Veggies and Ice Cream

My friend Jennifer, who I haven’t seen (or really even talked to) since high school emailed me to tell me that she would be in Utah for work. We decided to take a trip together down to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was a great excuse for a little vacation!

This was Eliza’s first camping trip! Before Eliza came along, Mike and I would always sleep under the stars and backpack more often than car camp, but we figured we should start small with our little one: two nights in a tent. Eliza and I slept in my two-man tent that I got back in my cycling days. Mike slept right outside (two-man tents aren’t made for men who are 6′7”, let alone one who is sharing with wife and baby). I bundled Eliza in a sleeper and hat with little socks on her hands. She slept great (much better than her momma who kept waking up to check if baby was warm enough)!

Eliza loved having her diaper changed out in the open air! There’s just something about a cool breeze on a bare bum. Below is just one of many changes where Eliza is smiling much bigger than us (note the surprise oozing out the left leg)!

At first, we went to the view points and tried to take in the beauty, majesty, and colors.

Then we hiked down in among the hoodoos. I wore Eliza in the Moby Wrap. I was a little worried that she’d get too hot pressed up against my body, but it wasn’t too bad. She slept for most of the time, so I kept her little head tucked inside. When it started to get hot, I wet a cloth diaper to drape over her sun hat to keep her cool.

It was great not having to bring any food supplies for Eliza. Breastfeeding definitely makes camping with a baby a breeze! I could feed her any time, any place! It was super convenient! Whenever she was hungry, we just found some nice shade and took a little break. It was perfect. I insisted that Mike take some pictures of me feeding her in such a gorgeous spot.

At night we had a delicious Dutch oven cobbler!

Eliza was great and we had lots of fun! We will have no problem taking Eliza on our next adventure! It really was about as easy as taking care of her at home, in fact she actually napped better!

No, I didn’t hit a pedestrian. But I almost hit 2 jaywalkers.

Ironically, the first incident was only some feet from the “Hit a Pedestrian, Change your lives” billboard on State street just as you come into Provo. Three high schoolers just ran across that wide part of State street. Plenty of traffic. Dumb. High schoolers do dumb things sometimes. I was a high schooler once.

Then, not a mile later, in front of the hospital, cars on both sides of the road had to brake as a grown-up, scrub-wearing, health professional made his way across the busy road (away from the hospital). No light. No crosswalk. Plenty of traffic. Dumb. Doctors do dumb things sometimes. I was a patient once.

[That wasn't originally intended as a slam on the medical profession. I just couldn't resist the parallels. Really though... jetting out in front of fast moving cars isn't a very healthy decision for anyone.]

I have been wanting to chop my hair for a while now. I wanted to leave it long until Eliza was born so that I could pull it back while I was in labor (My hair would not stay back when I was in labor with Lily). I also wanted to make sure it was long enough to donate. Ever since I was in middle school I have been growing my hair out, then cutting it short to donate to Locks of Love. Well I have been putting it off and putting it off because I don’t have a hairdresser around here (my mom is far away) and I hate calling to make appointments in general.

Lately, I have had new motivation. Eliza has figured out the art of grabbing and pulling. Prying her sweet little fingers off my hair mid diaper change is not very fun, to say the least. Sometimes I will just find a random long blond hair in her hand (or mouth!) during the day. At church on Sunday, Mike found a long Steph hair on his suit pants. Enough! The time had come for the hair to go!

I decided to make it a surprise for Mike. He has been hinting at it (or at least that’s how I’ve been taking it… he won’t admit it) for a while. He always comments on how cute my hair looks in pictures on the wall where my hair is short. I heard that Katie cuts hair, so I called her up and went over on Tuesday. It feels so great! Thanks Katie!

It’s still wet here.

This is more or less how I have worn it so far, though this picture was at the end of the day, right before bed. You get the idea.

We purchased a little photo shoot for a fundraiser for kids from the local high school who are going on a trip to Mexico.  The camera must have added 10 or 15 pounds because I don’t think Mike looks quite so hefty in person.  I still look a little pregnant… those last 10 pounds are the hardest to lose.  (That makes it sound like I’m making a concerted effort to lose them.  I haven’t even gone there yet!)  We think Eliza looks cute, though, so we’ll give you a peek!

Eliza is such a grown up!  We can hardly believe she’s already so old, but at the same time it feels like she’s been with us so much longer.

Eliza is great at sleeping at night.  She often sleeps for 8 hours without waking up!  Other nights it’s 6 or 7 hours, but definitely nothing to complain about!   When she wakes up to eat she goes back to sleep easily.  She is a faster eater now.  I don’t spend nearly as much time nursing as I did when she was brand new, but as you can see, she’s getting plenty to eat!  Breastfeeding Eliza is easy and wonderful.

Eliza is so happy when she wakes up and after she eats.  She loves to have conversations with mom and dad with her animated babble.  She loves the impromptu rhymes and songs that mom and dad invent.  We love singing to her and playing with her!  Eventually we’ll get some videos posted of Eliza’s own songs and discourses.  She is intrigued by the camera, which makes it hard to get smiley pictures of her.  She just stares with wonderment at the strange object that keeps flashing and beeping at her. 

She always wants to sit up.  Whenever she’s in her swing or car seat or even laying down flat, she always lifts her head up and tries to pull herself into a complete sitting position.  She’s pretty strong with those neck muscles.  She still loathes tummy time and hates exercising the other neck muscles (lifting her head up while on her tummy).   She likes to grab at things and bring them to her mouth if she can.  We’re impressed by her accuracy in grabbing and her ability to use her hands.

Eliza likes to take her naps on mommy’s shoulder, the Boppy pillow on mom’s lap, or with mommy wearing her in the Moby wrap.  She also will fall asleep in the car seat when being connected to mom isn’t an option.

We love our little Liza and are so glad she’s with us!

Here are a few shots from the last month!

The kitchen and I have had a falling out as of late (and not just because the dishes aren’t doing themselves).  I’m am usually semi-confident in the kitchen, though I would say Mike is better at cooking real food (treats are my area of expertise).  The results of these past few days in the kitchen remind me of our baking and cooking and experiences in Guatemala, only now there’s no excuse.

For one reason or another, I hadn’t made a real dinner in a while, so I thought I’d surprise Mike and have dinner ready when he got home on Tuesday.  Well, dinner was ready for us, but were we ready for dinner?  Not quite.

Since I didn’t have anything in mind (we were out of staples like cheese, chicken, and hamburger), I decided to just choose a few things we did have and throw them together.  I used the ingredient search on allrecipes.com to get some ideas of what I could do with rice and frozen spinach (inherited when my sister moved).  I got a few ideas and then went out on my own (partly for lack of necessary ingredients, partly because neither of the recipes looked like it would make enough for my man).  Add some cream of chicken, milk, onions, parmesan, saltines, and pepper to that rice (lots of rice) and spinach and you’ll have the gluiest, blandest casserole on the planet.   My plan to disguise Popeye’s favorite ingredient by putting it in a casserole failed miserably.  The only thing you could taste was the spinach.  I tried to convince myself of the nutritional value and just choke it down, but couldn’t manage more than a few bites.  Mike, on the other hand, is a trooper (sadly, a trooper with a big appetite).  He packed away two helpings (plus what I shoveled from my plate onto his when he was distracted by the baby).  So now we’re left with 2/3 of a pan of Spinach Rice Mush.  We’re not ones to waste food (Mike would eat it all cold before letting me throw it away), so any ideas on how we can transform this into something palatable?  I figure we can always just add cheese.  Lots of cheese.

The kitchen curse continued today.  I like to make treats from scratch, but since I was wearing Eliza while she napped in the Moby Wrap, I figured I had better take a shortcut if I wanted to see the fruits (cookies) of my labor.  I found a cookie mix that I got on sale for $.50 a while ago and thought I’d give it a shot.  After all, how can you go wrong with anything that says “double chocolate.”  As I was digging through the cupboard I found some fruity mini marshmallows and though they would look cute in the cookies.  On the contrary!  These are probably the most un-cute cookies I have ever made (they don’t taste nearly as bad as they look, fortunately).  I’m not sure what I was thinking?  Anyone knows those poor little guys, while they maybe colorful and cute, can’t endure the heat of 4 seconds in the microwave, let alone a 350 degree oven!  They melted and made quite a mess.  They look… well, you can see for yourself.

 +  = 

The Saturday before Mother’s Day, along with dozens of other families who have lost babies, we celebrated our daughter Lily. Each year IHC’s parent support group, Common Bonds, holds the Walk of Remembrance at Thanksgiving Point. There is a short presentation of all of the babies’ names, then families are free to enjoy the gorgeous gardens of Thanksgiving Point. It was good to catch up with our friends from the group. The weather this year was wonderful! We enjoyed taking pictures with baby Eliza in the beautiful flowers as we thought of her big sister Lily.

We are so grateful to have Lily in our family. Having Lily has helped us be much better parents for Eliza. We truly cherish each moment we have with Eliza. Our patience with her seems endless (something I never would have thought possible).  Lily’s death reminds us of the fragile nature of our lives and helps us appreciate each beautiful thing we see.  It also gives us even more motivation to be very good so we can all join her up in heaven and be a whole family again.

Better late than never! Lots of people have inquired as to little (or should I say ‘big’) Eliza’s growth. To look at her you wouldn’t guess that she’s only two months old. At her two-month check-up, she weighed 13 lbs 11 oz (94th percentile) and measured 24.6 inches (98th percentile). The doctor was impressed with her growth and said she’s the picture of good health.

She is lots of fun to play with now that she smiles and coos a lot. We have a monkey in our room that hangs by its tail. Eliza absolutely loves watching it swing back and forth. It often soothes her crying just to watch him swing. She will let you know when he stops. One of her favorite games is having Daddy do choo-choo train with her legs, complete with all the sound effects. She always giggles when her momma sings silly songs. Bath time is still one of her most favorite times of day. She loves going to new places and is always intent on scoping out the lights and moving things. She sleeps 6 or 7 hours at a time at night which is wonderful.

We love our precious Liza so much! We are truly grateful for each day she is with us!

Can you believe I didn’t take a single picture on the actual two-month mark? This was taken the day before. She has been spitting up quite a bit, so we’re using every bib we’ve got… even if they are a little seasonal!

Mandy made Eliza this Drug Free shirt to celebrate that her mommy was unmedicated for her birth. We love it! We got a good laugh. Eliza sports her all-natural shirts proudly. I thought these pictures were great for this post since my plan not to have an epidural or pain medication during childbirth is what brought me to hypnobirthing, which I promised to explain. Though this post is written in the first person for me (Stephanie) it was actually a Steph and Mike collaborative effort. I was having a little blogger’s block, but Mike is amazing.

Mike and I have seen lots of interesting reactions when we’ve mentioned hypnobirthing (and I’m sure there were many more covered up by polite smiles). If you’re like me, you probably picture someone rhythmically swinging a pocket watch when you hear anything that starts with ‘hypno’. That was definitely my first mental image when some of my friends told me that they had done, or were planning on doing, hypnobirthing to manage the discomforts of labor. Though I was a bit skeptical (I’ve always thought hypno-sorts of things were a crock), I was interested. How could someone fake a painless childbirth? I started reading the book.

It was a relief to learn that this ‘hypnosis’ was not the type you see in a stand-up routine at a comedy club. It’s more like losing track of time while reading a good book, or driving on auto-pilot, zoned out, but somehow still arriving at your destination without an accident. It’s a state of super relaxation where your body takes care of things without your mind having to consciously direct every action. This was still a little odd, but much less creepy than I had first imagined.

Hypnobirthing offers an alternative to the traditional pre-labor experience. Our hypnobirthing classes explained the physical process of childbirth thoroughly, all the while emphasizing that childbirth is a natural function of a woman’s body and that, if left to itself, the body knows knows how to deliver a baby naturally and with minimal discomfort. We actually learned more about the actual process of birth from hypnobirthing classes than we did from our Lamaze classes, which we took from a labor and delivery nurse at the hospital.

Some of the theories behind hypnobirthing made a lot of sense to me. The “Fear-Tension-Pain Cycle” is a good example. Can you think of a time when you hurt yourself but carried on with what you were doing only to look down a little later and see blood? Suddenly, the injury that you hadn’t noticed gets really painful. When you realize you’ve been injured, you begin to fear the pain you know must accompany it. Fear makes your muscles tense, increasing any pain, and your mind begins to dwell on the fear and pain in a self-perpetuating cycle.

It doesn’t require a hypnobirthing instructor to explain that our mental state affects our physical state, and our physical state affects our mental state. I know that my mind can convince my body that it’s sick, and it will actually get sick. Mike missed a few days of elementary school that way. One of the ideas behind hypnobirthing is that if we condition our mind for a positive experience, we can actually make the physical experience more positive. That seems like a good idea, but it takes serious concerted effort and lots of practice. Our mind is conditioned by our experience, the experience of our friends and family, the things we’ve learned in school, what we see on the television, and everything else around us. Have you ever seen a laboring woman on TV who was calm or one who never screams and curses the father? Probably not. Most baby showers (not mine, thankfully) are filled with horror stories as guests try to “one up” each other with an even more awful childbirth experience. As the stories grow more dramatic and excruciating, the pregnant guest of honor becomes more tense and fearful. If you add up everything you’ve heard from family or friends, seen on television or in movies, and read in pregnancy books, you end up with some pretty negative mental conditioning. Our hypnobirthing classes helped strip some of that negativity and turn it towards positive expectations. Was I still nervous? Of course. But I wasn’t terrified, and I was more excited than nervous.

In some parts of the globe, women go out and birth their babies without fanfare, weeping, or wailing. Is their anatomy so dramatically different than ours that what is excruciatingly painful for lots of Westerners is a walk in the park for them? Or are they just tougher than us and don’t complain as much? They probably are tougher, but I am convinced that a lot of the difference stems from the conditioning of our minds. In our society, we fear childbirth. We expect it to be agony, and spend the months before the actual experience conditioning our minds and bodies to expect it too. By the time the baby is due, we have trained our minds and bodies so well, that they react perfectly, as if they were being subjected to the most excruciating pain imaginable. The tension we build up in the expectation of pain helps create the pain, which increases tension and causes more pain. In places in the world where the expectation of pain is less severe, this cycle never begins, so the pain itself is less severe as well.

We also learned methods to actively divert and distract from the fear and tension that is likely to build during the childbirth process so that it didn’t become the painful experience it might have. For several weeks we practiced consciously relaxing each part of our bodies from head to toe, something akin to what’s recommended for people who sit at desks all day and have stressful jobs. We found it was not only a wonderful way to relax after a long day, it was also a great way to fall asleep. We practiced telling stories, so that our minds could be busy remembering places we had been together and things we had done. Since the mind can host only thought at a time, an engrossing story effectively blocks it from dwelling on discomfort or fear, letting the laboring woman’s body do what it naturally knows to do when it’s time to give birth. Labor doesn’t really require mental direction; the body has all the hormones in place to make the action happen without any help, and since the mental interference of a woman who is terrified is likely to increase tension and pain, the body probably works better when it’s left to do it’s own thing.

I don’t think the hypnobirthing method is the one and only way to have a pleasant childbirth with minimal pain, nor do I agree with everything taught in hypnobirthing (there’s are some things that are a little over the top), but I think the basic theory is good and the methods are useful. Mike and I feel it was well worth our time and money. We felt very confident. I trusted that my body knew what to do and was capable of doing it. Because we had educated ourselves, we were able to make informed decisions and take control of our birth experience. I would recommend hypnobirthing to anyone. Even women who plan to have an epidural can learn from the ideas and methods of hypnobirthing and benefit from the confidence that comes with better understanding. Every woman will have to make decisions about her own care and that ofher baby, and will certainly want to be able to manage the discomforts of labor until pain medication is offered.

Wow. We are long-winded! If you have any questions about hypnobirthing in general or my experience with it feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to follow up. Also, if you are interested in taking the classes (which are very reasonably priced), I will be happy to refer you to the wonderful teacher we had.

We have some catching up to do as far as posting pictures of Eliza goes. Some of our out-of-town relatives have eagerly been awaiting updates to see and hear about the growing girl. So here’s a bit about the babe. Stay tuned for posts on other topics. I promise they are coming (they are currently in the traffic jam of my mind).

Would you believe Eliza’s already been here on the outside for 7 1/2 weeks?! It has all gone by so quickly, yet at the same time it seems like she’s been with us forever. She is smiling a lot now, especially in the morning, though she can be stingy with her smiles when the camera is out. She has always made lots of funny noises, but recently we have been hearing more of her sweet little voice as she goos and gaas. She still has all her hair (it’s probable even grown). We have fun experimenting with styles after her bath each night.

We don’t follow any schedule. When she’s hungry, I feed her. When she’s tired, she sleeps. Since we don’t go to bed at any set time, she doesn’t really either, though it’s usually somewhere between 10pm and midnight. We do have a nightly routine of bath, nurse, burp, sleep. Mike burps her, bounces her a little if she’s fussy, then puts her in bed whether she’s asleep or not. She is getting good at putting herself to sleep. We don’t even have to let her cry! She just makes all her little noises and before long, she’s asleep. Hopefully this lasts. She still wakes up to nurse every 3-4 hours (which is fine with me), but usually goes back down without much trouble. She is a much more efficient eater than she was when she was younger. In fact sometimes she eats so much so fast that she ends up giving some of it back to me.

We’re really noticing lately how much she’s grown. She has grown out of some of her 0-3 month clothes. We’re eager to see what her stats are at her 2 month appointment. I took her in to be weighed at 1 month and she was 10lbs 10 oz.

I love this expression. It’s her little hungry baby bird face. When she thinks she’s starving she gets quite insistent along with this cute face. She also “woodpeckers” at whatever is near and latches on if at all possible. I have been wanting to get a picture of this face (or any of its variations), but Eliza’s meal is usually in plain sight.

This is one of her favorite poses, with her hand up against her face. She must have been that way in the womb. She nurses like this, too.

Eliza went to her first wedding reception when she was 3 1/2 weeks old. She wore this red and black dress. I love the tights. You can’t tell here, but the tights have little red Mary Janes built-in! The dress and tights are both fun hand-me-down from Karyn’s girls.

Playing dress up and posing with daddy. We wanted to get some pictures in this pretty dress from Allison’s girls.

Since we have hardly any pictures of me with the baby (like I said, I always happen to be all decked out to feed the babe), my sister took a few of us the other day before we went shopping. The last one is kind of weird, but I like itfor her eyes.

Here are a few random ones: