3 months

Now that we're making our way out of the newborn stage and venturing into just the plain old baby stage, I feel I can safely admit something. I really don't like the newborn stage. Eva was (is) a wonderful, sweet baby, but those first couple of months were just plain hard. With the crazy sleep deprivation, to the difficulties in feeding her, to the tragedy of my nephew's death, I am just really glad to be coming out of that period of time.

I have always liked and loved my baby, but the older she gets, the more I like her! She's just starting to interact more and as long as she's not hungry or overly tired, she's one happy kiddo. Her third month of life, she:

-Smiles quite a lot throughout the day and has started TRYING to laugh. It's usually just a breathy sound that escapes her lips, but it's coming!
-Transitioned from sleeping on my chest in bed with me, to sleeping in her pack 'n play next to the bed, to sleeping in her pack 'n play in her very own room. I wasn't expecting to move her so soon, but this mama was getting no sleep due to being a very light sleeper. So Evie got moved about 20 feet away, across the hall.
-Started getting a small bit of cereal in her bedtime bottle. She regressed and started waking up every hour or so at night, so we pulled the old cereal trick to get her to sleep longer again. It worked like a charm....for a few days. Then some issues (related or unrelated - still not sure) arose, so we went back to just formula.
-Made her second trip to Utah. She's becoming a real frequent flyer!
-We had our first set of days and nights just the two of us without anyone else around (Skylar was out of town for 4 days) and we survived just fine!
-Has discovered she has hands and sometimes when she swings them around, they can hit or move things.
-Is awake more and more of the day. She's a terrible napper, only taking 15 minute cat naps throughout the day, so she's awake quite a lot. Which means I get to see that sweet gummy grin a lot!

Stats:
Weight - 13 lbs 2 oz (60 %)
Height - 23.5 in (50%)
Head - 15.75 in (75 %)

Feelings On Nursing (or lack thereof)

I spent the first 5 weeks of Eva's life agonizing over her health and how she was eating. It was miserable. I couldn't fully enjoy her because of all the worry. Finally, after 5 difficult weeks, I decided to give up trying to nurse her. And just like that, I began to bond with my baby for the first time. While I don't regret my decision (it led to a much happier, healthier baby and mama), I do carry deep remorse over the entire situation.

I'm going to be perfectly frank here: I feel like an impostor as a mother. Rationally, I know that to be an absolutely ludicrous feeling, but deep down, there's a yearning for what I wasn't able to do for my baby. Because I'm not nursing her, I feel replaceable. I feel like anyone could just step in and take my place and life could carry on without skipping a beat.

I guess a big part of the reason I feel like a fake is because I tried to do most things the more natural, gentle way in terms of pregnancy and babies. I had a wonderful pregnancy guided by midwives, a powerful natural birth in a very peaceful environment, heck, I even cloth diapered! But as hard as I tried, I couldn't make breastfeeding (the most NATURAL thing of all) work for us.

When expressing my grief over our circumstance, many people (likely with good intentions) made comments to the effect of: "It's ok, there's always future babies you can try again with." While yes, that's true that I will absolutely be giving my everything (again) to breastfeed future babies, it does nothing for the here and now. Those future babies aren't Eva. I'll never be able to nurse her properly. I'll never be able to do for her what I'll (hopefully) do for her siblings. And that's what I mourn. Yes, I now know what I need to do differently to have a higher chance of success in breastfeeding, but I mourn the loss of that with this baby. She's my only Eva.

When I see or hear of friends (or even strangers) discussing anything to do with breastfeeding, I feel a pit in my stomach and a quick pain in my chest. I feel like such a phony because I'm missing that one piece of motherhood. Like I said, logically I know this to be ridiculous. Lots and lots of women bottle feed their babies for all kinds of reasons and they are wonderful mothers. But I can't get rid of this feeling. It's getting to the point that I'm avoiding these friends that have even innocently mentioned anything about their positive experiences breastfeeding. It's crazy!

I figured I would struggle with these feelings for a while, but I had no idea I would still be feeling this way months later. I know this is such a minor, silly trial (especially in light of such devastating circumstances people close to me are dealing with right now) and I've tried to bury these feelings all this time. But I still feel them, no matter how deeply they're buried.

My baby is happy and healthy and I know that's all that matters. I just hope these feelings subside over time.

2 Months

Poor baby girl - already getting a bit neglected. Isn't the first child supposed to get overly smothered with all the ridiculous details only a first time mom cares about? Since we were traveling for basically an entire month due to unfortunate circumstances, I'm going to give us a pass for missing her 1 month updates. Quite a lot happened in her first month of life.

-Received the nicknames Bug, Sugar Bug, June Bug, and Evie Girl.
- Her sweet cousin, Garrett, passed away so we made 2 trips to DFW and back to be with family and also flew to Utah and back for the funeral.
- She had surgery for her severe lip and tongue tie (on her one month birthday no less :( happy birthday, baby).
- She struggled so hard with nursing and finally at 3 weeks she began bottle feeding. We slowly transitioned from breast milk to formula.
- Once on a bottle, she started sleeping longer stretches at night (going from waking every hour while nursing to waking every 3-4 hours on the bottle).
- Because she started on formula, her poo became more gross and difficult to deal with in cloth diapers, so we switched from cloth to disposable. More expensive, but far easier clean up for formula fed babies.

Sadly, I don't have an official 1 month photo or stats from the doctor (because we were out of town from weeks 2-6 of her life, so we didn't make a 1 month appt). So here are some cute pictures from her first month:

During her second month of life, things began to slow back down a bit. We eventually came back home to San Antonio (after she recovered and had her post-op check up for her surgery) and began to start figuring out our groove. But here's what went down during her second month:

-She started smiling intentionally! It was only 1 or 2 smiles a day at first, but gradually she started grinning more and more.
-She LOVES to be talked to, especially when you have a smile on your face. She'll just stare as you say things to her.
-She's become best friends with this cute decoration Jenn (Skylar's long time friend) made for her. It hangs on the wall above her changing table and she absolutely loves looking at it and smiling at it. I use it to keep all her bows easily accessible, so I'm not sure if it's the colors she loves or what. She'll happily lay there for 10 minutes or more just watching it (even though it doesn't move).
-Got her first round of shots and handled it like a champ, only letting out one yelp as they stuck her.
-Began tolerating her car seat a little more. The first month, she would SCREAM the entire time she had to be in her car seat (except on the long drives to/from DFW for some reason. God was merciful with that).
-Started having regular tummy time. At first she completely hated it and wouldn't last more than a few seconds before screaming, but it's getting better. She's always had a really strong neck (from the first few minutes after she was born, she was pushing herself off my chest and moving her head around), but we're just trying to stabilize those muscles ;)

2 month stats:
Weight: 11 lbs, 3.5 oz (50%)
Height: 21.75 inches (25%)
Head: 15.5 inches (75%)

And now for the cutest 2 month old bug you've ever seen:

I don't know  if it was just all the difficulties and sadness we faced during her first month, but it seemed to drag on and on and on. Her second seemed to fly by. I know time will only speed up from here on out. I sure do like this kiddo and I love being her mama!

Failure Turned Blessing

Don't you love it when you have to eat your words? This is a story of being humbled. It's about the time that I experienced my first big failure of motherhood, and the blessing it turned out to be.

Breast is best. I've heard that for years and I absolutely believe it. I got my degree in public health so I knew the many benefits (physical, mental, emotional, etc.) of breastfeeding your baby. Before I had one of my own, I had many opinions (they were facts in my head) about the best way to raise a child. Breastfeeding was, no doubt, the best way to go and anyone who didn't breastfeed probably just didn't try very hard. That was what I believed to be true. Then along came Evangeline.

She was quite small when she was born. Perfectly healthy, but on the small side. She wasn't ever able to latch and we all attributed it to the fact that she was just weak because of her small size (and the fact that my nipples aren't ideal for nursing). I had been trying to nurse her all that first day without much luck, and by that first night she was so hungry she was just screaming. Clueless and desperate, I sent Skylar to the store at 2 a.m. to get some formula. My baby needed to eat, after all. The next day, my midwife came out to our house for the routine postpartum check. I told her about the night before and was reassured that we did the right thing. Amber gave me a nipple shield and said it would help Eva nurse until she was bigger and stronger and could do it on her own. For two weeks, I nursed my baby round the clock. She would literally be latched on (with the help of the nipple shield) for about 20 hours a day. Something didn't feel right about the situation, but everyone just kept telling me that it gets better. Eventually, hearing that only made me more frustrated and concerned.

The day Eva turned two weeks old, I got a nightmare of a phone call from my brother. My sister and her five kids were visiting my parents in DFW and her youngest, Garrett, had drowned that afternoon. He had been rushed by life flight to the children's hospital, but was brain dead and would not survive. We hurriedly packed our things and Skylar, Eva, Indiana (our dog), and I made the 250 mile drive to my parent's to be there for Veronica and her family. We spent nearly a week there, learning what it means to mourn with those that mourn. But all that deserves a post of its own, so I won't go into that here..

While it isn't ideal (or recommended) to do much traveling with a two week old, it is doable - though we quickly found out it has its consequences. We were out of our comfort zone, stressed, grieving, living in a hotel, and spending our days at my parent's house that was FULL of 25+ people at any given time. I continued trying to nurse Eva, but it was getting harder and harder given the circumstances. Soon I noticed that her diaper output was dropping and she hadn't been gaining much weight. After a few nights of being there, Eva began having trouble staying latched on even with the nipple shield. After a 4 hour stretch of nursing and her falling off the boob, she gave up and just cried because she was still so hungry. I decided to give her a bottle of formula just to see how she did. Up until that point, she had had a bottle a few times. She sucked down 5 ounces in less than an hour. That's a lot for a 2 1/2 week old! I realized I had been starving my poor, struggling baby.

I made the decision that I would continue to try to nurse, but that I would also pump and bottle feed Eva breast milk until we could get back on track. I knew that bottle feeding could very likely deter her from going back to the breast later on, but we were in a constant state of traveling at that point, and I needed to make sure she was getting enough to eat. Much to my surprise, however, when I started pumping I discovered that my milk supply had dropped drastically and I was barely producing anything anymore. Eva had been having such a hard time getting much out of nursing, thus causing my body to cut my supply way down. Also, the stress of the whole situation can really do some damage in situations like this. After talking to lots of people, I formulated a plan for getting my supply back up. I would pump every 2-3 hours, in addition to increasing my water intake and supplementing with various herbs. I would still nurse her, but pumping and bottle feeding would be her primary source of food for a while. Thus began a very difficult journey.

While discussing all this with my mom, she decided to look up the local chapter of La Leche League and we saw that they were having their monthly meeting the next day. What were the odds? I attended the meeting and talked to the women about the problems I'd been having. They were supportive, but I began to feel a bit discouraged because it was all just uplifting talk. Nothing particularly helpful. The last 15 minutes of the meeting, however, the last leader showed up. She just so happened to be a board certified lactation consultant. After talking to her and having her watch a bit of Eva nursing, she checked Eva's mouth and found that she had a severe lip and tongue tie. THAT was why she wasn't able to nurse well. She was able to give me a referral for a dentist that could perform the surgery she needed and I made an appointment with him for a couple weeks out (that was the earliest they could see Eva).

After a few days of pumping all the time, Eva began to prefer the bottle and fought me hard at the boob. I continued to try to nurse her a couple times a day, but because I was having to pump so much, there was hardly anything in there for her and she HATED it. After a week of being in DFW and a few days into my pumping adventure, we headed back to San Antonio for a few days before flying up to Utah for Garrett's funeral. My supply wasn't increasing at all, but it was at least maintaining, so I continued even though my nipples were being torn to shreds and I was losing pieces of skin off them. The night before we were supposed to leave for Utah, I woke up in the middle of the night with a high fever, chills, and horrible pain in my boobs. My mom had warned me of infection and told me to get to the doctor, but I never made time to do it. Now I was facing the consequences. The next morning, I went to urgent care and was told I had mastitis. I was so engorged and with that and the infection, pumping was so painful. We had to drive back up to DFW that day so Skylar could attend a conference for work, then we'd be flying to Utah after that. That was a miserable journey.

We spent a day in DFW then four days in Utah. With all the traveling and stress, it was incredibly difficult to properly take care of myself, pump on the appropriate schedule, and take care of Eva while attempting to pump on the appropriate schedule. (Without fail, every time I'd try to pump, Eva would wake up and need me. It is literally impossible to pump and take care of her without another person helping.) My supply began to shrink even more, despite my best efforts. After flying back into DFW, Eva's appointment with the dentist was the next day. The surgery went remarkably well. I was still hopeful that after the surgery we'd be able to nurse, but I knew we'd need help so I called the lactation consultant who diagnosed Eva a couple weeks before. She wasn't able to see us until five days after the surgery, and I began to worry that by that point we'd be so far gone from nursing that we wouldn't be able to make it back. My mastitis cleared up, which made pumping easier, but then Eva got thrush in her mouth AND her bottom.

When the day of the lactation consultation arrived, Eva was in so much pain and was screaming all the time from the thrush, that I had to cancel the appointment. There was no way it would be productive and would end up being a waste of time and money.

Throughout all this I wanted to breastfeed my baby so badly, but in trying to make that happen she and I were both getting extremely stressed out with everything working against us. The bonding that's supposed to take place early on was being strained and I wasn't able to enjoy my sweet, precious newborn. As we approached her 5 week mark (the day when the lactation consultation was supposed to take place) and I was having to solely bottle feed her, the thought of having to go straight formula became less stress-inducing and more relieving.

After cancelling the appointment that day, I was soothing my crying child who was in great pain and feeding her a bottle. For the first time I felt like I was finally bonding with her. Finally, I was able to just take care of my baby without the strain of trying to take care of her "the BEST way." And my decision was made: I will no longer be breastfeeding my first born child. I won't even be pumping to give her breast milk anymore because 1) I'm barely producing anything anymore and 2) I cannot pump unless another person is there and able to take care of Eva while I do so, and I don't have that luxury at home.

And guess what? I'm still a good mother. From struggling to get her to latch, to starving her, to later finding out she was lip and tongue tied, to pumping and shredding my nipples, to getting mastitis, to surgery, to thrush, to the shrinking of my milk supply, all while traveling all over the country to deal with the stress of my family's grief over my nephew's death, I can honestly say I gave it my best effort. Perhaps I could have tried to reschedule with the lactation consultant to see if we could still try to salvage nursing, but my poor baby has been through enough. We've finally begun to get into a routine which just happens to involve formula and a bottle (we're still in DFW - we're not even home yet) and we're FINALLY bonding. I can't bring myself to disrupt her little life yet again to battle with her over nursing. There's no guarantee we can even make it work at this point (and even if we could, my milk is almost gone anyway), and we're finally getting to a place where we're happy. And isn't that what matters? Sure there are benefits to breastfeeding that formula doesn't have, but we weren't reaping many of those benefits in her short 5 weeks of life so far. My baby will still be happy and healthy and our relationship will thrive from here on out.

So, I failed at breastfeeding my baby. But because of my perceived failure, I was given the gift of having my eyes opened. Now, whenever I see a mother who loves her child, that's all I see: love. I no longer see that she's breastfeeding or bottle feeding, cloth diapering or using disposables, co-sleeping or crib-sleeping, helicopter parenting or letting her kids be independent. There are so many RIGHT ways to raise a child. If a mother loves her child, then she's doing what works best for them. And who am I to say what's best for them? In my very short experience of motherhood, I have been given a wonderful blessing: I'm far less judgmental and far more compassionate than I ever used to be - all because of my "failure."

And now,some cuteness:

Good News! A Birth Story.

I guess the pregnancy posts are done. It's time to move on to baby posts! Our baby girl made her debut into the world on Saturday, June 28, 2014! It's only been a few days, but already I'm starting to forget some of the crazy details surrounding her birth, so a narrative is in order.

This is really long, so before I begin, here are the stats of interest:

-Labor technically started at 2:30 am Friday, June 27

-Labored about 26 hours

-"Pushed" for 11 minutes

-Baby was born at 5:11 am Saturday, June 28 (only about half an hour after we made it to the birth center)

-Labor and delivery was done naturally and baby was born in the tub at the birth center in New Braunfels

-Baby girl weighed 6 lbs 6 oz and was 18 inches long

-After two days, we finally named the baby Evangeline Nita Buras (Eva for short)

Friday morning I woke up around 2:30 to what felt like period cramps. After laying in bed for another half hour through several of these cramps, I figured I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon and decided to get up and hang out in the living room for a bit. Soon after I got up, the cramps changed to what I figured must be mild contractions and began to get fairly rhythmic (maybe a contraction every 5 or 6 minutes, but only lasting about 30 seconds) . They weren't horribly painful, but they were getting pretty uncomfortable. Over the next two hours, the pain wasn't really increasing and they were staying about 30-40 seconds long, but they began to come every 3-4 minutes. I figured this was just false labor (I was only 39 weeks that day and was convinced I would be pregnant for at least 42 weeks), so I decided to get in the shower and see if that slowed them down. On my way into the bathroom, Skylar woke up and I told him I'd been having contractions for two hours, but it was probably nothing so to go back to sleep.

The shower didn't do anything to slow them down and I didn't want to deal with "false labor" anymore so about 6:30 that morning I decided to try lying down again and see if that did anything. They slowed down to 8 minutes apart and then gradually spread out to about 20 minutes apart and I was able to fall asleep between contractions. About 9:30 I called my mom to let her know that it would probably still be several days at least, but that my body was doing something (she was planning to drive down when I went into real labor and be there for the birth). I went ahead and got up and went about my day as planned. I had lots of chores I had been planning to do and it seemed like a good day to check off my to do list.

Throughout the day, as I cleaned and did laundry and such, I would have 1 or 2 contractions every hour, but again, figured it was just my body starting to maybe, kind of, sort of think about having a baby in the next week or so. As the day wore on, the contractions did get stronger, but they were still very manageable so I kept working. About 7:00 that evening Skylar and I were hungry and after spending the day on my feet, I didn't feel like cooking dinner, so we went to a Chinese buffet. On the way there, the contractions started picking up again to about 10 minutes apart until we got home a couple hours later. We called it a night and went to bed pretty early (around 10:00 or so), but the contractions started to get closer together and I quickly learned that I hated contracting while lying down. After the second or third contraction in bed, my body started shaking uncontrollably and I almost threw up. I knew that often happens during transition, but my contractions were only about 8 minutes apart at that point and I still didn't think this was the real thing. I told Skylar to go to bed and I got up to try to get some sleep in the recliner in the living room.

By this point, my contractions were getting stronger, but they were still very manageable. After a couple of hours I got out of the recliner, but I honestly don't remember what I did during the next two hours. All I know is, suddenly it was 2:30 Saturday morning and my contractions were about 5 minutes apart, lasting about 1 minute each, and had been doing so for about an hour. Ah, I had finally reached 5-1-1. Up until that point, I still wasn't fully convinced I was in real, active labor that would result in anything anytime soon because I STILL hadn't lost my mucous plug, much less broke my water (I knew my water may not break until the end, but I figured I would at least lose my plug before real labor set in). I decided to go ahead and call my midwife to see what she wanted to do. She told me to get in the shower and call her back in an hour unless something changed before then. I called my mom and told her we were probably having a baby that day so she should start making her way down. I went into our room and woke up Skylar (yes, I had let him sleep during all that because there was nothing he could do and I wanted at least one of us well rested in case this turned into something). I tried getting undressed to get into the shower, but my contractions really started picking up and I knew it would be impossible to accomplish that feat. Suddenly my contractions were two minutes apart and it was becoming difficult to work through them. I told Skylar to call Galyn (the midwife) back and tell her how close they were. She told us to go ahead and come in to the birth center. Skylar called our birth photographer and loaded the car as I put in my contacts and brushed my teeth. Those things were incredibly difficult to do by that point!

We made the 30 minute drive to the birth center in New Braunfels, and sometime during those 15+ contractions in the car, I accepted this was it and we were having a baby that day. We finally got to the birth center around 4:30 and Galyn helped me inside as Skylar brought stuff in from the car. She checked me and said I was at a 7 and that my water was going to break any minute. As soon as she said that, there was a tidal wave! She said I could get in the tub if I wanted, but I decided to stop by the toilet first. While sitting on the toilet, I had two contractions and during the second one, I felt my body forcing the baby down which caused me to involuntarily lurch forward. I was so surprised by that feeling! I got in the tub and had another contraction just like that one.

All of a sudden, my body was not my own anymore. The baby was being forced down so fast and hard that I had no control at all. Labor up until that point was exactly as I had expected it. Not fun, but manageable through the pain. I did NOT, however, expect to go from 7 cm to 10 cm in less than 20 minutes and have my body turn itself inside out while I stood on the sidelines and watched. My body was pushing the baby out and I could do nothing about it. Galyn realized what was happening (probably by the exorcist type sounds that suddenly were coming out of my mouth) and rushed to "hold things together" as the baby was already crowning. She told me to stop pushing, but I had no control. I wasn't the one pushing - my body was. I tried so hard to stop it, but the baby was about to come flying out. Galyn told Skylar she needed him to help catch the baby so she could make sure the "damage" from the force was as minimal as possible. Skylar barely got his watch off just as the baby shot out and almost hit the opposite end of the tub. He grabbed her and lifted her out of the water to put her on my chest.

She soon started crying the most perfect little cry and opened her eyes after just a minute. I was in shock. I couldn't believe she was here! It happened so unbelievably fast that I didn't have time to process it all. The baby and I stayed in the tub for a while as the midwives drained and refilled it and we nursed a little bit right there. After a while though, I had to get out so Galyn could assess the damage to my nether regions. Because of the technique these midwives use, they almost never have a woman tear during birth. They maybe get one tear every 8 months. But we knew I was going to be the unlucky one in that statistic, simply because of how crazy fast this girl came. Sure enough, I got torn up pretty good and she had to stitch me up, but it wasn't (and still isn't) as awful as I had expected it to be. After making sure I was stable and checking/weighing/measuring the baby, the midwives and photographer left us to rest and eat the breakfast Stephanie (the apprentice midwife) had gotten for us. Honestly though, I just wanted to get home and get to my own bed. We did eat and rest for just a bit and then I got cleaned up just as my parents got to the birth center at 9:00. They saw the baby, gave hugs, then went on to meet us back at our house.

We got home, rested and my parents drove back that afternoon (they'll be coming back down next week). Since then, Skylar has been off work and we've been trying to figure out how to take care of this beautiful, perfect baby girl. We've had some problems with nursing, but that's to be expected and we're slowly getting better at it. On Monday, we finally settled on a name: Evangeline Nita Buras.

Evangeline means "messenger of good news" and Skylar first became interested in the name because it's the name of the little girl in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Nita was Skylar's mom's name and it means "Gift of God." We'll probably call her Eva. We feel like names are super important and should be meaningful so we didn't want to settle on a name until we met this girl and felt more sure of what her name was supposed to be.

She is just the sweetest thing and is SO beautiful. I've loved watching Skylar interact and love on her and this baby loves him right back. His voice and warmth soothe her. We're still in shock at how it all went down, but we're so grateful everything went well and that we're all healthy and happy.

Alien Contortions

I've been getting braxton hicks contractions since I was about 22 weeks along. At first they were relatively infrequent (maybe one every couple of days) and quite mild in terms of "discomfort." As the weeks have worn on, however, they've gotten to the point where I get at least one every hour or so and sometimes they're strong enough that I can't talk and have to retreat within myself until it subsides 30-60 seconds later.

I usually enjoy looking down at my belly as I feel one coming on because it goes from nicely rounded to eerily lopsided. The baby typically likes to spend most of her time with her back up against the front right side of my belly (hooray for anterior babies! Since I have an anterior placenta, I was afraid she'd stay posterior - and I did NOT want to deliver a posterior baby). When I have braxton hicks, the uterus tightens up all around the baby and you can distinctly see her back protruding out the front right side. It is the strangest and coolest thing!

This was the best I could do for this post (from the perspective of me looking down at my belly). If you look hard enough, you can see the left picture is normal belly and the right picture is during a mild braxton hicks contraction. You can kind of see the right side of my belly sticking out a little farther.

When the contraction isn't too strong and I'm able to function through it, I like to put my hand on belly and just feel how perfectly my hand fits over her tiny curved back. As we're getting down to mere days (hopefully) or weeks (more likely) before we get to meet this girl, I'm finally starting to feel a little bit more connected to her. I'm really looking forward to feeling how perfectly my hand fits around her back as she's laying against my chest.

As I type this, she's wide awake and bouncing around in there. I can see my belly jumping and contorting in ways that must look so foreign to outsiders, yet have grown so familiar and normal to me. These are the moments I'll miss about pregnancy - when it's just the two of us playing together and the world has no idea there's something special happening.

And just for fun - this was a few days ago at about 38 weeks.

Third Trimester

I'm 2/3 of the way through the last 1/3 of this pregnancy. That means I only have a month left to go (give or take a little bit, depending on when she decides to arrive)! I can't believe we're getting down to the wire now. I feel SO lucky to have had such a great pregnancy so far. Maybe I'm jumping the gun here. Maybe the last month will be hell. But I feel like I can honestly say I like being pregnant and I'm probably going to miss it after the baby gets here. Crazy? Like I said, maybe.

The first trimester was pretty much a breeze. I only felt nauseous a few times, I typically wasn't any more tired than normal. Almost nothing about my life changed much except that I started checking out midwives/birth centers (though, I think I actually did all that research before I had even confirmed I was pregnant). We told our parents really soon after finding out, then told family around 6 or 7 weeks, then told "the world" about 12 weeks.

As I entered the second trimester, I initially thought I was finally going to start experiencing all the negative effects of pregnancy everyone complains about. For a couple of weeks I was exhausted. As I mentioned in a previous post, my gag reflex suddenly turned on though I never did actually throw up. And then that subsided after a month or so. I did have to start sleeping on my sides instead of my back (which took some training for my body), but once I finally figured out the proper "nest" of pillows, that became fairly comfortable. My main annoyance was incredibly superficial. By the end of my second trimester, I still wasn't looking pregnant, just fat. But so what? I was healthy and the baby was healthy. And aside from several super intense bouts of heartburn near the end of the second trimester (in which I temporarily thought I was possibly having a heart attack), I was still feeling pretty great.

Because I had gotten so lucky for the first 2/3 of my pregnancy, I figured there was NO way my last trimester would follow suit. It just didn't add up. The women in my family all seemed to suffer during pregnancy either from morning sickness, migraines, intense swelling, extreme dehydration (probably from the morning sickness), or whatever. I couldn't possibly be so lucky as to actually somewhat enjoy pregnancy.

Yet here I am, less than a month to go (theoretically) and I'm still comfortable enough that I'm not anxious to get this baby out. Sure I've got braxton hicks quite frequently (but I've been getting those since about 22 weeks), my feet and ankles are so swollen they're even stretching out my flip flops, and I've recently developed carpal tunnel syndrome and now have to wear splints on my wrists day and night, but those are my worst complaints! Seriously, that's it!

For me, pregnancy has been such a cool experience. I've loved getting to feel life form and thrive inside of me. And even though by the time I deliver I will have probably gained close to 60 lbs, I've loved seeing my body expand so uniformly and perfectly. It seems to be getting soft in all the right places that a baby would want to snuggle. Sure I'm covered in stretch marks and I'll never look the same as I did before kids, but why would I want to? I'll never be the same person I was before kids. I love my body for so effortlessly doing exactly what it was made to do.

(36 weeks and a couple days. Please note my crazy swollen feet and also Indiana's prime position in this picture.)

Little Hands and Feet

One of the coolest and also weirdest parts of pregnancy has been feeling the baby move around in there. I first started feeling her in early February (when I was about 18 weeks along). The kicks were so light I wasn't sure if it was the baby or just my guts doing their thing. Then a couple weeks later I felt her kicks from the outside for the first time. We were on a cruise with my whole family and I was sitting up in bed reading with my hand resting on my little belly. Suddenly my hand was lifted just a little bit. Then again. Then one more time. Then she was done for the night.

As the weeks progressed I could feel her getting stronger and stronger. Sometimes the kicks and jabs were so powerful it would literally make me jump from surprise. My favorites though were when I could feel her rolling over from one side to the other. One time I was lightly pressing around on my belly, trying to see if I could feel what position she was in. I found her bum on the upper right side of my uterus and all of a sudden she scooted her booty clear across the front over to the left side. No doubt, there's a real live person in there.

The last few weeks, however, she's started to run out of room. I feel far less kicks and rolls these days as she mostly only has room to wiggle her hands and feet. Though it can get a little uncomfortable to have her feet constantly pushing up on my ribs, it's reassuring to feel that her head is down where it should be. (Now if I could just get her to stay facing backward like she should be instead of wanting to face forward, we'd be in good shape.) I always know when she's awake because her feet are constantly in motion during those minutes. These days I'm loving the moments when I feel her move her hands, especially when I can feel her little fingers wiggling around and feeling her environment. The way those tiny movements feel, I can almost see her opening and closing her fists down by her face.

I am so looking forward to getting to touch and kiss those tiny hands and feet. It will be so cool to finally see those little appendages that I've become so well acquainted with over the months. I feel like I already know just how they look. Her face is a different story though. I have no clear image in my mind of what I think she'll look like. I can't wait to find out!

(But I can wait. In fact, I can wait AT LEAST 3 more weeks, baby girl. I'm only 34 1/2 weeks along, so just keep on cooking. We're not quite ready for you yet.)

Confidence For the Teenage Years

Skylar is serving in the young men/scouts program at church and this past weekend we were asked to chaperone the stake youth dance. The theme for this dance was simply "decades" so we did our best to come up with something (which ended up being a little harder than we thought because it was still church dress). We went with 60's, figuring that would be the easiest.

Once we got there and the kids started showing up, we realized that it was one of the boys from our ward's first stake dance. I had Josh in my Sunday School class and I really love the kid, but I knew he was kind of....different....so I told Skylar we needed to encourage him to put himself out there and really experience his first dance. I had no idea Skylar would take that challenge and run with it!

Skylar marched across the gym, sat himself down right against Josh along the wall, and began his pep talk. After just a few songs, he somehow had gotten Josh out on the floor with everyone else doing the electric slide. It was so funny to watch this poor, terribly uncoordinated, horribly awkward 14 year old boy try to keep up with everyone else who seemed to know what they were doing, but apparently that was all he needed to break out of his shell. Josh danced every slow song with a different girl and several other fun songs after that! Periodically Skylar made the rounds to the other boys in our ward and got them going too.

I couldn't believe how comfortable he looked with all those gawky teenagers. It gave me a great sense of relief to know that when our time comes to get our teenage children out of their own way and live life, I've got a partner who's a natural at that sort of thing. I had no idea Skylar had that in him - or that it would come so naturally! Regardless of his supposed feelings toward EFY, he would have been a really great youth counselor.

Seriously though, the relief. Even if I feel like I'm going to screw up our teenagers, I've got Skylar to step in and help me out! Whew!

THE Ultrasound

February was a whirlwind. We started the month off in Utah for my niece Hailey's baptism.

A few days after we got home we set sail to the western Caribbean with my ENTIRE family for 8 days. It was a beautiful, glorious 8 days (a little surprisingly, as there were NO fights at all between any of us during this trip).

The very next day after we got back from the cruise, Skylar and I flew off to Ohio for a roofing convention where we won an award!

And then, the day we got back from Ohio, we went in for another ultrasound for the sole purpose of learning,  once and for all, this baby's gender.

I have no idea why it was made known to me years ago that this girl was coming, but I'm getting more and more excited for her presence every day! When I think about this daughter, I find that I don't give too many of my thoughts to her babyhood, but rather to her whole "personhood," if you will. Of course I'm looking forward to snuggling a newborn fresh from above (everyone says it's the best), but mostly I'm looking forward to knowing this person. I can't wait to learn all about her, learn from her, and be right there with her as she progresses through life.

And, if I'm being honest, one of the things I'm most excited for is to see how much she and her dad are going to love each other. Our "oldest daughter" (Indiana, our dog) stole Skylar's heart last year. I've never seen a man love his girl dog the way Skylar loves Indiana. And he is her FAVORITE thing in the whole world. When he's around, I might as well be chopped liver. And that's fine with me because that dog KNOWS she's loved. So I can't imagine the dynamic that will develop between this father and daughter (of the same species).

So keep on cookin', baby girl. We're excited to spend the rest of our lives with you, but there's still plenty to do (on your part and ours) before that adventure begins.

I can't get enough of that profile. It's just so cute!

Girl Of My Dreams

This post was written the first week of February 2014:


I was never the little girl who pretended to be the mommy to all her dolls. I don't think I really even had dolls. I didn't play "house" very often, but when I did I was often cast as the dad (or the dog). As I got older I babysat a lot because it was easy and for some reason parents trusted me with their spawn, but I never oooh-ed and awww-ed over babies or cared about holding them. (I still don't, actually).

After Skylar and I got married, we immediately moved up to Utah so I could finish my degree. We were surrounded by people our age, in similar roles in life, doing similar things as us. But one difference was that either they were having kids or they were pining away for their future children. But not me. I knew one day I'd have children and I'd most likely be a stay at home mom. I even knew that was what I was made for and I'd probably be decent at it (even though I knew there would be plenty of times I'd feel like I was doing it all wrong) and I was perfectly ok with it. Not an ounce of remorse in the decision I had already made for myself years in advance. But I felt no urgency in getting there.

Just a few months after our wedding, I had a dream about a baby girl. She was probably about 6 months old, in a little dress, sitting on the ground. She turned and looked at me in the dream. And that was it. I woke up thinking that was a strange dream to have and went about my day. A couple months later I had another dream about a little girl. Nothing elaborate in the dream, just an image of a baby girl. This continued to happen periodically for the next few years. I never felt like this girl was telling us she was waiting for us or to hurry up and get her here; it was more like a friendly hello. I figured once we started having kids we'd probably have a girl at some point, but that was about it.

While in India a couple summers ago, I couldn't help but feel drawn to the women of that place. They were strong and they loved their children. I most enjoyed watching mothers and daughters on the buses as we traveled to and from the slums every week. To most speculators, it probably just looked like every other mother and daughter traveling home together after a long day at work and school. But I loved looking for the little displays of love between them. Simple things like a mother brushing back the hair that had fallen across her daughter's cheek as she rested her sleepy head on her mother's shoulder. These were their mothers' girls. And they loved them.

As soon as I got pregnant, I felt like this was it. Our girl was coming to us first. Truth be told, Skylar and I were hoping for a boy (mostly just because we're the younger ones in our families so we rarely get to be first at anything - and producing the first grandson to carry on the Buras name would be pretty sweet), but I knew she was coming. My girl. At first the thought scared me a little. Girls can be so emotional and dramatic. Their feelings of self-worth can be swayed so easily by others and that's hard to protect as they get older. But no matter, because my girl was coming and she would be loved fiercely.

We had our first ultrasound last week and the little wiggle worm wouldn't let the tech get a decent look at the goods, but I knew.

One of my favorite things about that ultrasound was when the tech was making sure the organs looked good and she spent a few minutes looking at the heart. She was impressed with our babe and said, "The heart looks perfect. Most of the time babies tend to hide their heart, but not yours. Your baby is showing it off." I feel like that's a good sign for who this little person will grow up to be.

Skylar wants to get another ultrasound next month to confirm the gender because he doesn't want to be surprised. But I already know. I've known for years. It's her in there. My girl.

(I must say, I think this baby is shaping up to have a pretty cute nose.)

According to Plan

This post was written back in the first week of February 2014:


Sometimes I wish I could join in with all the people who share their stories about how their lives didn't go at all according to plan. They're always exciting tales full of interesting and unexpected turns. But either I'm one of the most boring people alive or I quickly forget there was ever a time that I wanted something different. I'm not sure which it is, but my life doesn't have many plot twists.

All  that is to say: a year ago, Skylar and I decided we would start trying for a baby in the fall of 2013. When I peed on that stick on October 18, I was looking pretty hard for a line. I couldn't be sure if I just wanted to see one or if there really was the teeniest shadow of a line, so I peed on one the next day. And the next. And the next. That line got brighter and brighter each time I went for another stick until finally there was absolutely no doubt about it: these sticks were telling me there was a baby coming.

Being the realist that I am, I planned for a very difficult first trimester. My mom and one of my sisters were incredibly sick the first few months (if not the whole pregnancy) and my other sister had bad acid reflux and migraines while pregnant. I stocked up on crackers and ginger ale and every time there even a hint of queasiness, I downed those things. By 7 weeks I was sure I was going to hit the morning sickness wall and live hovered over my toilet. But by 12 weeks I finally started to relax a little. I never came close to getting sick beyond a few days of mild nausea here and there. In fact, I felt remarkably normal the entire first trimester. No fatigue (except for a 48 hour period where I slept about 36 of those hours), no sickness, no moodiness. I even took a couple more pregnancy tests just to make sure I really was pregnant (as if hearing the baby's heartbeat at my first appointment with my midwife wasn't enough). I gained more weight than I "should" have, but I was feeling fantastic. I was even still working out at exactly the same intensity I had been before getting pregnant.

Then the second trimester rolled around and my body decided to do things backwards. All of a sudden my gag reflex turned on. I gag when I sneeze. I gag when I cough. I gag when I see a few tiny leftover hairs in the sink from Skylar shaving his beard. I gag when I think about gagging. Still no throwing up and not too much nausea, but lots and lots of gagging. And the exhaustion. Holy moly. I run a lot of errands around town for work and after 2 stops I'm pooped. I have to sit in the car and give myself a pep talk for 15 minutes before I can go into the next place. Just doing housework wears me out so badly I can't go more than 30 minutes at a time without sitting down and taking a break. You'd think I'd sleep like a rock at night because of this, but you'd be wrong. I'm a back sleeper by nature, but sleeping on your back is a no no after the first trimester so I'm trying to train myself to sleep on my side. But I wake up every half hour because that's not where my body wants to be.

And the pregnancy hormones finally really hit the other day. It was a Saturday morning and I had a bunch of errands I needed to run. Skylar had left his car at the office the night before so I was going to take him over there on my way out to take care of things. Once we got in the car, however, the demon within woke up. Now this demon is not referring to the baby, but rather to the insane hunger that strikes quickly and randomly and causes me to become a raving lunatic until I have food in my belly. I'm told this is caused from growth spurts, but that sounds too plausible. It's that bad. SO, I realize this is coming on as we're pulling out of the driveway and I tell Skylar we would need to stop and get me something to eat on the way because there was no possibility of me making the 8 minute drive to the office in one piece. The thing is, there's no fast food places directly on the way, so we would have to make a minor detour. Long story short, he was annoyed by this, I ended up telling him nevermind, I'd just try to find something at a gas station (that he was going to stop at on the way to get Dr. Peppers), I got a disgusting sandwich from Shell, and after 2 bites I broke down in tears. I sobbed through a few more bites before I couldn't stomach anymore nastiness. What? I know. Ridiculous.

But really, who can complain when you've had a pregnancy like mine so far? I'm not uncomfortable and I'm not throwing up. Maybe my third trimester will be hell. Or maybe this baby will come out super colicky and never sleep. But so far, it's easy to forget I'm pregnant most of the time because I feel relatively normal. At 17 1/2 weeks, I'm feeling pretty thankful this pregnancy so far has been very different from those of the other women in my family. If this keeps up, I may just have 10 more babies.

(This picture was actually taken while we were on a cruise with the McCorkle family at the 20 week mark - but that was when I finally got around to start taking belly pictures. 17 1/2 weeks looked pretty similar, but a little less belly.)

Changing of Seasons

I wrote this post in late September 2013. I never posted it because (like all the other posts I've written, but never published) I was waiting until I had found coordinating pictures for the post. Then, of course, I forget about the post and 6+ months go by and nothing gets done with it. So here it is:


Two weekends ago, my parents came into town to go to a genealogy seminar with me (more on that later). In one of the classes, the speaker prompted us to see our ancestors in all of their seasons. She was referring to exploring where and how they lived throughout the years, so more of a literal "season" meaning. But it got me thinking it would be good to examine the figurative seasons of their lives as well, which of course got me thinking about my future posterity examining the figurative seasons of my OWN life (because I'm self-centered like that).

So what seasons have I been through in my life? I guess they could be grouped in different ways. There's the school seasons, the geographical seasons, the spiritual seasons, the friend seasons, the family seasons, and so on. (And now the word "seasons" sounds incredibly strange to me because I've said it way too much in my head while writing this post.)

I'm always up for some good self-reflection, so let's examine the current season of my life, shall we?

School: Last August I graduated from college. After roughly 20 years of formal schooling (public school and private university education), it felt quite nice not to have the stress of impending deadlines and tests looming over me. I thought I would go on for my master's a year later, but a year later here I sit un-mastered in my home office, content as could be for the time being. Husband, however, is learning for the first time what those particular college stresses feel like and he's handling it like a champ. Especially considering he's a full time student and a full time business owner at the same time. Impressive. One day I'll probably get a higher degree of some sort, but man oh man, does this no school gig feel great right now.

Geographical: I'm living back in Texas for the first time in 7 years and it's 98% marvelous. After graduation, husband and I knew we would go back to Texas because, obviously, but we wanted some sort of adventure. So we picked a place neither of us had spent more than a week in and went for it. San Antonio has proven to be a hidden miracle for work as it gave us the opportunity to be the exclusive dealers for our line of work (does my ambiguity make us sound like drug dealers?). It's a perfect 4 hour drive from our parents which is close enough for a long weekend trip, but far enough that we are able to establish ourselves as a completely independent entity. It's got everything a sane person could want (read: a sane person clearly would not want mountains or snow) except for fall. This is the 2% where San Antonio falls short. I miss Autumn terribly. We get 11 months of spring/summer down here and a month off and on of "winter." But no fall to speak of. But let's not end on such a sad note. Need I remind you that San Antonio is home of the Alamo? Can't get more Texan than that. Or how about SeaWorld, home of Shamu? Nevermind that I've never been. The mere fact that it's here makes this a happy place.

Spiritual: I'm in a pretty good place right now with lots of room for improvement. Husband and I have gone through periods of slacking spiritually from time in our marriage (and lives, let's be honest), but we're doing pretty well right now. I teach Sunday School for the 12-13 yr olds and Skylar teaches Mission Prep. I learn a lot as I prepare and teach, though it's mostly about the psychology of young teenagers, which I'm sure will help me down the road. I leave church feeling uplifted every week, which is more indicative of how I'M doing rather than how well the speakers and teachers taught their lessons. While testimonies are always to be a work in progress, I finally feel like I'm in maintenance mode rather than building mode. Maybe that's a bad thing to feel that way? It feels good to me. And though there are always improvements to be made in the primary areas (prayer, scripture study, etc), I feel like I'm starting to become myself. I'm understanding who I am and I'm good with it.

Friends: This is an interesting one. I still claim to have two best friends (besides husband, of course), but I only talk to one once every couple months just to catch up on the biggies in life, and I talk to the other one even less. I'm actually making friends down here in SA though, which is almost a first in a long time for me. I haven't MADE new, good friends in years. We've got the Bushai (a term of endearment for them), whom we spend most of our "friends time" with. Joey is a long time friend from Joshua and Chanel is a newer, but just as good friend. We've got Marcus (one of our friends and sales reps) living with us, so obviously we spend a lot of time with him. And I'm starting to actually become friends and do things with a lot of women in the ward. Oh, and we've got Tristan (the bro-in-law) living just down the road, but does he count in the friends category?

Family (warning: the following paragraph might be too personal?): This one might be my favorite season. Just over 3 years ago, I set off to start my own tiny family consisting of husband and me. We've experienced A LOT in our short marriage so far, but it's always an adventure. Even with all the hard times we've navigated, these 3 years have been my favorite, "just the two of us" (figuratively speaking since we almost always have someone living with us). But we finally feel like the time is right for it not to be just the two of us anymore. This transition has been interesting for me. I've never been one to love kids unless they were related to me, and even then it was debatable. But I've always known that one day I would be a mother and that's what I would "do" with my life. When we got married, I was a little repulsed by all the people popping out babies right away. Then after we'd been married for a couple years, I lost the repulsion and became indifferent to those around me having babies. I'd hardly been to any baby showers for anyone that wasn't related to me because I just didn't care. I knew one day it would be my turn, and I hoped my feelings would change so that I was having kids because I wanted to and not because I felt obligated to. About 6 months ago, husband and I were having yet another discussion about WHEN to start having babies. We finally settled on the summer of 2014 as being the earliest acceptable time to have our first child. That meant this fall was "go time." After that decision was made, I kept hoping that my feelings would indeed change so that my decision lined up with my desires. Lo and behold, I think God really does want me to have babies because my attitude is right where it needs to be. I don't know if I'm finally just ready for kids and our timing lined up, or if my desire grew because I set a date for myself and my brain decided to match it. Either way I'm glad to know that children will be had because I wanted them and not just because I felt like I was supposed to. So I guess all I'm trying to say is that I'm (hopefully) coming to a close on the longest season of my life to date (that of being childless) and am about to begin a new season that will last the rest of my life. It'll be another adventure.