervix out of the way manually. Couldn't you have done that 3 hours ago!! Is he kidding? After he moved the cervix I pushed (which took a second to figure out considering I couldn't feel anything from my ribs down) for 3 hours. NBD. Finally my dr made the call that it wasn't happening and we would be doing a C Section. I was so upset about this because I had worked so hard and been there for so long and it was ending like this? David could not have been a better husband during this whole process. He told me all along how great I was and how proud of me he was. When I was crying because they were taking me in for the C section he was telling me I couldn't have done better. He helped me so much. At 5:55am on June 19, 2011 my little nugget was ripped from her home inside me and thrown into this world. She cried right away coming out which I was so relived about her lungs being healthy. I thought for sure she'd have to go to the NICU due to lung issues but the second she cried I knew she was perfect. David and I just sat there and cried. My dr kept saying "No wonder she wouldn't come out! Wow, look at her. Good thing she came early!" She weighed in at 8 lbs 6oz 22 in long. Kyla Gwen Barham. Now to tell you that I remember much after that would be a big fat lie. I was exhausted and now on some serious meds and all I remember is falling asleep and shaking so bad as a reaction to the morphine. Then I heard they were taking Kyla to the NICU because she was grunting and that can mean fluid in the lungs. They just needed to check her out there. Then I heard they were admitting her because her blood sugar was low. Then we also had big problems because since I pushed for 3 hours her head had stretched out so far without her skull following that she had a subgaleal bleed. I'm so glad I was out of it that day because it wasn't great news from the NICU but I didn't really know or understand...however I also didn't really feel like I had a baby. I saw her for a second when they wheeled me into the NICU but there was no holding her or bonding with her at all. I've been saying from the beginning of this pregnancy that my worst nightmare would be to be in labor for 20 hours and then have a C section. Don't worry folks thats not what happened...I was in labor for 23 hours and then I had a C section. All I know is I'm glad she's here and so obviously I wouldn't change anything. :]

Coming up: The tales of the NICU and beyond

Lockdown Mode

So a ton has changed since I blogged last. I have so many stories and things I want to write down and share. I love blogging and I think its such a great thing in so many ways but before I can document everything about this little beauty...
...I have to know who's reading it. Lockdown. So if you want to follow our little families blog still just give me your email and I'll add you. I don't mind if you're a random reader, (in fact finding new blogs is one thing I love about blogging so don't be shy) just tell me how you found my blog. I'm excited to share everything that has happened over the last couple of weeks so I'll give it a minute to get everyone's emails and then I'm going to go off :]