Ander and I are two very exhausted parents... as we knew we would be. Charlotte has really good nights and some really bad ones. Usually they're good, and the bad ones only come along every once in a while. Last night was a bad one.

Here's our problem: I apparently developed mastitis in my right breast. This is a blocked milk duct of some sort that usually comes with some infection. My doctor told me I needed to pump every two to three hours instead of every three to four, so all night long I wake every three hours to pump. This means I hardly have time to feed Charlotte myself throughout the night, so Ander is on feeding, changing, and burping duty each time Charlotte wakes up. He is a CHAMP for doing so, but I feel completely useless... even though I'm the one providing the milk he's feeding her. I know I'm technically doing something but I don't feel like I'm DOING something. And pumping every three hours isn't quite in sync with Charlotte's feedings during the night. I have to wake up far more than Ander does, and from the beginning of a pumping session to when I can finally go back to bed is about an hour, since I have to wash pump parts and store the milk in the freezer. So I'm sleeping in two hour sessions, while Ander is usually sleeping in three to four. Either way, we're both super pooped, but it looks like this infection is going away (hopefully!) So here's hoping we can get back to shifts in the night with more sleep!

In other news, we made a trip to a plastic surgeon this past week. Vain, I know. I'll get to that after these few pictures.

Okay, about her ear. Charlotte was born with a little floppy ear on her left side. We called it her little elf ear. It was actually super cute, but I kept thinking to myself that kids can be really mean, and I wanted to try and fix her ear if we could. Luckily one of the pediatricians at the hospital gave us the name of a surgeon in Austin who specializes in this kind of thing. He's the only one in Austin who does this when the baby is still very young, instead of waiting until the child is six or so to have a surgery to correct it.

 So Dr. Cone put these little plastic molds on her ears to shape the cartilage. When children are this young their cartilage is very flexible so it can be molded. Even better, our insurance covered 80% of this, even though technically it's cosmetic!

So now for four weeks little Charlotte has earmuffs. They don't bother her in the slightest. We go in every once in a while to have them reapplied since the adhesive begins to wear off after a while, but it's a pretty sweet deal. This way we completely avoid surgery!

And to top things off, one of my lovely clients/friends ordered us a huge Chinese take-out feast the other night and had it delivered directly to our door! This food lasted us for days!

A truly magical device

After coming to my conclusion about breastfeeding today, we've decided to introduce our secret weapon to Charlotte:

The binky.

And holy moly did it go over well!

This changes everything.

WARNING: Thoughts and opinions ahead that may not be the same as yours

For the past 11 days with my brand new baby girl, I've had to make a lot of decisions. Even in the hospital, her blood sugar was low on her very first night. Very low. In fact, they almost took her to the NICU because she wasn't nursing at my breast, so she wasn't getting any nutrients. I had to make a decision: supplement her with formula, or send her to the NICU. I chose the formula, and her blood sugar did eventually return to normal.

I felt that I had done the right thing as a mother, but I've already been told by multiple people that I shouldn't have introduced a bottle of formula to my baby on the very fist night of her life. Not to mention those bottle nipples make the formula come out super fast, so it was very easy for Charlotte to just chug. But like I said, in the end, I believed I had done what needed to be done for her to keep her healthy.

My baby girl just isn't a nurser. She latches improperly and chews on me and it is excruciatingly painful. The nurses in the hospital just didn't have time to sit and help me, especially that first night we were there, so I felt like I had to choose to give her a bottle. Even the lactation consultant at the hospital tried to help me and Charlotte would not have it. Now, she still won't nurse, it's still incredibly painful, but now it brings on meltdowns. Being a new mom, sleeping in three hour increments, and trying to decided what to do about nursing has been the most stressful thing I have ever had to do. I have stayed up sobbing multiple times in the night while Charlotte is sleeping peacefully in her bassinet next to me wondering why I can't nurse my baby, and why it matters. I've been pulled in three different directions: Stick it out and continue to try and nurse, switch completely to formula, or exclusively pump my breastmilk (which I have a lot of, apparently). Each time I felt like I had a grip on the situation something would happen that would reduce me to tears again. And I knew that Charlotte was picking up on my stress, and so was Ander.

We called our insurance company and they told us that a lactation consultant was 100% covered on our plan, but they didn't have one in my network, so I basically had to just call random lactation consultants to see if they accepted my insurance. I made phone call after phone call trying to figure something out and get some help, but no one helped me. And for the insurance company to authorize a lactation consultant it was going to take 15 days. And by 15 days from now, it wouldn't be worth it anyway.

So after much deliberation, prayer, and many tears, I have decided to exclusively pump my breastmilk for Charlotte for as long as I can, and after that she'll go on formula. I'm hoping to pump for the next six weeks until I go back to work, then we'll see how I feel after that. Who knows, maybe I can keep up pumping every three hours in a 24 hour period. Maybe not. But for the next six weeks my baby girl will be drinking my milk out of a bottle, and I am completely at peace with that.

Ander tells me that now that I've reached a decision, there will be many people who will tell me I'm wrong, or that I didn't try hard enough. This hurts, because I do believe I tried everything I could to make it work, and it just didn't. Some people can do it, and some can't. But what I do know is that Heavenly Father helped me make this decision, so I know it is not wrong. I have trusted in Him more during this past pregnancy and these last 11 days more than I think I have every trusted in Him in my life. He knows exactly what I'm going through, and He helped me make a decision.

My little Charlotte is happy and healthy, she opens her eyes bigger every single day, she sleeps like a champ as long as she has eaten a good meal, and I can't believe Heavenly Father entrusted me with such a sweet little spirit. I am honored to be her Mama, and I am also honored to be married to such a great Papa. Ander has been nothing but supportive during all of this, and I don't know what I would have done without him.

We're going to be just fine here, don't you worry.

Charlotte has already changed so much in the last 11 days. It's quite amazing, actually. She is literally the stinking cutest thing I've ever seen in my life, and even when she's crying at 4AM I STILL think she's the stinking cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.

So, without further ado, here are more awesome pics of our little girl.

 Another one of my clients bought this little owl hat for Charlotte. She bought it in the 3 month size since Austin will be colder then, but we thought we'd pop it on her anyway. She'll... grow into it.

 One of my clients bought us this baby wearing system for my shower, and it is absolutely wonderful! Ander loves it! Look! He can multitask! We went for a walk the other day with Charlotte in this carrier on Ander, and two different people that I have never spoken to in my life that live in our apartment building stopped us and said, "Oh! You had the baby!" Ander just laughed and said it's because they've all seen me waddle around outside with May-May for the past 5 months. Thanks, apartment friends!

 Proud Papa. Honestly, Ander is the burping champ.

The time is now 4:48 am and I just wanted to make a shoutout to technology for making it possible to text my mom who is literally in the next room and ask for help.

Poor Ander never took a nap today (word on the street is you're supposed to sleep when your baby sleeps) and Charlotte was EXTREMELY fussy tonight. Luckily for me I did get to take a nap earlier before dinner, so as I sat here in bed watching Ander try to console Charlotte while barely being able to sit up straight I told him to go to sleep and I would take care of her. She finally fell asleep next to me in bed about 20 minutes ago, and I suddenly realized I needed to take my pain medication.

Grandmama Lisa to the rescue!! I texted her knowing that she was probably asleep, but praying her phone would awaken her. 

Two minutes later I still have a baby sound asleep on me (thank goodness) AND I'm up on my pain meds.

Like I said, shoutout to technology! (And Granny Lisa!!!)

Warning: cuteness overload ahead

Now that I finally got Charlotte's birthing STORY out of the way, I'm posting a bunch of super cute photos in this post. None of them really need to be explained, they're just pictures of my cute, chubby baby girl. I didn't want to turn Facebook into a baby picture exposition, so I'll do that here!

 (please forgive the photo above's coloring. I tried to make her look less purple. The light was really bad in our room, but she looked so cute relaxing with her little hands behind her head we had to get a picture. So it's slightly poor quality)

 The picture above was probably taken at about 4AM, when I was stuck in my hospital bed and couldn't help with anything. I loved looking at my sweet, sweet husband feeding our sweet, sweet baby. I thought I'd snap a picture. He's a natural, I must say.

Charlotte Grace

I don't know if any of you know this, but I am a planner. My life has always been a perfectly planned series of events. (give or take) I plan everything. So much so that Ander sometimes tells me I need to lay off and let things just happen. But I don't seem to have been born with the ability to do that, so I just plan some more.

During this pregnancy my planning has been thrown completely under the bus, but none so much as this past week.

My body was ready to go into labor at any moment. I was reaching 40 weeks and my doctor told me that we should move my induction date from September 11th to the 5th because I probably couldn't wait that long. 

Yay! A plan! I love plans!

So I planned away, making work arrangements, making phone calls, and getting myself ready to finally meet this little girl! My mom decided to fly out to Austin on September 4th so she could actually be here for the birth on the 5th (Our appointment was at 5am Friday morning) and she was going to stay with us for about eight days to really help us out with our new little bundle. I changed my last day of work to the 3rd in preparation for the induction, and Ander changed his last day to the 4th. Everything was set, and it was glorious. I had peace of mind (other than the thought of having to push this baby out in a day or so) and I was so happy that everything had worked out.

After what seemed like no sleep at all we all awoke at 3:45 AM on Friday September 5th and had a light breakfast, gathered our hospital things and headed out the door to meet our baby girl! Walking into Labor and Delivery I thought to myself, "Well good, this will be the last time I ever have to walk in here, because we are having this baby and hopefully won't be back for a looooong time!"

I'm staring into the face of a male nurse who seems extremely flustered. Nurses are running back and forth all around us. "Woo, this place is busy early in the morning!" I'm thinking to myself. "Did you not get our voicemail we left you?" the male nurse asked us.

"Voicemail?" I blink a few times.

"Yes, we left you a voicemail this morning about an hour ago. We have to delay your induction, we don't have enough rooms. You're induction technically speaking isn't medically necessary so we need to hold onto our empty rooms for mothers that are naturally in labor. We're really sorry, but we have to delay your induction."

Delay? The plan? All my plans?

I blink again.

My mom chimes in, "Will it still be today?"

"Oh yes," he says, "it'll still be today."

My brain seems to have jammed. "Well, let's stay positive," I think to myself. "If I were a mom in natural labor right now I'd want a room instead of some silly girl who doesn't have a medically necessary induction."

We were told to go home, and call back at 9 AM to see how things had progressed.

It was a quiet drive home. We got home, we all went back to sleep, and I tried not to soak my pillow in tears.

"No, things still haven't really changed around here," the charge nurse said on the phone at the appointed 9 AM. "Honestly, it could still happen today, but it's a pretty slim chance. I'll have your doctor's nurse call you to discuss your options."

Waiting. Agonizing waiting. What do we do? Everything was done? How could we focus on doing anything at all? More waiting. Sleeping, maybe? I felt like a zombie. My phone rings: It's my OB nurse!!

"Well, the best we can do is reschedule you for Tuesday September 9th," she says. "Tuesday? That's four days away! My mom just flew in from Utah and can only be here for a week! No one told me there was even a POSSIBILITY of me getting bumped off of my induction day, so I told my mom to fly out. Can I come in tomorrow?"

"We don't schedule inductions for weekends, I'm sorry."

My end result: Wait over the weekend to see if I go into labor naturally. If I don't, then I'm on stand-by on Monday September 8th for an induction, even if it isn't my doctor. If I don't get a call on Monday, we are scheduled on Tuesday September 9th at 6 AM for an induction.

I was heartbroken. And honestly, it wasn't because I wanted to meet my little girl, or that I was still pregnant, or anything like that. To have my hopes set so high and my anticipation to be through the roof... to have had a priesthood blessing the night before to calm my nerves... to have my mom fly out here... and to have all of that come crashing down around my ears was just too much for me. I cried. I sobbed. I couldn't help it. I was so disappointed. How could I have thought that it would work out the way it had been supposed to? It was too perfect.... too planned. (I didn't know there was such a thing!) I was crushed.

I'll spare you the weekend details. We did end up going into the hospital on Sunday because the baby wasn't moving as much as she had been, but that ended up being a false alarm and once again we were sent home. That weekend was awful. Waiting waiting waiting, with nothing to show for it.

On Monday morning I had just made some french toast for all of us and was sitting down to have mine when my phone rang. "Hi Susie, this is Laura, the nurse for Dr. Gutierrez. How do you feel about having a baby today? We can get you in at noon!"

I almost dropped the phone.

Fast forward to 12:30 PM on September 8th. There I was, hooked up to an IV and all tucked into a labor and delivery bed. Ander and my mom and sitting on the couch next to me, and we're waiting for my doctor to come in and break my water. Talk about surreal. 

But when the doc actually did break my water, and I began to have contractions, the baby's heart rate would drop after each one. They hadn't even started me on Pitocin yet! I could tell the doctor and nurses were beginning to be concerned. Shoot, so was I. They did start me on Pitocin, but by the time I got my epidural and wasn't feeling anymore pain, the doctor told the nurse to stop the Pitocin. She explained to me that my labor couldn't progress because the baby's heart rate kept dropping, so we might have to do a C-section. I didn't care. Whatever we needed to do to get our baby girl here safe and sound. But even after they stopped my Pitocin the baby's heart rate still dropped after each contraction. It always came back up, but the doctors told me they couldn't chance having my labor progress like this if the baby's heart rate continued to drop.

To the operating room!

As far as having a C-section goes, let me just say this: I had no idea how major of a surgery this was. I had never really thought about it. But good grief, they cut through your abdomen! I was on so many drugs for the surgery, I felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean. I was coherent, but only just. The worst part was probably the shivering. They said everyone experiences that, whether they have a C-section or a vaginal delivery. It's a combination of the hormones and the pain meds. My upper body shook uncontrollably. My teeth chattered. I couldn't relax, but all I wanted to do was sleep. When Ander finally came into the OR to sit with me I could barely hold his hand.

And then we both heard a baby cry!

I squeezed out two little tears of joy before feeling like I was at the bottom of the ocean again, and I had to chuckle at myself because when they finally brought Charlotte to me while I was still being operated on I could barely even say hello from the drugs. "Hi baby," I slurred while Ander held her close to me. I couldn't take my eyes off her, even though all I wanted to do was sleep.

I realized this post is super lengthy, and I apologize. I'll cut to the chase:

Baby Charlotte Grace Meine was born at 7:46pm on Monday September 8th. She weight 8 lbs and 15 oz, and was 20 1/2 inches.

So off went Ander with my baby to the nursery to get cleaned up, and I had to get sewn up. They told me to rest and get some sleep while I was being stitched up, but I was shaking so badly I couldn't relax. So much for that.

By the time they wheeled me into recovery I was still shaking pretty badly, but it was beginning to subside. (Thank goodness! That shaking was exhausting!)

Everything after that is a little bit of a blur. I was still heavily drugged, and although I remember seeing Charlotte, my mom, and Ander, trying some breastfeeding and failing, and being wheeled to my postpartum room, everything kind of runs together. But who cares? We finally had our baby girl! And she is so beautiful!

Baby Charlotte was born on my Grandpa Richard Rassmussen's birthday. Out of all the people vying for the same birthday as Charlotte, good ol' Grandpa Rass won. I'm sure he was up there in heaven telling her, "Now you just wait a minute missy, don't you go down there yet. It's not the proper day." So she stuck it out up there until September 8th.

Remember all that talk earlier about planning? Well, this whole experience sure gave me a run for my money. Looking back on it now I know Heavenly Father had a plan from the beginning and He knew exactly what needed to happen. If I hadn't have been induced, we never would have known that Charlotte's heart rate was dropping. Imagine if I'd been laboring at home for a few hours! I'm so thankful we were there being monitored by doctors so we were informed. There really is a reason for everything, He has a plan for each of us, and we need to be patient and have faith in Him. I was given a really hard time by some people for choosing to be induced, but in the end, I believe it was the best decision I could have made regarding the birth of my baby girl. She is healthy and happy, and I am truly grateful for that.

She. Is. Perfect.

Such a short video for such a long journey

I decided to make a little time lapse video of all my belly photos. It's odd that we really only took about eight of them, but I thought once a month was a little much. So enjoy!