And 1 more makes 4.

So I know I'm terrible at posting but now that I'm spending a few hours a day glued to the couch and I have a tablet, I might as  well try again.
This is the reason I'm such a couch potato- we have a new member of the family. I'm using a blogger app so I don't know where the picture ended up but that's our new darling, Lucy Love. She joined our family on September 1st at 7:42 am. Because Pearl joined us via c-section, we went ahead and planned to cut Lucy out too. I figured that since I went into labor 2 weeks late, scheduling her delivery for a week before my due date would let me miss out on the lovely labor experience but it turns out that she was coming on the first even if I hadn't scheduled her to. One of my friends in VA told me that with her second baby she felt the contractions in her incision site and that definitely was what I experienced.
I don't remember much from the day Lucy was born- morphine really messes me up- but I vaguely remember them bringing her to me for a few minutes before carting her off to the NICU. I slept most of the day because there wasn't much else I could do and finally around 8 pm, they let me go see her. She was definitely a full term baby- 8lbs 9 oz (a pound and a half bigger than they thought she'd be) but because I moved from practically sea level to 8000+ feet during my third trimester, her lungs didn't develop how they needed to in order to handle the lack of oxygen up here and her blood sugar wasn't stabilizing like it should have and she wasn't regulating her temperature correctly.
The rest of my hospital stay was pretty much horrible. The NICU nurses complained that Lucy cried too loudly- seriously- and that she kept spitting up all over her blankets and refused formula and wanted to be cuddled a lot. I spent all day with her other than to eat and take my medicine and at shift change but that seemed to frustrate them too. I felt like a huge hassle. It was awful having no control. The second day, Lucy started having dry diapers because she wouldn't eat formula and my milk hadn't come in yet. Because I was in the NICU all day, I got to hear all the rounds the doctors and nps did and either they didn't know I was just behind the curtain or they didn't care because they all questioned whether I was the cause of her dehydration- lemme tell you how good that made me feel, worrying about my baby, doing everything I possibly could, and then hearing her doctors act like her problems were my fault.
Outside the NICU, people were much nicer. The doctors told me they'd have my orders changed so I could be discharged later if she needed to stay longer- which looked increasingly likely. The nurses were definitely supportive and nice as well but I really wasn't in my room much at all so most of my days were spent being stressed out. Pearl came to visit a couple times and I missed her like crazy. The last night we were there, I had Paul's dad give Lucy a blessing. They'd told me that the chances of us being discharged the next day were extremely slim and in a combination of stress and hormones, I cried and cried. I missed my Pearl, I was sick of being in the hospital, I wanted to go home. I had Paul spend the night at the hospital instead of going home. That helped a bit but I was still exhausted and frustrated at the prospect of at least one more awful day and night. After the night shift change we went to go sit with Lucy again and found out she had a different night nurse. She turned out to be such a blessing and a real answer to prayer. Instead of treating me like a horrible mom if I slept more than 2.5 hours, she practically ordered me to sleep and insisted that it was my job to sleep and have my milk come in and it was her job to try and get Lucy to eat with a bottle so that we could go home. I checked in a couple of times during the night but she told me to go back to bed because she'd been able to get Lucy to do what no one else had- take more than an ounce of formula without spitting it all back up. When I went in at 5:30 to feed Lucy, my milk had come in and Lucy hadn't had a dry diaper all night. It was wonderful and I felt so much better. Things stayed positive all day and finally, around 6pm, they let us go home with Lucy on oxygen.

She's a wonderful baby. She looks just like Pearl did with a bit of a smaller head and extremely dark brown hair- and lots of it. We were worried about how Pearl would handle us bringing home a baby but she was ridiculously excited. She's not really into being a little mama but I wasn't expecting her to be one. There's been a bit of drama because Pearl hates loud noises but she's already a million times better.

Lucy still hasn't made it back up to birth weight despite the fact that she seems to want to eat 90% of her wakeful periods but hopefully when she does we'll be able to test her off of oxygen. I'd like to enjoy my sweetie's face without a canula. Yesterday a lady stopped me and asked why she was on oxygen and it actually caught me off guard because I'm so used to seeing her with a canula that for a second I couldn't figure out how she knew. Come to think of it, other than when we change her tubes, I haven't seen her without oxygen. Lame. t

I'm going to completely ignore the fact that I haven't blogged in almost a year.

We're slowly getting our Sunday schedule down for the rest of the time we're here in Virginia. We have the awful privilege of going from 1 to 4 so by the time we get home Pearl Pepper is absolutely beyond done for the day. Part of the reason our routine was not so easily cut and dry is the fact that it takes me a little bit to, I don't know how to say it- come down? after meetings are over. We (read I, Papa Pepper has to take the Pearl Pepper to the foyer or else she's a cranky distraction) were switched from teaching 9 year olds in primary to teaching 5 year olds- 9 of them. My mom said that when she was in the primary presidency in Colorado, that was the average and I'm sure that for those used to wards in Utah, 9 is laughable but for me, it's a lot. It's a LOT. Octomom has another thing coming when she has 8 5-year olds to take care of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Come 4 o'clock, I'm so jittery from two hours of what I can only describe as the Caterpillar Room from Toy Story 3 but with pictures of Jesus and no toys, that I can hardly sit down to cuddle my Pearl Pepper. It seriously takes me a good 30 minutes to achieve normal muscle tension .

Anywho. We get home from church and then, because it's too late for Pearl Pepper to take any sort of nap, we have to do our best to keep her awake and happy for another hour or so until we can put her in the tub and send her to bed. This is where I've given up all the pious ideals I was so sure I was never going to break before I had a baby: When we get home, we cuddle up with Pearl Pepper and turn on Toy Story 3.

In the immortal words of one, Joy Hickey. "Don't you judge me!"

After the post-church collapse, I'm done. If Pearl Pepper wanted to play (and she doesn't because she's already started to resemble a zombie more than an actual human being), I don't know that I could. I'd just have to lay down on the rug and let her beat me with whatever she had in frustration that her mama was such a lame-o. As it is, we both kind of slump down, and wait in droopy-eyed anticipation for the toys to confront Lotso at the dumpster- it's a convenient stopping point because the rest of it is almost too intense for me and I'd rather not subject Pearl Pepper to all-encompassing bad-parentage just yet. We'll save that for when she's at least 2.

Let's boycott Prevacid!

So I'm either going to get fat or type 2 diabetes, maybe both, and it's all the fault of modern medicine.

It all started when Pearl decided to have reflux- I know! who does that?! She was pretty good as far as reflux babies go from my experience. Sure she cried quite a bit but other than worrying that she was in pain it didn't bother me much. She did, however, spit up a lot. Cute baby fountain a lot. Niagara Falls a lot. I didn't keep spit up cloths by our bed, I kept full on bath towels- true story. Because of all this puking, all Pearl ever wanted to do was eat. I'm pretty certain that after she woke up in the morning I fed her every hour until about 2 in the afternoon and then every hour and a half until bed. That's me, just a milk makin' machine. Of course after she'd spit up literally every ounce of what I'd just fed her I'd have to chastise her, "Pearl, why should I even bother working so hard to make this stuff for you if you're going to be ungrateful!" Surprisingly, that didn't help much.

Finally, after much pleading from Papa Pepper (his ear drums aren't encased in steel like mine are) I took Pearl to her pediatrician's office. How long had this been going on? he wanted to know. Because I am such an awesome Mama, I knew the exact answer- "Um, like a few weeks I guess?" He looked at her chart for a few minutes and said, "well, she had the same symptoms at both her 1 and 2 month check ups and in 2 weeks she'll be 4 months, so let's go with a few months." Great, now Dr. B thinks I'm a big fat liar and neglectful too but in my defense, you'd have a hard time remembering if your brains were being sucked out your chest 14 times a day too. Regardless of how bad of a mother he thought I was, Dr. B gave us a script for reflux medicine. After some tricky finagling with the insurance company to get it approved, we filled it a week later. I was expecting it to take a few weeks to kick in- we noticed a difference in days! No more mammoth amounts of spit up. No more making a mental note to was having to wash our sheets every other day. No more weird looks when I pulled out a large hand towel in the mother's lounge at church to clean up the pools of creamy on our sweaters and skirts. It was FABULOUS.

Or so I thought....

Because Pearl had been eating ridiculous quantities for who knows how long, this milk making machine did not know how to cope with the new low consumption rate- we're talking MAYBE 1/3 of her normal necessary supply. Suddenly my nursing bra no longer fit and I had to walk around like a leaky Dolly Parton, terrified that I'd sneeze in the grocery store and have to put one of the girls back in its too small cage. Darn modern medicine... but that wasn't the worst of it. Nooo. Mondo melons were nothing compared to what those pills did to my scale. When the week where I finally understood what it was like to have men not talk to your face ended, the numbers on my scale were magically up. "But I've lost all that milk weight! What is wrong with you?!" I asked in desperation but it did not answer. That night I told Papa Pepper of my concerns and after the obligatory argument about whether or not I looked fat, he said, "well maybe your weight has to do with what you're doing right now."

"What? Calling myself fat?"... He gave me a weird look, "when did you buy that giant bag of Skittles?"... I had to swallow the mouthful of sugar, "nothing."

"Nothing doesn't work here. I know you have Skittles, you've been "sneaking" them from under the covers all night." -- Yes, we hang out in bed all evening don't judge-- I didn't think he'd notice so I told the truth, "yesterday evening." "And how many are left?" I pulled out the bag and peeked inside, "four... but I've been eating this much for a while now and I've never gained weight before!" "Maybe you're just not burning as many calories because Pearl's not eating as much anymore."

Of course he was right, Papa Pepper is always right.

But it's so not fair! I loved eating everything in sight and having my weight stay the same. One day I actually ate not one but 2 Wendy's Bacon Deluxe MEALS and the next day I was down 2 pounds! And since I've been eating this way for months I'm finding it hard to stop. Stupid habits... no! Stupid modern medicine! How dare you make my Pearl feel better? You've got some nerve drug companies.... some nerve....

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!

okay, so I know I've been remiss about blogging for like the past 3 or 4 months but I have a sweet daughter that really really really doesn't like being put down and only sleeps for like 20 minutes at a time once or twice during the day... she sleeps really well at night though so it's okay.

right now, paul is holding a fussy pearl while i quickly type this... so here it is:

how weird/wrong do you think it is for an almost-23-year-old parent to sleep with a stuffed animal at night?

i'm not going to tell you who this almost 23-year-old-parent is because it might influence your decision.

comment me and tell me what you think or facebook me, i don't care which but do one or the other because paul and i do not agree about this and we want some input please!