gracie at 1 month

My baby is one month old today! I can't believe how fast time has flown by, and yet I feel like she's been with us forever. 

She spends a lot more time awake and in active alert phase. She smiles for longer times and will turn toward sounds. For a couple of weeks she would want to stay up after waking up in the middle of the night for a feeding. Our days were beginning at 3AM because she would not fall back asleep! The past few nights have been better though so I'm keeping my fingers crossed she will keep sleeping more at night! I love dressing her up and putting all sorts of bows on her head that usually just end up getting taken off by her dad or grandpa, but it's still fun. Gracie's gotten really strong...she will grab and get a good yank on my hair, she can hold her head up pretty well for a little while, and can kick off my lap hard with her legs. She's wearing newborn diapers and newborn clothes. Some of her newborn sized clothes are still too big. I can definitely tell she's growing though, and she is getting some chubby cheeks!

Some more pictures from the last two weeks:

We went to Bear Lake for a day to hang out with my family. 

-misses lake

Newborn Pictures

M.K. Nash Photography is amazing. i am in LOVE with these pictures!

gracie at 2 weeks.

honestly, these baby posts are definitely more for me than anyone else. i want to record all these things somewhere and my blog is the easiest way to do it right now...

today my baby is 2 weeks old...ahh i'm already feeling like time is going by too fast! her birth weight was 6 lb 5oz and she is now at 6 lb 12 oz and in the 9th percentile for weight! her birth length was 19" and she is now at 20 3/4 " and in the 48th(!!) percentile for length.

she eats great, but has had a lot of reflux. she poops a ton...she is the queen of getting changed and tightly swaddled just to poop loudly the second you pick her back up. she also gets the hiccups like 20 times a day. 

our dogs? they LOVE her. we feel so lucky that they have been so good with her so far. they will watch her, sniff her, and sneak in a lick or two if they can. 

she loves her daddy! even right after she was born she'd open her eyes or look around if she'd hear his voice. of course our favorite thing in the world is when she is awake and just staring at us. we both love snuggling with her. she's gradually gotten a little fussy, but she does spend a lot of her awake time just quietly looking around and staring. she loves staring at the monkeys hanging from her bouncer.

she likes being swaddled at night, but sleeps fine unswaddled during the day. she makes lots of cute cooing or squeaking noises in her sleep and pulls all sorts of fun faces. she also stretches her arms all over the place for a while before waking up. we've had some rough and sleepless nights the past couple of weeks, but we've developed more of a bedtime routine the past few days that i truly believe has helped. she'll now have some 3 hour stretches at night, although sometimes she won't sleep well for an hour or two in the very early morning.

we've heard pretty evenly split that she looks JUST like dawson or JUST like me. dawson says she has my chin and mouth, i say she has his lower lip, nose, and forehead. either way, i think she is the best looking kid i know. she has the longest monkey toes...which she inherited from both parents. she also has a lot of very soft baby hair that we absolutely love.

it surprises me how fast my days go by while taking care of a baby. i feel like i am constantly diaper changing, breastfeeding, burping, diaper changing, outfit changing, breastfeeding, burping, repeat. i sneak in going to the bathroom, feeding myself, doing small household tasks, and getting naps in while she sleeps during the day but i can't ever plan on getting a lot done. to be honest though, i think i anticipated pretty well that having a baby would be this much work and that i wouldn't really have time to myself. what i did not anticipate though, was the overwhelming love i would feel for this child and the strong feeling she would bring into our home. although i've been busy, sleep deprived, exhausted, and emotional at times, it has been an incredible two weeks for sure!

the day we brought her home from the hospital

a week old

snuggling with her dad

4th of july

puppy love

today at 2 weeks old...she looks so much like her dad in this picture!

i love being this girl's mom!

-kandis

Gracelyn's Birth

on the morning of thursday june 26th, we loaded up everything we needed, took our dogs to my dad's house, and headed to the hospital to have our baby girl. i had been dilating for 5 weeks up to this point, and the week before we had scheduled to induce labor on thursday if she hadn't come before then. i was nervous about being induced because so many people had advised me against it, but i didn't want to be pregnant past my due date and didn't want to spend very much of my maternity leave from work without my baby. up to that point i tried all the at-home tricks to induce labor. i had been walking, hiking, jogging, doing squats and lunges, cleaning the home, working 12 hour shifts, taking herb supplements, bouncing on the exercise ball, eating spicy food and pineapple, rubbing my ankles and other pressure points, and having sex. the one thing i refused to do was drink castor oil. but nothing worked. i would start getting regular contractions but they'd go away or space out within an hour. so thursday the 26th it was! it's a weird thing to schedule having your baby on a certain day, and just wake up and head to the hospital when that day comes.

we checked in at 7:00 and the doctor came in to break my water at 7:30. when he checked me before breaking my water i was still at a 3 and completely effaced. our nurse was awesome, i am so glad we had her! she started my pitocin and went over our paperwork with us. part way through the paperwork and teaching, i couldn't even focus through my contractions. after i threw up from the pain, i requested my epidural and had it by 10:00. i felt like quite the wuss for needing it so early, but felt better when i found out i was already at a 6. labor was progressing quickly! daws joked that as long as the baby waited until the US soccer game was over, he'd be happy.

i felt so good after my epidural all i could do was sit back and laugh from relief and conclude getting it was the best decision of my life. i ate an orange popsicle and watched the soccer game with dawson as he paced around the room. he was pretty nervous about the soccer game and having a baby, double wammy i guess! as the soccer game was ending and i was getting ready to take a nap, the nurse came in and checked me again and i was almost at a 10! i was shocked! i started pushing for the first time around 12:00, and then my doctor said he wanted me to take a half hour break to see if the contractions would push the baby further on their own. during that break my mom came by and talked to us for a little bit and left when it was time to start pushing again, a little after 1:00. 

[right before meeting our baby girl!]

i hadn't been pushing for very long when my doctor came in and informed us that the baby's heart rate had been decreasing and that we needed to use either the vacuum extractor or forceps. we decided on the vacuum and he got it going right away. dawson says that watching the doctor use that vacuum was the craziest thing he ever saw. i was so concentrated on pushing that i was surprised when our girl came out, much faster than i had anticipated, at 2:02 pm. before i even knew what was going on, they were setting this slimy, cone headed baby on my chest, but i looked at her face and thought she was the most beautiful thing i had laid eyes on. holding my daughter for the first time was truly the best feeling in the world! dawson and i both loved her right away.

 i was able to do skin-to-skin care and breastfeed. baby girl was a natural at it!

 6 lb 5 ounces and 19 inches long

first bath from daddy

 this is when i cried...one of the best moments of my life for sure.

up to the time she was born we hadn't picked out a name for her. we had a couple of favorites we were deciding between but hadn't made up our mind yet. last summer, before i was even pregnant or planning on being pregnant, i couldn't stop thinking about a baby girl and how beautiful the name "grace" was. one of mine and dawson's favorite girl names has always been "gracie", and a few months before we had her dawson suggested "gracelyn".  i think deep down i always knew her name would have "grace" in it, but we had other options in mind also. even the night before she was born, dawson had a different favorite name. when she was born and we saw her, dawson said he thought her name was gracelyn, and i agreed. it just felt right.

this is my family!

meeting her grandparents...

and her uncle kody.

we sure love our angel gracelyn!

-kandis