Growth progression

Abi is now 14lbs 11oz and 25 and 3/4 inches long! Wow! She has alllllmost doubled her birth weight! And she is soooo long! LOL We knew she would be tall. She's in the 95th% for height and 85% for weight and head circumference. Crazy to think that my little baby is getting so big. She's sitting up pretty well now and has taken to sleeping in her crib like a champ! She's also rolling onto her belly and sleeps much better that way. Which freaks me out, but we check on her often so.... yeah. Anyway here's a pic of her progression from 4,8,12 and 16 weeks.

Sunday pinterest

So we made pizza rolls from pinterest this past week. Used croissant roll dough instead of bread dough... And it didn't cook all the way through. But what did cook was very good! I'll post more later if I can I'm not at my computer!

Last Sunday and a mini update..

Ooops I dropped the ball this week! But not without reason. Abi has been going through a horrible time.. I'm not sure if it's the "4 month sleep regression" or a growth spurt or teething or a wonder week or a mental leap or what the heck it is! But it's really been hard to do anything except try to feed her, try to get her to nap and try to keep her happy. She is getting a little better, but she's still up every hour or so at night until around 3 am at which point she will stay down for a little while. It's making us crazy!!! Also she doesn't really want to eat during the day. We pretty much have to force her because if we don't she'll end up so hungry that she's screaming and at that point she won't eat much because she's so upset. She is still not napping very well, but I have on occasion gotten her down for a 2 hour nap... she just has to be laying on me! And on her 16 week birthday she found her toes, but has since lost the interest in them. Yes in one week... it's crazy. She was also looking like she would be rolling over soon as she was rolling onto her side and alllllmost over... but she's stopped doing that too.. It makes me sad and I wonder what's wrong..
The only reason I'm able to write this really quick is because hubby took Abi to the store! AH! I'm supposed to be studying... shhhhhhhh... I'm doing that too... lol ;)
So anyway, last week I made brown sugar balsamic glazed pork! It was pretty good, a little dry but the glaze was delicious! I also made greek yogurt cucumbers as an homage to my grandmothers sour cream cucumbers.. because it's not summer without them! :)

the pork in the crock pot with all that yummy glaze

greek yogurt cucumbers!

and the finished product! YUM!

I want to scream!

Abi has had the week from hell this past week. She's not sleeping well anymore, she's a lot more fussy and just not herself. She isn't teething doesn't seem to be sick or anything ... I've heard it's the 4 month " sleep regression"... Whatever that means. All I know is hubby and I are frustrated and sleep deprived....

Giggles!!!

Abi giggled today! Just once but it was the cutest thing ever!

16 weeks old

This is what Abi and I would look like if we were cats. That's pretty much exactly how I hold her.

At 16 weeks old she's starting to show the beginnings of rolling over. ..

It will be interesting when she finally does since she hates being on her tummy!

Except sometimes on the boppy.

She also really found her toes on her 16 week birthday! She's been obsessed with grabbing them since!

NAP!

Little miss has been getting worse and worse with taking naps during the day. They now only last between 10-25 minutes and she needs waaaaay more sleep than she's getting. I still have to hold her for her to nap at all and by the end of the day she's crabby and fussy and over tired. The past two nights I've had to walk her and bounce her to get her to sleep ... at 6:45 and 7pm! Last night she got up again at 9 and had a bottle then went to bed for the night by 10 thank goodness... tonight she's still asleep and it's almost 9:30. She's also been getting up around 3am and 5.. then again at 7 and if I'm lucky she'll go back down till 8:30. I'm exhausted and hubby "has no idea why" because he sleeps through everything. What happened to my good napper that would sleep for 3 hours in her rock and play? And my baby who would sleep 10:30p-10am with one short feed in between? I miss her having that schedule, she created it herself too. I'm hearing that this sleep regression is a 4 month thing and should subside soon. I hope so!!!!

Awesome chicken gyros!

Pinterest night tonight! On the menu was chicken gyros, and let me tell you they were amazing!!! I pretty much did everything according to the recipe except I used apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar and flat bread instead of pita because we couldn't find any pitas without the pockets. I don't know what it is about apple cider vinegar.. I just love it! Oh and I used a whole clove of garlic instead of the 2 tablespoons. We love garlic in this house... needless to say we both smell like garlic now! Anyway here are some pictures of my amazingly delicious gyros.

the tzatziki sauce, yum!

Okay so I forgot to take a picture of all the chicken, but you get the idea :)

and the finished product! 

We will be making this again and again I'm sure!

Here's the link to the chicken gyros recipe. I love the gals blog too, soooooooo many recipes I want to try!

Ok finally.. my labor and delivery story!

So I am finally able to get around to writing this.. 3 weeks later! lol. But as those of you who are moms know, free time is in short supply early on. So anyway, on with my story!

4:30pm Wednesday March 21st: Hubby and I go into labor and delivery to get the prostiglandin gel placed against my cervix to help ripen it. When we get there they told me there was no room for me and to go have dinner and come back in a little while. So we wen't down to the cafeteria. About an hour later we go back and they put us in the little waiting room. It took about another 45 minutes for them to come get me. They set me up in the triage "room" and hook me up to the monitors. A nurse asks me tons of questions, as always. I was on the monitors until a little before nine when a Dr. finally came in with the gel! She told me to hold on to it for a while to warm it up and that she'd be back shortly. About 9 she came back and proceeded to place the gel, told us that they would like to monitor me for about 45 more minutes and then we'd get to go home for the night. She warned me that I might feel some cramping, that this was normal and to come back if my water broke (but that was unlikely). So we get discharged at 9:45 and head out to my car. The first contraction hit me while we were driving out of the hospital parking garage. It was uncomfortable, and painful, but nothing horrible. Hubby and I stopped for a shamrock shake (my fav.!!) and shared it since I was still trying to be good with my gestational diabetes.

From the time we got home until about 5:30am I had contractions lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minuets, they were 1 to 2 minutes apart sometimes.. and sometimes they came on top of each other! It was AWFUL! I was in so much pain! Eventually I was able to rest between contractions because they spaced out a bit but they always woke me up. I finally fell asleep about 5:30am and we got up at 7am to get ready to head to the hospital.

8am Thursday March 22nd: we left the house to hit up Tim Hortons for breakfast and then we were on our way to the hospital. We got there about 8:30 and they put us in the little waiting room again. I think we waited until around 9:30-9:45 ish and finally someone came to get us to take us back to my labor and delivery room!! We wheeled our bags into the room and set them down by a big dresser. The nurse had me get into a gown and left to get some paperwork. When she finally came back she had to ask me a bunch of questions and we handed her my birth plan. We went over it together and she put a lot of it into the computer so that other nurses could read it on the go. She said they'd hold to it as much as possible, which I appreciated. Then the nurse who places IV's came in to poke me with a HUGE needle. She had to do it twice because my vein "rolled" away from her the first time. Once she finally got the needle placed she taped me up and another nurse came in to draw blood! This needle was much smaller but boy oh boy did it HURT! She was digging around trying to find a vein and needless to say I bruised up pretty good from all that!

Finally around 11am I got started on pitocin. Within about 15 minutes the contractions started. Then around 1pm my Dr. came in to place a Foley bulb in my cervix. What that is, is a rubber tube that inflates with saline in 2 places (once inserted into the cervix) one "bulb" on the inside and one on the outside. The idea is that the two pressures want to equalize in the center and in doing so, it dilates the cervix. Once it's done it's job it's supposed to fall out. Awesome. It was pretty darn painful and on top of that I was having contractions. Ugh. But my Dr. said I did really well considering some women cry and carry on when having this inserted.

By 4:30pm I was ready for my epidural. The contractions had gotten closer (because they kept turning up the pitocin) and more painful. I had been hoping to keep from getting the epi until the Foley bulb fell out, but walking and rocking were not helping me control the pain as they had in the beginning. First the nurse brought me Nubian. Which was supposed to take the edge off the pain but all it did was make me light headed and drowsy. Then the anesthesiologist came in to place my epi. He prepped my back and gave me the local to numb me. That was the worst part of it and the actual placement hardly hurt at all. When he was placing the epi I felt the tube going down my spinal cord.. it was the COOLEST feeling! lol Then I got to lay back and wait for my legs to start numbing. I had missed my opportunity to nap from the Nubian, but I tried anyway. Hubby brought me chicken broth, jello and popsicles (which turned my mouth BLUE!) and to be honest, that was enough.

I believe it was 8pm (will check with hubby) when my Dr. finally came back in to check my progress. I had hit 5cm and the Foley bulb came out with a little tug. Hooray! At this point my Dr. broke my water, which didn't gush as much as I thought it would. We were all hoping that after breaking my water my labor would speed up and I'd have my baby by midnight. No. Such. Luck.

Because of the epi, I had to pretty much keep to one side or the other because I was told that an epidural works with gravity and will numb the side I'm laying on. Well, at one point my right side was waaaaaaay too numb and I was starting to get a little stir crazy. So I asked to be moved. I'm a little fuzzy on the details from then until about 1am when Abi's heart rate dropped really low after having my bladder drained. (No they didn't put in a catheter, they simply straight cathed me every few hours. Lovely, right?) Well at first there was just one nurse but she called for backup because she needed help moving me. Then there were 3 or 4 nurses in the room, all trying to help move me to a position where Abi's heart rate would stabilize. When I finally got into a position that was looking like it would be okay the nurses left and I tried to get a little more sleep. Then about an hour later it happened again when I was checked for progress (still about a 5 or 6). They decided that Abi must have been laying on her cord and since my water was broken she didn't have enough cushion to keep her off of it. So they brought in the internal monitoring devices and an amnio infusion. Basically a bag of saline with the line directly into my uterus so that Abi had some more cushion and we could hopefully keep her off her umbilical cord. We still had issues with her heart rate throughout the night, and my nurse signed off on her other patient so that she could focus just on me. I thought that was really nice.

At some point the epi started to wear off on my right side, and I was feeling a LOT of pain. To me it felt like this went on allllllll night, but hubby assures me it was only a "few" hours. I remember being pulled up to sitting at one point to lean over the food tray to try to help with the pain. I was in tears and practically hysterical. Unfortunately the move didn't help, it just soaked the end of my bed and the floor.. along with my socks. (Remember I had that amnio infusion? Well the fluid has to go somewhere and when I sat up it started coming out.. a lot) When I finally laid back down, my nurse had to change my bedding because it was all wet. So I got rolled and moved every which way to get the wet sheets off and dry sheets on. Not to mention they kept pulling pads off and putting new pads on underneath me. Up until this point I had not been very diligent about pushing my epidural button. So I was still in a TON of pain on my right side. I could not get comfortable and I was mostly still in tears. I think I may have fallen asleep for about 20 minutes or so. When my Dr. came back in she suggested getting the anesthesiologist back in to give me a big bolus dose to my epi to fix whatever had happened on my right side. Thank GOD she did because that worked and shortly after I was blissfully numb again. I believe it was that extra pain relief that finally allowed me to progress to a full 10 cm. Up until then I think I was fighting the contractions because I was in so much pain. (And it was only on my right side, I can't imagine feeling it all over!)

Happy Independence Day!

SUCH a cute outfit!

We're napping already because someone got up at 6am!

2 more recipes!

Okay so I cheated a little and let hubby make dinner.. it was pinterest night but I was busy playing with Abi... anyway "we" made baked sweet and sour chicken and cheesy quinoa. Doesn't sound like it should go together right? Still it was very good! Here are the links for cheesy quinoa and baked sweet and sour chicken. The major difference is with the quinoa we used pepper jack cheese and with the sweet and sour sauce we used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar. They both turned out amazing! Hubby said he'd give this meal a medium difficulty rating since there are a lot of steps. Totally worth it though!

And finally a picture to go along with this post! (Yes that's my hospital cup in the upper corner, I've been watching my oz intake of water, lol)

Yay! A winning recipe!

So this morning we decided to try a breakfast recipe from pinterest. I didn't follow it exactly... But it still turned out awesome! Pancake apple rings! Peel and core an apple (or3) I used gala apples, super sweet and tasty. Then prepare your pancake batter, I used bisquick complete. Just measure and add water. I also added cinnamon! Grease up a griddle, dip the apple rings in the batter and and slap them on the griddle til they're nice and golden. Top with powdered sugar and light syrup and we have a tasty breakfast that's not all that bad for you! They were like a baked apple pancake. Sooo delicious! Pics to come later as I'm on my phone.

wish I could figure out a way to flip these...

Edit: okay here is the link for the apple pancake rings. It's more in depth and sounds very yummy. Next time I make them I'll go for the whole recipe!