New and improved belly cast

Remember the cast that my sister Sage made of my big ol' 38 week baby belly?

Well, she painted it for me! I basically told her a rough idea of what I had in mind - tree on the belly, sun on one boob, moon on the other boob, maybe the Pisces constellation near the moon, and maybe a heart in the middle - and a few days later she brought me this:




Isn't it beautiful? Sage is an amazing artist. This will be the perfect thing to hang above Kyva's changing table. Every time she looks at it, she can be reminded of where she came from, and how much her Auntie Sage loves her!

Active Sleep, AKA the many faces of Miss Kyva

This next video is not only quite entertaining, it's also educational! It's an example of Active Sleep in the newborn...who knew?



There are 2 states of newborn sleep - quiet sleep, and active sleep. According to the cool new book I'm reading, Your Amazing Newborn, by Marshall Klaus and Phyllis Klaus:

During the newborn period, an infant sleeps most of the time - about 90 percent of the day or night - and will often fall asleep at the breast. Half of this time is spent in quiet sleep, the other half in active sleep. These two states alternate about every thirty minutes during sleep.

In quiet sleep, the baby's face is relaxed and the eyelids are closed and still. There are no body movements except rare startles and extremely fine mouth movements. In this state, babies are at full rest; breathing is very regular because they are taking in the same amount of air with each breath. However, in all states, babies take a deep sigh every several minutes which allows the lungs to be properly filled with just the right amount of air.

In active sleep, an infant's eyes are usually closed, but occasionally they will flutter from closed to open. One can often see the eyes move under the lids. Eye motion or stillness accompanying these two sleep states has even been observed in the fetus by means of ultrasound. The term rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep refers to the eye movements observed during this type of restless sleep.

In active sleep, occasional body activity ranges from movement of the arms and legs to stirring of the entire body. Breathing is not regular and can be slightly faster than it is in quiet sleep. While they remain asleep, infants in the active sleep state often make funny faces - grimaces, smiles, frowns - and may display chewing movements or bursts of sucking. When babies wake, they usually have been in active sleep rather than quiet sleep. Adults dream while in REM sleep; no one knows whether infants also dream in this particular sleep state.

Video of Kyva's first bath

Kyva and Grandma Renee spend some quality time together

Kyveli is 2 weeks old!

Everyone told me that time would fly once she arrived, and WOW, they were sure right! I can't believe it's been 2 weeks already. Kyva looks like a completely different baby to us now. Her features are much more defined, and she's packing on some pudge thanks to all the round-the-clock eating she does. We'll find out exactly how much weight she has gained at first her appointment with the pediatrician on Tuesday. She's tracking things with her eyes now, and staying awake for slightly longer periods of time. She's really alert when she's awake. She's also gotten just a teensy bit fussy, but only when she's overtired and she's pretty easy to calm thanks to Dr. Harvey Karp and his 5 S's.

We're feeling sort of lost in a sweet haze of newbornness, where time stops yet flies by at the same time. Kailen went back to work after the first week. He's eligible to take up to 7 weeks off, but he decided to take Fridays off until mid-October instead of taking his leave as a chunk of time. My mom has been here since last Saturday helping out a TON. I seriously don't know what I would have done without her, and I'm a little afraid of what will happen when she leaves. Last Sunday she even made us breakfast in bed! We've had a steady stream of visitors including grandma Marge, aunties Sage, Madylan and Heather and cousins Shasta and Jevria, in addition to lots of friends and other admirers. Everyone seems to agree that we "made a good one."

Here are some pictures from Kyva's first two weeks!

Posing in front of our cheesy garage sign/balloons:



Proud Grandmas Marge (Kailen's mom) and Renee (Zoe's mom):


Auntie Heather with new cousins (yay...cousins!) Shasta and Jevria:


Aunties Sage and Madylan:



Pitsie and Kyva getting to know eachother:


Visits from Vi, Caitlin and Molly:




Visiting daddy Kailen at work:


Who knew nursing pads made such perfect yarmulkes?


Doing a pretty good impression of her peapod doll:

Kyveli's first hiccups

Kyveli's birth story, Volume 1: At Home

DISCLAIMER: This thing is freaking LONG, sorry! I broke it into two parts to make it a little easier to read. Once again, I am simply incapable of making a long story short...what else is new?

On Saturday, we decided to take a walk. We had been meaning to get library cards at our local library, so we walked the ~1.7 miles over to the library thinking it couldn’t hurt to move things along since my due date was the next day. We walked slowly and I felt mild contractions along the way, but every time I sat down I would have another one and these were much stronger than any of the Braxton-Hicks contractions I had been feeling up to that point. We got our library cards, checked out a bunch of CDs and books, and walked the 1.7 miles back home, stopping a couple of times for a late lunch and at Trader Joe’s to pick up supplies for the barbecue we planned to have the next day if I didn’t go into labor (yeah…that barbecue ended up getting canceled!). Once at home we started timing the contractions and noticed that they were consistently 10 minutes apart. We called Mireille, our doula, and let her know that this might be the beginning of labor. She advised that we get some rest, because if it was the real deal, we’d need to save up our energy for the possibly long haul ahead. We watched “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” on TV, had some dinner, and went to bed around 11pm. I couldn’t sleep much due to being jolted awake by painful contractions every 10 minutes, but drifted off in between.

Around 3am I got up to attempt to distract myself from the pain, which was getting harder and harder to ignore. I updated the blog and began timing contractions again and saw that they were now averaging 5-8 minutes apart. I called Mireille again to let her know that this definitely seemed to be real thing. She said she’d come over as soon as I felt like I needed some extra support. I told her to go back to bed for now and that I’d call again if the situation changed. Around 4am I felt like I needed her to be here with us, so I called again and she arrived around 5am. She assessed the situation and said I was still in early labor, and helped me breathe through the ever strengthening contractions while encouraging me to rest in between. During each one, it felt best to moan really low, sort of like a cow mooing. I remembered what we had been taught in our Bradley class and relaxed my entire body and just tried to concentrate on taking each moment and each sensation individually instead of focusing on what was to come.

We got up a few hours later and ate some breakfast, and this same pattern continued throughout Sunday morning and early afternoon. Every so often, Mireille would suggest changing up our routine to encourage things to continue progressing, so we took a few laps around the backyard, and at around 3pm I took a shower. While in the shower I had 4-5 really strong contractions that I had to lean on the wall and moan through. Mireille said that this could be the beginning of the active labor stage and looking back, I think it was. Mireille and Kailen took excellent care of me by making me snacks and reminding me to drink lots of sips of water, juice, coconut water, etc. At one point, she listened to the baby’s heartbeat using her Doppler and noticed that it was a little on the high side, but not by much so we didn’t worry about it (more on this later). By 6pm the contractions were much stronger, longer and closer together and sometimes I didn’t even have a break between them. We decided it was time to head to Kaiser so Kailen called in and let them know we were on our way.