Just two weeks after getting these little earmuffs put on, Charlotte's ear is looking pretty awesome!

This is before. It's not the greatest pic, but I'm sure you've seen her floppy ear in other pictures on here.

Halfway there! Plus she's rocking a pretty killer haircut so the adhesive doesn't get in her hair. The doctor says she's coming along nicely and she is a great candidate for this. Honestly, I think we're some of the first people to have this done on their little one here in Austin. Her ear looks a little red because the mold rubbed it a little in one area, but the doctor put bigger molds on this time, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Charlotte screamed and screamed while they were reapplying her earmuffs, and it was so hard to sit and listen to because there was nothing either of us could do, but I will take the screaming now rather than when she first starts middle school and hates her ears and cries because she's embarrassed. She won't remember any of this, thankfully. A huge thank you to Dr. Cone and his staff at Wellspring Plastic Surgery!!

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.