Eating and Sleeping

Since bringing our little girl home we have learned something about her, she is a cluster feeder. What is cluster feeding? It is when a baby will want to eat every 1 to 2 hours. So what does this mean? It means that Evangeline starts cluster feeding at about 11 pm and continues to cluster feed till about 9 am. Which means no sleep for Mommy, because every hour Evangeline wakes up and wants more food. Needless to say, my last few days have been a sleepless agony. Most nights I have been averaging about 2 to 4 hours of very awful sleep. Well the other night Kevin hit upon a fantastic way of fixing this. He noticed that Evangeline sleeps better when there is a lot of noise going on around her. And when things are dead quiet she tends to wake up and want food and stuff. So on Christmas Eve I downloaded a white noise app on my phone and played it whenever I put Eva to bed. I ended up getting about 6 hours of sleep this way and felt much more rested the next morning. Which was perfect since it was Christmas. Last night I went to bed early, and then used the white noise app to help me get even more sleep during the night and ended up getting 8 hours of sleep total! Finally I have a morning where I don't feel like a zombie!! Thank goodness for a wonderful husband with awesome ideas!!

Awesome Cookie Husband

My Relief Society held a cookie exchange yesterday and because of everything that happened yesterday there was no way that I was able to make it to the cookie exchange. So today Kevin offered to go shopping while I stayed home with the napping Davy and I mentioned to Kevin that I was really craving cookies and would love it if he brought home cookies. Well he brought home so many cookies I now have no idea what to do with them all. I asked for gingerbread and fake girl scout cookies and maybe some take and bake cookies. Well he brought home all of those as well as quite a few others. More cookies than I wanted, more cookies than we need. But all that being said, he is such an awesome guy for it all! I know Mom Sampson reads this blog and let me just say, when it comes to Kevin you did really good in raising a good man. Not just for the fact that he fulfills my food cravings when I am pregnant but also because he is just an awesome husband. Yes, there are times when he can be frustrating, but in the end I know that he loves me dearly, cares about me greatly, and is completely committed in taking care of his family in every way he can. He is an awesome guy!

Hormones and Food

This week I have been craving tortilla chips and cheese dip, but we currently can't afford to get some until payday, which is Friday (tomorrow). So imagine my happiness when I discovered that chips and cheese dip were part of the party my parents threw for the grandkids yesterday. After everything was over my mom and dad tried to pawn off a lot of the food on both my sister and I. Kevin and I were the last ones to leave so whatever was left was basically given to us. As we were gathering up stuff, I said, "Hey, if you don't want it we will take the chips and cheese dip as well." I kind of felt guilty for asking for it, but they gave it to me so I ended up taking it home too. This morning close to 11 am I started getting hungry and remembered the cheese dip that was in the fridge. So I heated some up and started eating it with the tortilla chips. After not long of eating the chips and dip Kevin came by and started eyeing the chips and dip in a way that I knew he was going to ask for some.

But the problem was, I didn't want to share. I had been craving this all week long and had an awesome windfall before payday even came around, and there wasn't much of the cheese dip anyway. But I knew that claiming it all would be rude, so I told him he could have the rest if he wanted it. Well then as he went to get it he found some other cheese dip that we had in the fridge that I did not want to eat because I did not like the flavor of it. So he decides that he is going to mix the two and eat it.

Thinking back on it all the rational thing for me to have done would have been to ask nicely if he would let me have the cheese dip I had gotten from my parents and he could have all of the other cheese dip (which I knew he preferred). Instead I went into attack mode. And we got into an argument over it all. In the end he demanded that I ask nicely for the cheese dip I wanted, and I stubbornly refused to. Finally I calmed down enough to apologize for attacking him and he gave me the cheese dip, which helped me to calm down the rest of the way. After everything was done and finished and I was calm and happy again I said to him, "You know, arguing with a pregnant woman over her food is like wrestling with a tiger for a steak, it is about the same level on the danger scale." He thought about this for a little bit and then said, "Yes, but a pregnant woman is not going to kill you like a tiger would." "She might in your sleep." I said back. "No, I know how weak you are right now, you wouldn't be able to kill me." "Ok, true." I said, "But she can make your life miserable, which is almost as bad." "Yes, that is true." He said, "Which is why so many men are made miserable by their wives."

Thankfully Kevin is a great guy and awesome husband, and knows when it is best to just give me the food and save himself the suffering.

Poems and Cancer

Tonight I have been working on my computer, it pretty much crashed earlier today and we had to do a system reset to a past date when it worked. Then I scanned it and scanned it and tried to make sure to get rid of anything that might cause the problem again. While waiting I saw my old poetry journal that I made for myself when I was in college. It goes through the first few years of our marriage together, near the end it has one or two poems from our fourth and fifth year of marriage but mostly it holds poems from the first, second and third years of marriage. Wow, what a reminder. At first all the poems are mostly angsty little musings of a very young adult. I was 20 and still had memories of high school fresh in my mind and I was part of a writer's group where we pretty much spent a good amount of time reminiscing about how much public school sucked. The anger and love sick newlywed poetry leads very easily into the harsh cancer poetry. Those poems were such a sharp reminder. It has really been quite a long time since those days, but reading those poems brought it back so clearly. I am so glad that those days are behind me. I mean I wrote some fantastic poetry, but they were so rough on me. It has really been quite a while since I blogged like this. I really miss it, the whole voiding of the mind in the quiet times of the day. I really need to find times to do more of it. Especially now that I have "bed rest". I hate having nothing to do, I waste so much time. Anyway, it is getting late and both boys and both dogs are asleep so it is probably time for me to haul Kevin off the couch and into bed and haul myself there too.

So awesome!

I just wanted to write a post about how awesome Kevin is. I know I get frustrated with him a lot but all in all he is pretty great! When I look back on the last few months I find it incredible how much he has done. Not only did he get this house pretty much put together with the help of my dad, but he has helped me out in so many ways.

Before the baby he was the perfect husband, anytime I asked him to get something for me he would pretty much do it. And maybe as a pregnant woman I took advantage of that at times, but he didn't complain about it, ever. And when we went to the hospital to have the baby, my parents came and though it was nice having them there it was also a bit frustrating. Mostly because now that we were in the hospital they were focused on the baby completely. So when I was in discomfort they were like, "Yay, that means the baby is coming." Kevin though was immediately there for me, making sure to be there for me the entire time. Don't get me wrong, when it got down to it my mom really stepped it up and was awesome, but from the very beginning Kevin was there for me through it all. When the epidural failed he was the first one to realize that something was wrong and was immediately at my side making sure I was ok. After the baby came he took care of him for me so that I could get sleep. To the point where he changed every single dirty diaper that Davy had while we were at the hospital. Every single one.

Since we have come home Kevin has really been a good dad, yes there are times where I get frustrated and I wish he would do more. But for the most part he has been amazing. He has never turned me down when I have asked him to change a diaper, he is more than willing to feed the baby if I need him to. He loves to hold the baby, and almost every night he stays up till 2 am or 3 am and sometimes 5 am taking care of the baby so that I can get some uninterrupted sleep. How many husbands would do that? Really? To tell the truth because he does that we have better sleep than most new parents. I sleep from about Midnight to sometime around 7 am, 8 am, or 9 am and Kevin sleeps usually from 2 or 3 am till 9 am, 10 am, or 11 am. Not too bad considering. And Davy sleeps most of the night, which for being so young is really awesome for us.

All in all Kevin helps me keep my sanity, and has helped me to stay pretty stable during these first 3 weeks. And that in my book counts him as pretty darn awesome!

A while ago I heard a song on the Christian Rock station that reminds me of Kevin, and I wanted to share it:

The best husband for the job

I keep finding myself wanting to write about this, mostly because I have heard about husbands in the labor and delivery room who make the experience awful. Specifically I keep seeing commercials for the TV show "One born every minute" which follows women through the labor and delivery process. For the teaser clip they show a few scenes of the women in the labor and delivery room waiting for the baby to come and it shows the husbands and what they are doing and saying, and they are awful! One man plays around on his phone while his wife has contractions, one man tells his wife that he is bored and that the baby needs to come now. And it causes me to reflect on my experience.

As I mentioned before my epidural failed during my delivery, and it failed right as the transitional contractions were underway. Which means that I was dropped from a relatively pain-free experience right into the worst of it all. Kevin was the first one to realize that I was experiencing pain. And he realized it from the expression on my face. The moment he realized I was in pain he was immediately at my side holding my hand and saying comforting things to me. The next few hours were filled with pain, pushing, crying and a severe wanting on my part for the baby to be out of me so that the pain would stop. And all through it Kevin was at my side, holding my hand, saying comforting things to me. One of my favorite things he said, and kept saying was, "You are so beautiful." And he meant it, I could tell from the expression on his face when he said it. I have heard about women cursing at, screaming at, yelling at, punching, calling names, and many other things to their husbands, but when you have someone sitting there holding your hand, stroking your hair, and telling you that you are beautiful how can you get mad at that person?

As we got into the pushing I had to lean forward with each contraction, grab my legs and push for all I was worth for a count of ten. I was exhausted though, and could barely keep my eyes open let alone lean forward, and grab my legs. Thankfully both Kevin and my mom were there to help me. Kevin stood on one side and my mom on the other and together they would lift me up so that I could grab my legs, then they would help me lower back down and hold my hands after the contraction was over. They both kept telling me to squeeze their hands, but I hardly had the energy for that, I guess I did squeeze their hands hard at some point because I broke open the skin on my mom's hand with my nails at some point, and I almost did the same to Kevin. I probably could have made it through labor without my mom and Kevin, but I don't feel like it. They were a big necessity for me during the whole process. The doctor and the nurse kept telling me to get mad so that I would have more energy for the pushing, but I just couldn't get myself angry, yes I was in pain, but I had such a great support group there helping me that I just couldn't find anger in myself. Either way I got the job done and little David is here. It seems strange to think he has been here a week already. And even stranger to realize that yesterday was his official due date. It is good to have him here, I am so grateful for that little guy.

The I gave birth, before everything really got started Kevin went out to get some things. He came back with two dozen roses and a vase for them. He took of all the thorns when he got to the hospital and then set the flowers up for me. Everyone who came into the room stopped to smell them. The next day my parents came with flowers as well. It is one thing I remember clearly about my mom giving birth to my brother and sister, she got flowers. I am so thankful to both Kevin and my parents for remembering that and making sure I had flowers. They are so wonderful!

Father to be

Last night you sat down next to me
and rubbed your hands over my belly
and spoke to the baby residing there.
You called him by name, called him
by pet name, called to him and told
him what lies in your heart. I watched,
at first surprised, then embarassed
then amused, and amusement finally became
love. For a man who will be the father
to our baby, who already loves the little
child who will make our family complete.
You take away the fear that I have
about what kind of father you will be,
you leave me glowing with the anticipation
of the family we will become for our child.

Diaper Bag of Holding

Last night Kevin and I started discussing diaper bags. I asked him if he would be willing to carry around a diaper bag. He said, "Only as long as it doesn't look stupid or pretty, if you make sure it looks ok with no flowers and stuff on it then I will probably be fine with carrying one around."

Thus started our grand design to have a "Diaper Bag of Holding" created. For those unfamiliar with this let me explain. In the game of Dungeons and Dragons you can have all sorts of gear for your characters. One of the most useful items is a bag of holding. These bags basically open into an alternate demension or a pocket in space. The premise of the bags is that you can pretty much hold anything and everything. Think of Mary Poppins' bag.

Anyway, the website Think Geek offers a bag of holding, but what we really need is a diaper bag of holding. So we are setting out to see what can be done. If it all works we will have a diaper bag that Kevin is comfortable carrying that screams out our geekyness the whole world over.

Depending on how much it might cost the bag will probably look like this: