Betsey's first week....

Today is Sunday, and a week ago from today I went into labor with our little girl.
You would think that having 4 kids would make you a pro at parenting, but omg I totally forgot how to do everything. Also since this was my 4th cesarean, it hurt so much more than the others and recovery is totally kicking my butt. It took a few days for my milk to come in, and because of that Betsey has jaundice. When we left of wednesday her bilirubin was at a 12.5, we brought her in on Friday and it went up to 18.3. We were told to nurse like crazy, give her some sunshine and bring her back on Saturday to do another blood test. We thought she was looking so much better, she wasn't as orange, she was staying awake longer, nursing really well, and having lots a poopy diapers. However, after a 6 hour stay in the ER waiting for results we found out that her count went up to 21.7! We were transported to the other hospital in town, the one where she was born and admitted and started the bili lights last night. We will be here till tomorrow morning and hopefully we wont have to stay any longer than that. She loves the little "tanning bed" and nurses then goes back in with her cool shades on and falls right asleep. We were hoping at this point for our lives to start returning to normal, our other kids are extremely missed and believe it or not, don't want to stay at grandmas house anymore and want to come home and we are ready for them too.

Birth of Betsey Jane Contente

Miss Betsey joined our world 5/23/11 at 5:41 am weighing in at 7 pounds 10 ounces 18 1/2 inches long. I went into a short labor with her at 1 am came to the hospital around 4 am and was taken to cesarean at 5. She had some serious breathing issues being that she was born at 37 weeks, she had fluid in her lungs that she was having difficulty expelling and she turned a grayish white color, it was terrifying. But with the prayer of all of our friends and family and some great nurses and our pediatrician, she pulled through like a champ and her pediatrician was amazed by how quickly she improved. I am so in love with her, completely head over heels. She looks just like her big sister, but with jet black hair. She is nursing every hour, really hoping my milk comes in soon. I am still at the hospital and will come home tomorrow. Here are photos from our first 2 days together.

moo.

It's getting close to that time.
I am 35 weeks, and I am beginning to make "lists".
This particular list that I am working on, is my grocery list.
All 3 of my children have had some form of a lactose allergy.
With Mason he had severe acid reflux, and I was never advised to cut out diary from my diet even though he was pretty much exclusively breastfed until 6 months. And we were unaware of the allergy until he was 12 months old and had his first bottle of cow's milk. He outgrew the allergy by 18 months old.
London's I became aware of at 5 months old when we switched her to formula when she refuse to breastfeed due to me getting pregnant with Rowan. I don't really eat a ton of dairy, so she didn't have much of a reaction to it when I was nursing her. Rowan, it was evident right after he was born.
Cutting out dairy is easy, if you cut out meat with it.
I am a "fair-weather" vegan, and I only eat that way when it is convenient to me, or for a purpose such as this. I know, it's dumb to be like that, but that's me take it or leave it. I'll get on a 3 month soap box about it, and then go and eat a whopper. But when it comes to breastfeeding, I take it seriously, and I cut all of it out. This time I am starting it this week, well cutting out the meat first for a week then slowly incorporating milk subs so that way when our baby girl gets here I am prepared and in full non-dairy swing. She may not have milk allergies, but I am just going to play it safe for the few first months to be so sure of it because I don't want to make her sick so I can have a glass a milk, pretty darn selfish.
Some of our favorite cookbooks are :

Veganomicon, literally the bible of vegan cooking. It has everything in it. EVERYTHING.
by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Romero

Vegan with a Vengeance, same authors as the one above. It's a smaller cookbook with great breakfast and brunch options plus out weekly still favorite, Brooklyn Pad Thai.

The Conscious Cook- Tal Ronnen
Tal Ronnen loves meat, he is a manly meat eater but he has  moral conviction to not eat animal products so all of his vegan meals revolve around satisfying the meat eaters of America. Some of the dishes are "fancy smancy" but easy. Husband really likes his stuff, and have you seen Joe? He's a manly man.


I do not take dairy away from my kids, they love it. My daughter hates meat, so she is a self made vegetarian. Meat free meals are easy and after I do my shopping this week I will try and do a nightly photo post of what we have made.

in the third grade...

This morning I was reading a magazine and it was talking about how to do the birds & the bees conversation with your kids. And then on facebook today, I read someone's post about awful that conversation was with their mother. I started thinking about my "talk" and it is a funny funny story, one full of confusion, lies, and pure humiliation that even after all these years later my best friend Hayley likes to remind me of. I'm the type of person who has no problem laughing at myself, or making fun of myself especially for things that I did as a child. So I thought that I would share the story with you......

It all started in the third grade.

I knew that babies came from sex. I knew it was something that mom's and dad's did, but I didn't know what it was. As I have mentioned before on this blog, I was raised by my grandmother since the age of 6. And when I was 7, on a Sunday while she was in front of her vanity getting ready for church, I asked my Grandma Sharon, "how do you make sex?" Yup, how do you make it.

I remember sitting on side of the bathtub when I asked her, I'm not sure why I was thinking about it? I don't remember if someone's mom was pregnant or something. But she didn't tell me right away, she told that evening. And what she told me was something along these lines:

When a man and woman get married, they kiss. And when they kiss an egg comes out of the woman's ovaries, through her fallopian tubes, and lands in her uterus where a baby grows. Then the baby stays in there until it is done growing and comes out of her vagina. 

I was so confused about all of these body parts that I had no idea what they were, and where they were located that I didn't even realize that she had completely surpassed answering my "sex" question. I was 7, I didn't know what a vagina was, I had "privates" so how could I possibly know that I had ovaries filled with eggs? I thought platypuses were the only warm blooded creatures who laid eggs.....right? So a few weeks later, I went to a BBQ with my other grandmother, Kathy at her friend Marie's house. Marie had an 8 year old grandson, Jimmy, and Jimmy  kissed me. A plain peck on the lips because his older brother Mikey told him to do it. And then our loud obnoxious Italian grandparents who thought it "cute" started in on how we were going to get married when we were older. But I was so horrified because I knew that because of that stupid kiss, I was now pregnant, at the age of 7, in the third grade. I went to school the next day, and on the playground told my friends that I was pregnant. And I told them how it happened.  I remember this girl named Monet telling me that she didn't think I was right about the whole thing. Well later on that day during recess, I did a cartwheel during and my egg fell out of my uterus and died. My grandma received so many phone calls from parents in my class wanting to know what the hell was going on and why their daughters were telling them that "Nichole Homburg was pregnant and her egg baby died on the playground today." So after that happened, I got the real sex talk. And if I had only just had the truth handed to me at first, I would have never wanted to repeat what disgusting things my grandma said happens to you when you get married to anyone, and I most certainly wouldn't have thought I was pregnant at 7 years old, in the third grade.