CABALLERO

I've been noticing a rapidly increasing blog drought as of late. What's up with that? As a mother of a toddler and a new born... Gasp! I can't say new born anymore. No no no, she is two whole months now! Time flies. Anyways, as I was saying, some days, the Internet is my only connection to the outside world and I need some updates people! Sad? Yes. But before you go feeling all sorry for me, let me tell you that I love my life. Not every day, no. There are some days where I feel as though I could run away. Screaming. If we're being honest here. But I embrace the fact that this is normal, and that the good days far outweigh the bad ones.

We've settled into a nice routine here in the Caballero household. I couldn't have asked for a better baby. Our little Masey is so sweet and smiley. She does have a good healthy set of lungs on her, so if you've ticked her off, be prepared to hear about it. She goes to bed between 9-9:30 and only gets up once to eat. Sometimes she wakes up for the day at 8:30 but there are some beautiful mornings when she sleeps until almost 10:00. Ahhh those are nice. I usually spend this extra hour dozing on the couch while Noah has breakfast and watches a show. It's bliss. She seems to be growing much fast than I remember Noah growing. I just bought her some pajamas last week and she has already stretched them to the maximum length. Hmmm, oh well, more shopping for me! Why is it that I enjoy shopping for my kids so much more than I do for myself? Weird. At 8 weeks she is a rotund 15 pounds. Poor girl gains all her weight in her stomach and thighs. Oh how I can relate. When I change her I talk to her in my high pitched baby voice which Noah LOVES to mimic. I say to her, Hi Chubby Chubbers. And he leans in real close to her face, copies the pitch perfectly and says Oh Hi Chubby Chubbers! He loves to call her Masey girl which comes out sounding like Masey Goowha. Ed has been calling her Momma or Mommas from day one and Noah has picked up that one real quick too. When he hears her crying from her crib, he drops all his toys and yells at me, Mom! Let's go get Mommas! And hauls off down the hall to rescue his baby sister. So-o cute. I really can't say enough about how much he has changed since she has been born. Does he still tantrum? Of course. Is he still sassy? Absolutely. But he communicates so much more and in turn, listens to us communicate to him so much more. A few weeks ago I noticed him yelling while he was playing with his cars. Go sit on a time out RIGHT now! He yelled. Uh oh.... I wonder where he heard that from. My bad. I talked about it with Ed when he got home and we have really cut back on raising our voices to him when we are disciplining. what.a. difference. Who knew that calm talking would get you so much better results?? hahaha Everyone, I know. Bad habits are hard to break I suppose and when I am angry, or frustrated, I communicate that through the decibels in my voice. Or at least I used too. I'm doing so much better now and I think it's even helped me to communicate my feelings to Ed without offending by yelling. It feels good. I hope I can keep it up.

Speaking of Ed. He's my best friend. Have I mentioned that before??? :) Well it's true. How cool is it being married to your best friend? hanging out with them all of the time and sharing all the joys and pains of life? I don't know what I would do without him. He is so good for bouncing my idea's and thoughts off of and I love to hear his feedback. He has been really supportive of my weight loss and even pushes me to keep going. The other night for example, when I did NOT want to go out and run stairs. Yuck. He pushed me and pushed me until I finally grabbed the keys and stormed out of the house in anger. Working out really does give you endorphins, because I was no longer seething mad when I came back :) I even thanked him for his help. (Or at least I thought of thanking him... Hmmm. I should make sure I did when he gets home from school.) Shortly after Masyn was born we decided it was finally time for Ed to quit his job and move on to something else. We were extremely nervous of this because we had no idea what else he could do for money while still going to school. And when I say 'we' I really mean 'ME' I am such a stress case. More on that later. But in the end it all worked out perfectly much to the thanks of Ed's parents and brother for coming through for us. It's been a blessing for sure. We've taken a bit of a hit financially, but he is home way more and he is getting so much more rest than before. I will take that over more money any day. In other news, we did not get accepted into any Dental Schools this year. Which means we will be here for another year at least and Ed is going to take another shot at the DAT since they recommend you take it a few times anyways. Practice makes perfect I suppose. Anyways, he graduates in April and we are hoping he gets a good job so that we can rent a bit of a bigger place for this next year. So if anyone knows of anything he could do for work, please let us know. I would love to get into a place with a backyard of some sort so we can make the most of the warmer days ahead.

So earlier I was informing you of my stress case self. Well I have been noticing just how badly I stress over, well nothing sometimes. My life is not that bad, really. I just don't handle any kind of stress well, and I want to change that. I'm not sure how to go about channeling my inner stress demons. Yoga? Meditation? Is there a class I can take? I'm not sure. But I think that stress ages you, and well.... I'm feeling super old these days. So if anyone can help me out with info or anything that you do personally to manage your stress I would be forever grateful. And perhaps I would send you some baked goods.... perhaps. On another front, I am starting to lose my baby weight. I gave myself 6 weeks before I started in on anything. Well that was two weeks ago. A couple of days ago I received a phone call from my Bestie Juli telling me she was getting married in July. Well that put my butt in gear. Currently I have 3 1/2 months to lose just under 30 pounds. Bring it.


And lastly, I finally have the pictures back from our newborn shoot my sister did. Yay! And since both babies are napping, I shall include her birth story as you feast your eyes on the beauty that Masyn is....


So her due date was January 10th. No problem, I thought. Noah was a week early, she will be too. Naive. So naive. By the time the 10th came around I was already frustrated because I was expecting her 7 days previous. I was desperate. The window of opportunity for Wes and Amanda to see her before they left was quickly closing.

I had gone on several long walks, squatted whenever I could, did some jumping jacks (not the easiest at 9 months pregnant let me tell you) ate spicy food, vacuumed my parents entire house on my hands and knees and even got acupuncture (which for the record I will never do again. No matter how much I wanted that baby out of me, I could not get past the fact that there were needles sticking out of my body! Icky.)

By the 11th I had convinced myself that she was just never coming out and I would have to walk around being pregnant forever. Can you imagine?? It kind of freaked me out. On the morning of the 13th I had an appointment with my midwives. My Mom took the day off, we left Noah in Strathmore because that's where I was staying while Wes and Amanda were in town, and headed for a day in the city. At the appointment, they told me they could sweep my membranes and that could put me into labor. I'm sorry, just saying sweeping membranes sounds painful to me. Not to mention totally gross. So I kindly declined. I told them that if I was still pregnant by my next appointment, I would let them do whatever they had to do.

When I went back out into the waiting area, my Mom had booked me a massage so in I went for that. It was heaven on earth I tell you. If you ever get a chance to have a prenatal massage, do it. And then find excuses to have one every week for the duration of your pregnancy. It was grand, and over too quickly. That hour just flies by. Anywho, while we were in there I asked her to push on every labor inducing pressure point she could think of. And she did.

After that, it was off to the malls so we could find some last minute clothing for a family photo shoot that was happening in the next few days. So we walked, and walked and walked some more. Found all of the appropriate items and on our way home decided we should stop for a bite to eat at the Olive Garden. Yum. It was around 3:00 pm I think by this time. It was on the way to eat that I felt my first contraction. I started timing them and by the time we were seated and had ordered they were about 4-6 minutes apart. And umm PAINFUL. Ouch. I didn't remember it being this painful with Noah right off the bat. I remember thinking, well! You can stay in there as long as you like little lady. I'm not ready for this anymore.

An hour after they had started, we were ready to leave and they were getting longer in between each one. I was a bit disappointed but I was dealing. We decided I would still go back out to Strathmore since they seemed to be going away. We got home, played with Noah, bathed and put him to bed and all the while I was having maybe one or two mild contractions every half hour or so. False alarm I thought. Around 10:00 I was so-o tired so I headed for bed.

At 10:50 I remember being woken up from a contraction but like I said before, I was super tired for some reason and so I was still kind of out of it. I dozed in between the pain and kept thinking that I was watching someone else go through labor from an outside perspective. It was all very weird. Finally around 11:30 I was fully awake and realized that this might be it, but with Noah's labor being 26 hours long, I didn't want to get all excited. I knew I had awhile to go yet. So I thought I would try and sleep some more. Ya right. They were coming every 8-10 minutes and after each one I had to go to the bathroom. Like, bad. So I would have to trudge all the way upstairs do my thing, then come all the way back down, crawl into bed and have a couple of minutes of rest before I would have some more pain and then have to go and do the whole trip again.

I guess I was being kind of loud because when I came out of the bathroom once, I noticed my Dad sitting in the chair in the living room. "What is going on?" He asks me. "Oh, I uh, think I'm in labor actually" So I sat on the couch and he timed a couple of them for me. They were about 6-8 minutes apart and getting more intense with each one. He went and woke up my Mom because I told him I didn't want to have another one without her there. She came and sat with us and I went through a couple more before I called Ed at about 12:30 to tell him we were having our baby.

He started making preparations to get someone to cover for him at work, so I called Janay to let her know that it had started. I had asked her previously to be there and take pictures for me. We decided it would take too long for Ed to have to come out to Strathmore to pick me up and then take us back into Calgary, so I called Josh and asked him to drive me in. After that we started getting my things together and the contractions started coming faster. I remember standing at the top of the stairs after Josh had come in the front door and having to bed over from a particularly painful contraction. I was breathing through it while my Mom rubbed my back. After I stood up I looked at Josh who said "Yup, pretty much sounds exactly how I did when I had my kidney stone" I think that should be labeled under, what NOT to say to a woman in labor. If eyes could kill, my brother would not be here today. I told my Mom that I wasn't going to drive 45 minutes in a car alone with him, so she got ready and by 1:30 we were on our way.

It was during this time that I remember thinking, what in the heck am I doing?? Why oh why did I WANT to do this again? The pain was so bad I felt like I was dying. Every 5 minutes I would die for about 50 seconds and then I would come back to life. I felt as though I was walking to my death. Willingly walking to my death. How messed up is that?? I called my midwives to tell them we were on our way and that they were already 5 minutes apart. Kudos to Mary who practically flew from Airdrie to make it to the Foothills in time. They met us at the entrance at 2:30 and after stopping twice for contractions before we reached the doors they grabbed a wheelchair and had me up in the room before I had another one. They should make those chairs with a seat belt. I might have come flying out we were rushing through the halls so fast :)

After we got in the room they took my blood pressure and started filling up the tub right away. I went through a few more contractions just standing beside the bed until Ed finally walked in and we made our way to the tub. As soon as I got in the contractions stopped. I was like... ummm Uh oh! I don't know what I did, by they're gone! Mary just laughed at me and told me to enjoy the break because they would be back with a vengeance. She wasn't lying. I could not get over how painful they were. Based on my previous labor I thought I was going to be there for awhile, and I just didn't think I would make it out alive if they were that bad.

I don't remember what time Janay got there. Sorry, I was a little busy. But I do remember her walking through the door looking all fresh and cute and happy, and and..dressed. Here I was, bearing everything for all to see, red faced with sweat beads forming on my forehead, my hair wet and flat against my head and not a trace of make up on my face. yes that's right. You heard me, zero make up. I'm a daredevil like that. No, not really. It all happened so fast I didn't have the time. But oh was I mad. I was mad at everyone outside of that tub. Everyone walking in and out of that little bathroom who had a smile on their face. They would say things like, you can do this! It won't be long now! And all the while they were feeling zero pain themselves. How.dare.they.

Anyways, I eventually got over that because I was back to feeling like I was dying and couldn't be bothered to think of anything else. I started pushing not long after that and after several attempts to tell Mary that I couldn't do 'this' anymore, she was born at 4:13 am. They placed her on my chest right away and I remember saying 'What do I do? what do I do?' Im pretty sure I remember hearing laughing and then someone said, 'just hold her!' So I did just that. I held my skinny, slippery little baby girl. She didn't make a peep. Just laid there staring up, probably feeling totally confused and maybe a bit unsure of what was happening around her. I was so glad it was all over and she was finally here.

They got us out of the tub and into the room for the the stats and paperwork and we just talked while the midwives did their thing. She came in at 6lbs 13 oz and 19 inches long. Just a little bean. Mary cleaned out the bathtub then filled it back up again and went and sat back in it. She handed Masyn to me with a bar of soap and that was her first little bath. Janay and my Mom came in at some point and I held her in the warm water while Janay cleaned her up with the soap. The midwives walked out of the room and told us to tell them when we were done. Such a difference from our first experience. 100% better by far.

When she was squeaky clean, we both got dressed, Josh and Ed's parents came in to meet and hold her, we loaded her into the car seat and were walking out of the hospital at 6:30am. It was a whirlwind but what a great experience. We were home by 7:00 and by 7:01 the three of us were sound asleep. I do remember on the drive home, telling Ed that I honestly didn't know if I could ever do that again. He told me that was fine and I started thinking 2 kids instead of the original 4 would be totally okay with me too. But then just the other day I called my Mom late one night...

Me: So we have a bit of a crisis

Mom: Oh? What is it?

Me: Well now that Masyn is going to bed at a set time and is practically sleeping through the night, I'm starting to think I could have another one....

I guess you just never know :) Four kids is looking doable to me right now. Remind me of that as I am going into labor with our third.