We blinked.....and we have a 3 Month old!!

I can't hardly believe it, but Miss Kennedy Grace is 3 months old today!  It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital.  Everyone says that it goes by fast, and they were not joking! 

Kennedy Grace Wolfe
Stats:

Weight: 10.6 pounds (I weighed myself without her then weighed myself with her and this is the difference.  I am sure it is 100% accurate. :))

Clothing size: 0-3 months, some 3 month clothes fit but are big.  We have definitely outgrown newborns!

Diaper size: 1

Feedings: I am proud to say that at this point she is still 100% breast fed baby.  On my days off I nurse her usually anywhere between 2 1/2 hours to a max of 4 hours.  On the days I work she takes the bottle all day and usually eats 4 plus ounces in each bottle.  She always takes a bottle at night from her daddy.

Sleep schedule: she is STILL sleeping through the night.  She usually gets to bed at 9:30 or 10:00 pm and sleeps until around 8:00 am every day. 

Tummy time: She has a love/hate relationship.  Sometimes she loves it, and sometimes she hates it.  She has very good head control and will be ready to start sitting in the Bumbo seat very soon. 

Hair:  We haven't really lost any hair since birth but it is definitely become much lighter.  She has a small "thinning" area on the back of her head because she is so stinking active! :-)  If she is awake she is not sitting still. 

Favorite activity: Swinging in her swing.  When all else fails, swinging usually does the trick.  She also loves to do aerobics on her changing table. :-) She smiles and talks and kicks all around!  It is too cute!  She is constantly cooing and a little chatter box. :-)

Favorite toy:  Does her hand count? She constantly has her hand in her mouth!  She loves it! :-)  I would guess miss Sophie the giraffe is her second favorite.  Although she doesn't hold on to her by herself yet, she likes when it squeaks.

Nicknames: Baby K, K, Miss K, Cupcake

Favorite trick:  She is the sock Houdini.  She will literally get her socks off in seconds!  I will put them on and turn around to walk away and she will already have one off! 

Today we had a little amateur photo shoot with mommy: 

Love her!!!

Excited. Nervous. Sad. Happy.

Excited: I am excited to start back to work this Sunday at the NICU at Cox.  It is exciting because I have been off for 12 weeks after having Kennedy and it will be great to see all of my co-workers again!  I am also excited to get back into a routine.  For those of you that know me I really like routines.  There are certain things that I can be spontaneous and "fly by the seat of my pants" about and there are certain things that I LOVE to have planned out.  Kennedy and I have had our own routine for the past 12 weeks and I am excited to make a new routine that includes work.  I am also excited that Kennedy will get to have plenty of one on one time with her daddy!  One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the ability to change shifts and schedules.  We have decided for the benefit of baby Kennedy that I will go from full time day shift to part time night shift.  That means I will be working 2 12 hour shifts a week from 7pm to 7am.  This is exciting for many reasons, but the best being that Kennedy will not have to go to daycare and will only be cared for by myself and my husband in our own home.  Stay away germs!  Of course this means the 2 days a week that I am taking care of her on very little sleep I will probably be hopped up on all kinds of caffeine...or at least the max that I am allowed while breastfeeding. 

Nervous: At the same time I am also nervous about going back to work.  I hope that I remember how to be a NICU nurse!  Three months is a long time to not do a job.  I am sure that it will all be fine once I get there and get back into it, but still....I feel like its the first day of school again. I am also slightly nervous to go back to the night shift.  I NEVER thought that I would EVER say that I wanted to go back to nights after working nights for almost a year and a half.  Never say never! 

Sad: I am sad that I won't be spending all of my time with my little baby girl.  I am sad that I am going back to work, because I am not going to lie....I could get used to this stay at home mom routine.  :-) NEVER thought I would say that either!  Yes, I have become "that" mother. 

Happy: I am so very happy that I will be a "part-time stay at home mom." 

2012 year in review

So I worked on this post half of the day on New Years day sorting through pictures and adding captions in between Kennedy's feedings, and of course when I go to post it my computer freezes up and I ended up losing half of my post.  :-(  I was so stinking mad it has taken me this long to log back in and work on it.  Some of the pictures are missing and will remain missing because I just want to be done with this post. :-)

January 2012

My 28th birthday at Big Whiskey's

New job in the NICU. This was after attending a c-section.

February 2012

Valentine's day

Found out we were pregnant the day after Valentine's day.  I think I was approx. 4 or 5 weeks along.

March 2012

We were invited by our friends Austin and Summer to come visit them for the weekend in Arkansas and attend the horse races in Hot Springs.  We also did a little putt putt.  

Horse races in Hot Springs Arkansas

April 2012

Must have been pretty boring for us because the only picture I had was a Springfield Cardinals game. :-)

May 2012

Blair twin's baby shower.  One of my best friends was having twins!  She had a boy and a girl named Jackson and Avery.  My friends Heather, Krystal, and myself threw them a baby shower at Big Whiskey's.  We had such a great turn out!  (I wish the pictures would have worked because the cake and diaper cake were really cute!)

June 2012

Gender revealed!  It's a girl!  We had the ultrasound tech put the picture in an envelope saying if it was a boy or girl.  We took the envelope to a bakery that I had already arranged for them to make a cake and put pink or blue in the middle so we could cut into the cake and find out just the two of us. We picked the cake up about an hour later and went to the park where our good friend Karen Mcqueary was able to capture the moment for us as we cut into the cake and saw the pink line. 

We also took a mini vacation to Branson Missouri.  Yes, that is only 45 minutes away, but I was 20 weeks pregnant and we really didn't want to travel too far away.  :-)  We stayed at the Chateau on the Lake and had a great view of the lake and a random national wakeboarding tour.  That was fun to watch!  Our friends Heather and Mullis joined us for a night and we went to Level 2 for a really great steak! Highly recommended!  Little did we know that early that next morning the Blair twins would come into this world a little early. :-)

July 2012

In July we went to the Ozarks Empire Fair and the truck and tractor pulls. It was 100 degrees when we were there. Yeah, that probably wasn't the best idea ever. :-)

August 2012

My mom and best friend Olivia threw us a baby shower in Illinois.  We were so blessed with so many gifts! 

September 2012

Springfield shower at Highland Springs given by my best friends in Springfield, Melanie Blair and Heather Mullis.

Our 2 year wedding anniversary.  We had a maternity picture photo shoot and ended the day with dinner at Nicholas.

October 2012

Justin's birthday with dinner at Nakato and live band at Flo

40 weeks and 3 days.  Last night of being pregnant.  (hopefully)

Our bags were all packed and ready to go the morning we were scheduled for induction.  For more details about our delivery see my previous blog.

And here she is!  Miss Kennedy Grace Wolfe. Born Oct 30th at 5:57am

November 2012

 November 1st 2012 we got to take home our little baby girl.  

Justin trained several months for his first half marathon on November 6th.  We were really hoping and praying she wouldn't be too late so I wouldn't be in labor or in the hospital for his race.  It worked out great.  My mom was still here to help with Kennedy so we packed her up and myself and rode around cheering him on!  He did such a great job!  We are currently thinking both of us will train for the Chicago marathon 2013.

Turkey trot on Thanksgiving day.  Kennedy was 3 weeks old and of course slept the whole way. :-)

December 2012

Annual Silver Dollar City Christmas outing.  First time going with the Kennedy and the Blair babies. We had a great time and the lights were beautiful! 

Santa baby! Kennedy's first visit to Santa.  She was such a good girl.  We went to the Santa at the mall and he was magical.  He seriously looks like he could be the real deal.  She was wide awake and content the whole time.  When he first help her she gave him the funniest confused look.  It was so sweet.  I can't wait to see how she reacts to Santa next year.  Maybe it will be the same guy!

We went to Illinois to visit my family the weekend before Christmas.  That was our first road trip with Kennedy and it ended up being a long one.  It normally takes 5.5 hours and it ended up taking about 9 hours due to a traffic jam we were stuck in when we were only an hour away from my mom's house.  Crazy!  We made the best of it though!

Happy New Year.  Every year we get all dressed up and go out to a nice dinner.  This year things were a little different for us.  :-)  Different in a great way.  So we decided to still get dressed up and go to our friend's house and make a nice dinner and play with our babies.  :-)  It was a great way to bring in the new year. 

I am excited to see what 2013 will bring us because 2012 was the best yet, because we have our sweet baby Kennedy Grace! 

Happy New Year everyone!

Labor and delivery

This is a blog for myself so that I can remember the ups and downs of the birth of our child.:) We decided at the end of 2011 that we were ready or as ready as we were going to be to start a family. We were fortunate enough to not have any problems conceiving and found out in February that we were expecting. Then the planning began.....
We found out in June that we were going to be welcoming a little girl to our family. We had the name Kennedy picked out since before we even started trying or thinking about trying. I also have always loved Grace for a middle name so we picked Kennedy Grace to be our little ones name. I had a pretty uneventful pregnancy without any complications. I had one small issue with my heart skipping a beat or two, but after talking with my OB she said it was fairly common and told me to increase my fluid intake. It didn't help the fact that there are not many opportunities to hydrate at my job or the fact that it happened to be the hottest summer on record. :) I spent most of my time indoors due to the crazy heat. I was even able to wear my wedding ring up until about week 36 and at that point I had some swelling. Due to the fact that I had a smooth pregnancy I assumed I would have a normal delivery. I never even gave a c-section a second thought. We were due Oct 26th. That day came and went even though I was convinced she was coming early. We scheduled our induction for Oct 29th which just happened to be my nephews birthday but also happened to be one of the only days my OB was on call. We called labor and delivery early that morning to check in and see if they were ready for us. We were put on hold for a few hours so I tried to go back to sleep for a few hours (that didn't work). I called again an hour later and they said they had several deliveries at the time and said they would have the charge nurse call when she was done. Finally she called about 9:45 and asked if we could be there at 10:30 and I said you bet we can. We got to the hospital and got settled and the nurse started my IV. They hooked me up to Pitocin (which starts your contractions) and said we would go up by 2 every 20 minutes or so with a max of 30. This was also the day of crazy super storm Sandy. I was feeling no pain and watching the news coverage with my husband for most of the day. I was only dilated to a 1 when we got there and after several hours of Pitocin with no pain somehow I dilated to a 4. At that point my OB broke my water and then the fun began. I had planned for a natural birth with no drugs or an epidural. (Even though everyone thought I was crazy) we brought our own birthing ball, aromatherapy, distraction by watching my favorite Christmas movie (Christmas Vacation), and massages from my husband. The contractions came on strong. They were frequent and intense at that point being at 30 of Pitocin. I was stuck at a 4 for it seems like forever. I am not even sure what time of the day it was at that point but I am guessing maybe 9 or 10 pm. Finally I broke down and asked about the epidural. I stuck through it as long as I could and I just felt exhausted. I ended up with an epidural about 30 minutes after I asked for one and immediately felt relief. It was the best thing since sliced bread and worth every penny. I would highly recommend it! :) after the epidural I dilated to an 8. I think some relaxation did my body some good. Soon I was able to start pushing after 20 hours of labor. At that point I thought the end was in sight. My nurses were all so great and I went though 6 of them with all the changing shifts. I pushed for 2.5 hours and Kennedy did not want to come out. It turns out I do not have a pelvis shape that will allow me to have a natural birth. At that point my OB said we have to have a c-section. I was relieved. Finally at 5:57 am on October 30th Kennedy was born weighing 7-11 and 20.75 inches long with a full head of hair! Recovery was rough with some vomiting and nausea and a whole lot of shaking.  After I was loaded up with about 25 different meds ( not really but it felt like it) we were taken to the mother baby floor where we finally were allowed some rest. Not so much. There were so many people in and out of our room we didn't really get any peace and quiet for the rest of our stay. As a nurse I know this is necessary and just part of having a baby, but my husband was annoyed. :) We ended up staying Monday night in L and D and Tuesday and Wednesday night in the mother baby floor and my doctor let us go home on November 1st. We are so in love with our little girl! That crazy experience was all worth it. Lucky for me I had my husband and mother to take care of me while I took care of Kennedy. They were both such a big help by doing housework, making meals, taking me and Kennedy to appointments and keeping me on my medications. It took a few weeks before I could sleep in my own bed due to my incision I had to sleep halfway sitting up. It took several weeks to
heal and was pretty painful at times. If and when we have another baby our doctor said we will have a scheduled c-section. I am ok with that:) I hope this does not scare anyone who is pregnant now or wanting to be. Everyone is different and has different experiences. Just keep an open mind because it definitely does not always go as you plan. :)