VBACs, TOLACs, & ERCs

VBAC: Vaginal Birth After Cesarean
TOLAC: Trial Of Labor After Cesarean
ERC: Elective Repeat Cesarean

My next birth is something that I have thought about every day since Quinn was born. When I went in for my six week check up, the doctor who performed my c-section said I had a small pelvis and guessed that if I were to attempt a VBAC, I would have a 13% chance of succeeding. Those aren't good odds. At the time, Kelly and I just accepted it and decided that I would just deliver the rest of our children via cesarean. I never thought that I wouldn't be able to deliver babies normally, but at least I could have babies, right? I'm still one of the lucky ones. I kind of went back and forth, maybe I would attempt it, maybe I wouldn't. I think that at that time, the only reason I was considering attempting another normal birth was based on how much I hated recovering from a c-section. It seriously sucks.  The first few days of Quinn's life, I couldn't get up when she cried without someone helping me. I'm her mom, I'm supposed to be able to get to her when she needs me.

Well, Quinn got older and we had always said that once she was a year old, we were going to start trying for baby #2. She turned six months old, and I realized that I was getting so close to her turning a year old and I was starting to freak out. I was going to have to get pregnant again so soon! I finally confessed my fears to Kelly and he was like "Uhhh.. we don't have to have another baby until you want to." So then I felt relieved and kind of dumb, haha. Nobody is making me have more children right this minute. I also realized that I needed to find out as much as I could about all of these birthing options.

I had to have a wellness check up or whatever those appointments are called where they do a pelvic exam every year. I questioned the doctor at the time on his opinions about VBACs. He told me he generally didn't have a problem with them, but then when I told him that I was told that I have a small pelvis, he made it sound like I wouldn't be a good candidate. He said good candidates are usually those who had to have a c-section because of a breech baby, or a cord prolapse. After that appointment I decided I needed to find out all that I could about my chances of birthing normally.

Why is the VBAC rate so low? It's only around 8% of women who have had prior c-sections that choose to do VBACs. ERCs are basically considered benign by the general public and some doctors and they really aren't. I'll get into that later. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says: "Attempting a VBAC is a safe and appropriate choice for most women who have had a prior cesarean delivery, including for some women who have had two previous cesareans." If it's safe, why is nobody doing it? There are some guidelines in place from ACOG that say that facilities had to be completely prepared in case of an obstetrical emergency. Not all hospitals have an anesthesiologist on the floor 24/7, so they don't allow VBACs. I'm not sure whether the interpretation of the hospitals just varies on this one.

60-80% of women who attempt to VBAC will be successful. I don't think that this means the other 20-40% of failed attempts die or lose their baby, because uterine ruptures occur .5-1% of the time. I'm guessing this means that their labor stalls or something happens where the doctors decide that it's no longer save to continue laboring, and they perform a c-section. TOLACs have a maternal mortality rate of 3.8/100,000 births.

First of all, the biggest risk people talk about with TOLACs is uterine rupture. You could have a uterine rupture, and your baby will suffer severe brain damage or die. How is uterine rupture detected? Signs include: fetal bradycardia, increased contractions, new onset of uterine pain. The most common sign is the fetal heart rate abnormality. Once the uterine rupture occurs, I found two different statistics on this, you either have 16-17 minutes or 10-37 minutes to get that baby out before it gets serious brain damage or dies. I'm guessing that they don't take the time to give moms a spinal before that emergency c-section. Knowing how bad the incision hurts the day after getting it, I can't imagine getting one without being numbed. My friend had to have one and she said they strapped her to the table. Awful. I found these statistics from the 2010 NIH VBAC Conference: of women who have uterine ruptures, 6.2% (1 in 16) result in infant deaths. Mothers who deliver at term, 2.8% (1 in 36) result in infant deaths. So I'm not sure what the difference is, maybe in the first statistic, mothers were induced? In the second one, the moms were maybe allowed to go into labor on their own? I don't know.

Like I said earlier, ERCs are generally considered to be harmless by most people. They aren't. ERCs have a maternal mortality rate of 13.4/100,000. There are quite a few risks involved, but perhaps the biggest one is the risk of placenta accreta. I had never heard of this until a few months ago. This condition occurs when the placenta attaches to the uterus right where the scar tissue is. The placenta can't get proper oxygen from the scar tissue, so it burrows deeper into the uterine wall until it finds oxygen. In some cases, if even goes through the uterine wall. Once baby is born, the placenta fails to detach properly, part or all of it remains attached after delivery and severe hemmorhaging occurs. 90% of patients with this condition require blood transfusion. 40% require more than 10 units of packed red blood cells. This condition is generally detected during pregnancy. This condition has a 7% maternal mortality rate or 1 in 533, (I found two statistics for this one too). It has a 71% hysterectomy rate. I was surprised when I read the hysterectomy statistic though because from what I read on ACOG's website, almost every time they have to do a cesarean hysterectomy in order to save the mom's life. In some cases, if the mother wants more children they may attempt to remove the placenta surgically, but that comes with a lot more risks. ACOG says that the occurrence of placenta accreta has been rising with the higher c-section rate. Of 39,244 women who had c-sections, 186 of them had cesarean hysterectomies. I found two statistics for the chances of this occurring: after 2 ERCs it's either .57% or 5.77% I found those on two different websites so I'm not sure. The first one definitely sounds better though. This risk goes up with each ERC, so family size is definitely something to take into consideration.

Why don't doctors talk about this? All they ever tell you is that you shouldn't VBAC, because your uterus could rupture. I think that doctors like to be in control. If they can go in, get that baby out and sew you back up nice and tight, then they have done their job. Healthy mom, healthy baby for the time being. If they have to sit back and let your body do it's thing, it's hard for them to know exactly what's going on.

A successful VBAC has fewer complications than an ERC, but a failed TOLAC that ends in an emergency c-section has more complications than an ERC.

Fun stuff.

They told me I have a small pelvis. Quinn's head was stuck in me and the doctor had a hard time getting her out. So what is the deal with cephalopelvic disproportion? Basically that means that the baby's head is too big for the mom's pelvis. At first I had a hard time finding out much about this subject. What I did find is that this is actually pretty rare in the US these days. It usually happens because of malnutrition in the mothers that leads to bone structure abnormalities. The only thing I could find that made sense to me, is that the baby being positioned incorrectly can lead to the pelvis failing to make room for baby's head to pass through. During labor, the body releases hormones to relax the ligaments of the pelvis allowing it to expand. There is no way to know whether my pelvis would have expanded more if I had been allowed to go into labor on my own. But I do know that Quinn was posterior, or sunny side up. I definitely think it is possible that this is why my pelvis didn't spread far enough. She was correctly positioned before my labor started, but at some point she got stuck the wrong way.

ACOG says: "The chance of having a cesarean delivery is greatly increased for first-time mothers who have labor induction, especially if the cervix is not ready for labor." Well, my cervix certainly was not ready for labor. I was at a 0 and very hard. I had high blood pressure at the end of my pregnancy, and after refusing to take the prescribed beta-blockers, they wanted to induce me. I understand why they wanted to, I had really bad anxiety with each doctor visit during the last weeks of my pregnancy. I had never had a baby before, so I was kind of freaking out! Plus, since my blood pressure was rising, I felt like I had to stay calm or else I would get a bad reading!! So of course I couldn't stay calm. They got two really high readings on two different days, so they worried and induced me. They said I might have a seizure. A few hours after I had settled into my hospital room, my blood pressure went back down to a safer range. I really believe there was no medical need for me to be induced. Baby was fine, I was fine. So right now, my I strongly feel that I have a good chance of being able to birth babies normally. I think that I will probably have high blood pressure again towards the end of my next pregnancy (my mom always had this happen, and she delivered four healthy babies normally), and I will have to just either learn to calm down or put my foot down and tell my doctor that I don't need medication for it, and I don't need to be induced. I think that when my body starts to go into labor, we will check and see that the baby is positioned properly, and if he/she is, then we will go ahead and let me labor. I plan on hiring a doula for my next birth, statistically, births that are coached by a doula are much shorter. I would definitely need time to be on my side.

Something else that bothers me, a lot of doctors tend to scoff at things that midwives do. There are seriously so many things that can be done when a baby is turned the wrong way. Why don't doctors do that?! They want you to be lying on the bed when you push your baby out, because it's easier for them to catch the baby. Squatting can increase pelvis size by up to 30%. That's significant. Somewhere along the way, a lot of invaluable birthing knowledge has been forgotten, and now some women are paying for it with their lives. The US is now ranked 50th in the world for their maternal mortality rate. For every 100,000 births, 21 women die here in the US. We should be better than that.

I know that interventions save moms and babies. I am very thankful for modern medicine. I also know that interventions occur unnecessarily all too often, causing problems that could have been avoided.

I know that I am one of the lucky ones. My baby is here, I get to hold and nurse her. I thank God every day for that blessing.

Most of the information for this post comes from ACOG's website. I initially began researching on www.vbacfacts.com and then I checked ACOG to back up most of the stats I found.

Pants

It's been 7 months since I had my baby. That's a long time. Especially when I consider the fact that those jeans that I got into three months post partum are still the only pair of pre-pregnancy jeans that I can get on. I never wash them. Unless I spill something on them. They shrink when I wash them and then I have to stretch them out again until they are finally comfortable. This isn't as gross as it sounds because I only wear them when I leave the house which is usually only for 1-2 hours at a time, to grocery shop or for the occasional outing. As soon as I get back home, it's back into my yoga pants. 

These jeans don't even fit that well, which is probably obvious considering I try not to wash them, if I sit down I better be wearing a long shirt or else my post baby butt will be coming out the top. A few months ago, I was really excited that it wouldn't be too long before more jeans and my old pencil skirts fit again. I have 3 or 4 skirts that still don't fit so I usually wear stretchy clothes to church. That was a few months ago and my pants still don't fit. So now I'm thinking, should I just go buy new pants? If it's going to take this long, every time I have a baby, to get into my old jeans then I should probably just get some bigger pants, and skirts, right? Especially when I look at those jeans that fit and notice that they are wearing really thin in some places and are about to rip.

 Ugh. I mean, what are people even wearing these days? Last year, I was in college and I felt like I knew what was going on in the world. Now, my days consist of outings to the gym, walmart, winco, and Costco. One of my fears is that I'll be like one of those people who never moves on from the styles they wore in high school and college. I'm 23 but I feel so old. Right now, my wardrobe consists of v-necks from target and those one pair of jeans. Is that embarrassing? When I get dressed to leave the house I catch myself thinking things like, maybe I can find a shirt that I could just wear a sports bra with... Or, if I find a long t-shirt then I can wear leggings as pants. And then I realize that no, you need to wear a real bra with a real shirt and real pants. Have I let myself go?!  I still wear make up when I leave my house, so that's a good sign. There are days when I leave with my hair wet though, which I never used to do.

Anyways, I've gotten down to about 8-10 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight. It doesn't seem like that much weight but it does at the same time. I'm sure that by the time I get it off it'll be time for my next baby though. So I really should just buy some bigger jeans. 

Also, I know I wrote about some trivial things like clothes and make up in this post and they really aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. I still want to look nice though. 

7 Months

My baby is 7 months old!! Can she please just stay this way forever? I feel like I wanna have 20 babies so that I always have a sweet baby. Most likely that won't happen, but she just makes me so happy! I don't want her to grow up! I had to buy her some clothes the other day, which I always love doing, but I was buying her some 12 month sized jammies because she doesn't have any, and I almost started crying in the store when I held up those huge pajamas! I don't want her to get that big! She's still wearing 9 month size but I know it won't be long before she fits into those. 

Anyways, she has become much more vocal in the last week or two, she chats all the time! I love it. In the morning, I lay her down on the changing table and sometimes she just looks right at me and jibber jabbers and it is the sweetest thing. I think she is telling me about her dreams. She also likes to make high pitched squeaky noises. And she has learned to make popping sounds with her lips, so she does that all the time too. She laughs more than she uses to. I took her to the park the other day and I have a video of her giggling while I pushed her in the swing. I wish the blogger ap would let me add video. 

Here she is playing with her friend, Lily! They are only a week apart I think. They took turns stealing toys out of each other's hands. They are too young to he mad about it and I love that. It is the most wonderful thing to watch my baby take in and try to make sense of the world around her. 

In my last post, I mentioned that Quinn is sneaky and likes to practice new tricks while she alone in her crib. Sure enough, the first few times I caught her pushing up onto her knees she was in her crib! She did it for about a week in her crib before I snapped this picture of her doing it in the living room this morning. 

I think she knows it's faster and easier to just yell for me so I'll help her, maybe that's why she only did it while she was alone. 

There she is at church a few weeks ago. Man, church is difficult with this baby. She refuses to nap while we are there and she usually wakes up around 7:00 and church starts at 9:00, right when she needs a nap. I see other moms holding their sleeping babies and I just think how nice that would be. She never just sits to be held. Another reason I am thankful I am able to breastfeed her because that's one of the only times she will relax in my arms. She will get sleepy while I'm holding her afterwards but she doesn't usually like to fall asleep with me, she would rather be in her crib. Which is good, I am glad she likes her crib. 

I like this picture because I feel like she kind of looks like me in it. She loves to play with her bath toys! She hates when I lay her down to wash her hair, she just tries to sit up. I finally got a bath mat in there just today because last night I had a little heart attack after she slipped sideways while I wasn't looking! She choked on some water and I freaked out because I read about secondary drowning this summer and I was scared that she was gonna die in her sleep. I called Kelly and he told me she would be fine. Then I called my mom and she said the same thing. So I relaxed and she is still alive today, so that's good. I still have to watch her like a hawk though, she almost fell a bunch of times tonight in her bath because she was trying to get things out of her reach. Like the wall of the bathtub, which she was trying to bite. I think her fourth tooth is about to come in, because she is biting everything again. 

Here she is laying down watching the baby channel on tv. She likes to keep one or both feet in the air while laying down. This picture shows how out of proportion babies are, her feet are so tiny and her head is so big! I love it. And I love baby skinny jeans.

Something sweet that she does it she will touch my face so that I look at her. She does this every time I pick her up from the kids klub at the gym, and it is so sweet. I am glad that she misses me :) 

She loves to be out and about. She gets bored at home. I take her for walks in the evening before dinner time and she refuses to sit back in her stroller. She just holds on to the tray and leans forward and looks all around. She doesn't want to miss anything! I love my curious baby girl, she brings me so much joy! I am so thankful for a happy, healthy baby! 

6 1/2 Months

Quincy has grown so much in the last two months!  She weighs around 18 lbs and she is 26 inches long. She has tripled her birth weight. Her two bottom teeth came in a few weeks ago and a part of a third one has popped through. 

Her favorite toy is still water bottles of all kinds. 

She also likes anything that will make noise. She started flapping her arms up and down like a bird a few weeks ago, and now she does it whenever she is excited, or if she's holding a toy that makes noise. She has these toy chains that she loves to shake and sometimes she has red marks on her head at the end of the day from hitting herself during her vigorous arm flapping while holding the chain. She likes to sit in front of her basket of toys and pull them all out. She gets kind of bored with her toys so inside her basket there are random things like crumpled up paper and water bottles. 

She eats baby food every night. She likes most kinds except bananas. She likes apple but she can't eat it because it upsets her tummy and keeps her up at night. She likes peas but I don't buy them for her because for some reason puréed peas smell like fart. I'm going to start making our own this week anyways because the stuff you buy is so watered down and over priced. I did buy some of the puréed meat food like chicken but they smell so bad. I bought "ham with gravy" but I am terrified to even open the jar for fear of how it might smell. Ugh. Also, I don't know why but no matter what food I give her, she always makes a horrified face when she has the first bite. Then she usually gobbles down a whole jar but it's like she doesn't understand what I'm putting in her mouth at first even though she has had it every day. 

We took Quinn camping at Flathead Lake in Montana last week for 8 days. I was pretty nervous that I would undo all of the progress we had made as far as her sleep habits go. We slept in a tent, but my parents have a trailer so we got to give her a bath in it every night. The first day we got there, she took a nap in her pack n play, and she fell asleep on her own. She started out sleeping well that night too. I thought that I had worried for nothing. But then it got cold in the middle of the night. And her pack n play was at a slant because there was no flat ground so she ended up sleeping with me on a cot. So the rest of the week wasn't that great. Actually, at first, I was like oh my gosh I love snuggling her all night! But then neither of us slept great squished together on a cot and she kept crying when I put her in the pack n play so I just kept her with me so she wouldn't wake up other campers. She pretty much woke up every hour and a half and I had to nurse her back to sleep. By the end of the week, she had started throwing her binki off of the cot so I had to search for it in the cold dark tent a bunch of times and I was getting pretty irritated. Then we came home and she is sleeping better then she was when we left. She wakes up twice at night still, which is not awesome but a hundred times better than where we used to be. And she consistently takes 90 minute naps. So she is happy and I am happy. She loved camping though! The lake water was pretty cold since it is glacier fed, so she took awhile to get used to it. I would just carry her in and let the waves hit her feet. She would gasp and try to climb up me and hold onto me really tight. The second time I took her in she was a little more brave and kept leaning towards the water, wanting to touch it. She would go back and forth between me and the water but pretty soon she just wanted to be held parallel to it so that she could splash her hands in it. She kept splashing water on her face. I wish I had pictures of that but I don't. She also would suck the water off of her hands. The second half of our week there the weather was super cold and rainy so then we spent the next few days in my parents trailer, wishing it was warm. All in all, I would do it again. Camping with a six month old isn't too hard. We just had to bring a lot more stuff. 

Quinn is not crawling, when she wants something that is out of her reach she just kinda rolls back and forth from tummy to back and wiggles towards it until she can reach it. I remember before she was really rolling, she hated tummy time and she would get really mad before finally rolling out of it. But then I would go in her room and she would be playing after her nap on her crib and she would be on her stomach and moving around. Then one day she rolled all the way across our living room floor. So I am pretty sure that she practices stuff when she's alone in her crib and we can't watch her. It's like she doesn't want to do stuff just because we want her to do it. I won't be surprised if she just starts crawling one day. 

She has mastered the art of putting her binki in her mouth the right way. One night, she kept crying even though I knew she wasn't hungry, so I went in to give her her binki because she usually goes to sleep if I let her cry for a few minutes and then go in and do that. Well, she was crying with her binki in her mouth. What was I supposed to do with that? That was when I realized apples upset her tummy. She also started sucking her index finger last week. Speaking of fingers, I remember when she was a newborn and her hands and feet seemed so big and her fingers were so long and skinny compared to the rest of her. Now her fingers are shaped more like bugles. And she has small feet, she's not even into size 2 yet, although she wears 9 month clothes. 

Quinn is such a happy baby. She is social now, I always see her trying to get people's attention when we go to church and there are people right behind us. She is very smiley. When she's not being social, she is usually very focused on a certain task. She is quite determined and sometimes it can be hard to get her attention if she's right in the middle of working on something. She yells a lot though. Especially when it is quiet. She talks the most when she is in her crib or in her car seat. And then she flat out yells when she is mad no matter where she is. She is wonderful. I can't believe how amazing she is. I love watching her grow and learn. I am so lucky to be able to be with her all day every day. 

Sitting with grandpa :) 

Uncle Hayden being weird with his awkward mustache 

I would highly recommend bringing one of these if you camp with a baby. 

Notice the water bottle close by. 

Getting sleepy! She pretty much yawned all day every day while we were there since she didn't exactly get quality sleep. 

The beautiful lake the morning after a storm. 

She got really excited when we put these life jackets on her before our trip. These are the smallest ones they make that I am aware of. I guess life jacket makers probably think that most babies don't need life jackets. They are rated for under 30 pounds though, so I guess it's safe!! 

Crying and sleeping and mostly crying

Last Sunday I was at church, standing in the hallway waiting for Sunday school to be over so I could go to relief society. I had skipped Sunday school because Quinn desperately needed a nap so I took her into the mothers room and nursed her to sleep. Like clockwork, she woke up after 30 minutes. The longest nap I could get her to take was 45 minutes, but that was a rare occurrence. I would even wait inside her room, on the floor next to the crib, and I would put her binki back in her mouth as soon as she started to stir. It didn't work. She couldn't go back to sleep. I tried nursing, even though I wanted to break the nursing to sleep association. It didn't  work either. That particular Sunday morning, Quinn woke up early and so I tried to get her to nap before church, so that I could maybe stay almost the whole three hours. We ended up being 20 minutes late and no nap was taken. 

So there I was, standing with my overtired baby in the hall. A lady I had talked to a couple of times came and stood by me. Her one year old started to play with Quinn and we started talking. I told her how Quinn would never nap. I told her that I've read so many sleep books and they aren't helping. I did not want to let her cry it out, that is bad! I had had a headache for over a month. It was a tension headache, and I was super tense in my upper back and neck. I had been sleeping on a camping pad in her room, when she would wake up and I was too tired to rock her back to sleep, I would just sleep next to her. But it wasn't helping anymore. I told her that Quinn would just roll around in the middle of the night, like she couldn't get comfortable. And I would resort to nursing, but that stopped working after awhile. I was practically crying while I told her all these things. I hated everyone who was sleeping at night, and who got to take naps whenever they wanted. I hated that my baby was grumpy all day from being tired, and that I seemed to spend all day every day rocking her to sleep for her to nap only 30 minutes, and that I could not figure out, for the life of me, how to give her what she needed. I don't think it was safe for me to be driving at all. I read somewhere that if you get less than six hours of sleep for so many nights in a row it was like driving drunk. Well, I had gotten less than six for like 200 nights in a row, and I could definitely feel it. It was hard to react to things while I was driving, things like red lights. I didn't run any, that I know of, but I definitely had some close calls over the last few months. I cried so many times after laying her down, just to have her wake up again. And people would say super helpful things like, why don't you sleep when she sleeps?! Oh, why didn't I think of that? Wait, I did. And I tried all the time. How am I supposed to fall asleep when I am this overtired, with that 30 minute clock ticking in the back of my mind?! Yeah, I was not that fun to hang out with. Maybe I'm still not, I don't know. 

Anyways, she listened and she knew exactly what I was talking about. Sometimes I would try to talk to people about her sleep habits and they would be like, oh "she is teething/growing." And I'd be like "yeah, she has been teething/growing since the day she left my belly. Thanks for your useless tip." I can't blame them though, I think most babies sleep pretty well. Or maybe their moms just don't talk about it, because they feel like if they tell people they can't get their baby to sleep, maybe they will think she is a bad mom. That's how I felt at least. Quinn was not the greatest newborn, but when she was about eight weeks old, she started sleeping in a four hour stretch at night. I felt awesome. I remember telling myself that I had this whole mom thing figured out. Other moms just weren't as intuitive as I was, or else their baby would be happy, too. Right?! WRONG!!! That lasted a few short weeks and then for almost three months it was awful. Neither of us were happy because neither of us could sleep. 

So, back to me and my friend in the hallway, she tells me that her baby was the same, and that I need to go rent a good movie, put her to bed, and let her cry it out. I did not want to do that. I told her I couldn't. What if Quinn hated me after that? What if she just felt abandoned and she just gave up on life? What if it went on and on and didn't work? She told me that her baby was around six months old (same as Quinn) and it took her an hour. Then she slept through the night and started napping better right away. Then, her baby was way happier.

 Now, I had talked to other people who had tried crying it out and heard horror stories. One lady told me that she did it with her eight month old, and she cried for three hours and never have up and she didn't sleep well until she was over a year old. Another lady told me that she did it with her 18 month old, because she was pregnant an could no longer gently set him in his crib after he fell asleep. She let him cry and after an hour and a half, he threw up from it. She said it was a six month process. So, these stories made me feel like if I was going to do it, I had to do it now. We were planning on going camping three weeks from that day and I couldn't wait another month to start it. I had to do it. 

I cried off and on that whole day. I did not want to do it. But I was at my wit's end. I could not take any more. The constant headache and the dangerous driving... Yikes. I had tried the no cry sleep training methods and they helped a little, but it had been two months of that with no success. I called my mom and cried. I cried when Kelly came home and I told him what I was going to do. He told me that he'd been trying to get me to do it forever and he asked "why now?" I have him my reasons and told him that I was going to sit outside after I put her to bed and he said he would stay inside with her. I went and got the camp chair out of the garage and I was ready. I just didn't want to hear the crying. So, that night I fe her baby food with rice cereal, gave her her bath, read a story, then she nursed. And she went right to sleep. I went downstairs prepared to leave when she woke up after 45 minutes or whatever. She woke up once after 30 minutes and I gave her her binki. But then I told Kelly, I'm not going in there again. I won't go back in her room until 11:00-12:00 to feed her because she will be hungry. (I wasn't trying to wean her from night feedings, I don't mind getting up to feed her if she goes right back to sleep). After that, she slept like a champ! She didn't wake up until 12:30. I fed her and she went back to sleep. She woke up at 2:00 and cried for a minute and went back to sleep. She woke up at 4:00 and cried for a long time, when she started to get out of control after 25 minutes I went in and gave her her binki and she went back to sleep until 6:30. I went in her room and she was just laying there, awake. I felt awful. Maybe she didn't cry because she felt like no one would hear her! But once I got her up and fed her, she seemed happier. Her naps were better than before that day, two short 45 minute naps in the morning and then she took a longer one that afternoon. That's a huge step up from 5-6 30 minute naps a day. It got better each day. She is still inconsistent. I decided to feed her when she wakes up around 4 in the morning because she cried one time for an hour and a half, she was hungry. I don't want my baby to go hungry, and even though the books day she doesn't need to eat more than once a night, I don't care. Some nights she only wakes up once. One night, she slept until 5 in the morning, then she ate and went back to sleep. I slept almost seven hours straight for the first time since she had been born! It was awesome. I wanted to keep sleeping. Her naps are still inconsistent, but they are always at least 45 minutes. A lot of the time I can lay her in the crib without rocking her and she will roll over and go to sleep. Yesterday, she napper for more than two hours and so did I. I feel so good. We are both so much happier. When she wakes up at night, and it hasn't been more than four hours since she last ate, I let her cry for a minute or two and then she goes back to sleep on her own most of the time. Maybe she would have done this all along if I hadn't rushed in there at every little noise she made. I was just always afraid that if I didn't get her back to sleep right away, then she wouldn't go back to sleep. I also think that the methods I used from Elizabeth Pantley's book helped her be more prepared to fall asleep on her own. Now she knows that she can do it, and she does it most of the time. She wakes up between 7 and 8:00 most mornings, and it is so nice to have a baby that's a little bit predictable. I feel like I have a little more control over my life again. She has had two teeth pop through in the last few days, so that has made nap time a little harder, but it is still way better than it was! Looking back, I wouldn't have done it much earlier than I did. I still believe that letting your baby cry it out is wrong when they are teeny tiny. Apparently people say that 6 months is the age where it's ok. It was okay for us at five and a half months. She seems to have developed so much more since I started doing this, she doesn't get frustrated as easily and she is learning so fast! Also, she doesn't hate me. :) 

This morning: 

5 Months

Quinn turned 5 months old over a week ago, it's taken me awhile to get around to writing this update. Both her and I got a cold two weeks ago, it lasted about a week but we are both still a little congested from it. Combine that with her not so great sleeping habits, and I could barely do anything for awhile. 

She weighs 14.5 lbs in this picture, taken one month ago. She started wearing 6 month clothes. She wore her 0-3 size for three months, but now I think she's going to grow out of her 6 month size really fast! As of last week, she weighs 16 lbs. this morning I tried to put some shoes on her that she wore for the first time two weeks ago, and I couldn't get them on. 

She got her ears pierced! She cried pretty hard for a minute, and I may have teared up. I felt really bad but she was happy two minutes after it happened. 

We practice sitting up in we boppy pillow. She is getting close to doing it on her own, but she tips backward a lot. 

She also found her toes a few weeks ago! She grabs them every time she is on the changing table. She is only halfway doing it in this picture, I wish I had a better one but it is getting harder to capture her doing stuff because she sees me get my phone out and she just watches me. 

This picture is blurry, but Quinn figured out how to stand up for a few seconds in her bouncer and she would get so excited! She throws her arms out to the side and balances on her tip toes and it's adorable. 

There's also this gem that I captured at Costco the other day. She has been a scowler since she was born. 

I am pretty sure she gets it from her dad. Sometimes I feel like she is judging me when she lifts up one eyebrow at me, I can't do that and neither can her dad. 

When she goes to sleep she likes to touch her binki. It's like she is protecting it. Another thing she does when she is trying to settle down is run her hand across my fingers. When she wakes up I can sometimes get her to go back to sleep by giving her her binki and letting her hold my fingers. I also discovered that she likes to sleep on her side. I wish I would have figured that out a long time ago, but her sleep has definitely been improving since I realized that. 

We took her up to Scout Mountain. We didn't end up camping but we had a fire and cooked dinner up there one evening and then drove back the next day and we hiked. She did really good in the front carrier. She definitely preferred facing outwards, we had her facing me at first and she started to get mad after 20 minutes, then we turned her around and she was totally happy for the full two hours we were hiking. She really likes trees. Actually she likes plants in general. One time, she smiled at a tree when I took her outside. 

I got a kiddie pool for her and I to play in. She has a little baby inner tube thing that she sits in and yesterday, she was in it and she flipped forward so she was on her stomach. She could reach the ground with her toes so she scooted around the pool for awhile. Then she scooted to the edge and caught sight of the grass and she just stayed there and stared at it. I wish I had pictures but I didn't have my phone with me. 

Glistening from rice cereal all over her face! 

She really likes water bottles of all types. Sorry it's upside down. I'm too tired to rotate it. (She seriously wakes up every 2-3 hours at night still. It's hard to think straight.) 

Ignore my adorable pajama pants in those pictures. 

She has started teething this month too. I'm pretty sure it's her canines and the teeth beneath them that are coming in. I know that's not the norm, but it's what's happening. Teething takes forever, holy cow. She has had some rough days with it. Last week in particular, she was screaming and crying a lot, and she would be up for hours in the middle of the night and after a few days of it I took her to the doctor because I thought he might have an ear infection. I hoped she would have one, because then I could just give her some anti - biotics and solve the problem. They looked at her and said nothing was wrong with her. Then I realized that I had started giving her a little bit of applesauce around the same time, and that she had been farting a lot lol. Apparently applesauce makes her gassy! Bad parenting moment for me. 

Cooking Fails & Other Things

So the other day I liked the Crockpot Girl on Facebook so that I could get awesome recipes right on my homepage. The next day she posted about slow cooker roasted vegetables. I thought it sounded awesome, I love roasted veggies. You just dump whatever veggies you want in the crockpot, drizzle some olive oil and seasonings on them, and then leave it on low for four hours and it's supposed to be just like you roasted then in the oven. How simple. So I thought id try it today with some red potatoes, but then I was too lazy to chop them up so I thought I would just throw in the Normandy blend of frozen vegetables you can buy at Costco. I did that and then I took a nap with Quinn. When I woke up, a very strong broccoli scent assaulted my nose. I went downstairs to look at it, and all the vegetables were super wilted and limp and dis- colored. They definitely didn't look oven roasted. It had been less than two hours. I tasted some and it wasn't good. I thought that maybe Kelly would like it so I left them in the crockpot on warm so that the broccoli smell could seep into the walls. I eventually realized that he probably would not like it, since it was disgusting, and I turned off the crockpot. I told him what happened when he got home and he said "well, it probably would have been good with fresh vegetables. Not frozen ones." Oh. Haha.

Meanwhile, I decided to just boil some red potatoes to go with dinner. Only, every time I've boiled them it takes forever to get them soft. So I thought I should boil them for a good hour, since 30 minutes wasn't doing the trick. I put them on the stove on high and then ran upstairs to go put Quinn down for another nap. She fell asleep pretty fast and I decided to fold laundry before Kelly got home. I ran downstairs and brought it all back up to our room and I was jamming out to some music when the most awful sound attacked my eardrums. 

What is that?!...  The smoke alarm! It's gonna wake up Quinn! What is burning?? The potatoes!!  

Those were the thoughts running through my head. I booked it down the stairs and saw a smoking pan of red potatoes on the stove with no water. I checked the potatoes and they weren't burned too bad and they still weren't done so I got a new pot and filled it with water then put it on medium and went back upstairs. I listened at Quinn's door and I didn't hear anything. How is she still asleep? That child wakes up when my ankle pops as I'm walking out of her room. Maybe she's dead... So I check on her and her eyes are closed, I make sure her chest is rising and falling, and sure enough, she is alive. She slept through the smoke alarm. Good job Quinn. 

I also burned the oil I was heating up to fry fish for dinner, but nothing bad really happened. I just dumped it out and started over. The fish and the potatoes were good. I'm probably an unfit mother though. Thank goodness for smoke alarms. 

Basically the only other thing I have to talk about besides my cooking fails is holy cow, I get really lonely sometimes! I love staying home with Quinn. It's exhausting a lot of times but I don't want a break from it or anything. I just miss people! I feel like I've had this problem since I had her, where now when I actually get to talk to people, whether it's visiting teachers or the people at the kids klub at the gym, I just over share. It's like I can't stop myself from talking because I'm so excited to finally talk to someone during the day. I get to talk to Kelly, obviously, but I need girl talk. He doesn't really get girl talk... I probably over share on this blog sometimes too. I call my mom a lot and I can tell that after awhile she gets bored and she starts coming up with reasons to get off the phone so I try to think of something interesting to say. Anyways, now that I sound pathetic as ever, I'll end this post.