Paging Doctor Herman...

Here we are, at long last!

Six days after Piercy Joye's ("zero-th") birthday, a sweet swimmer friend from college days who has two beautiful children herself, sent me a message encouraging me to start blogging. A mere 45 days later, I'm finally writing my first post! The hold up? My blog title: Lame excuse, I know. Endless days of little sleep, fewer showers, and preoccupation with my beautiful new daughter and changing her diapers left my creativity in the ditch. At the beginning of the week, I wrote Leah a note telling her I'd given myself a deadline of the end of the week, and here we are mid-Friday (typical of last-minute me).

The lesson: All pregnant first time mothers-to-be even considering the outside chance of starting a blog postpartum should create and set up their blog during pregnancy so that it's waiting after baby arrives! Duh! I was too busy eating corn dogs and half-gallon buckets of Blue Bell ice cream to bother myself with setting up a blog.

Alas, these are the things I would have posted about in the last seven weeks, abbreviated for your pleasure:

1.) Beginning with labor, parenting seems to be teaching me that I'm less in control of my life than I ever knew.

Putting on waterproof mascara pre-induction... Typical.

Without boring you with my "birth story," just know that I planned on carrying our baby from 40-41 weeks, having a non-medicated birth wearing a hospital gown I'd sewn of beautiful fabric, and that in the last weeks of my pregnancy, I had an inkling that our "wait-til-it's-born-to-find-out-the-gender" baby was a strapping young boy.  In short, I was induced at 38.5 weeks for Pregnancy Induced Hypertension (aka preeclampsia, which my mother also had with my brother, her first child); I went into labor with a sunburn I magically got while on "bed rest;" I had a 14+ hour long labor, the first four hours of which were unmedicated and had me envisioning my death; I managed to receive not one but two epidurals, all while not wearing the beautiful hospital gown I had started but planned on finishing in my last two weeks of pregnancy.

Oh yeah, and "It's a Girl!"  Which, by the way, is awesome, and waiting to find out her gender til the bitter end was magical.

Piercy Joye and daddy holding hands

2.) Breastfeeding is really hard. No, really. It's HARD.

I am still currently breastfeeding Piercy, but for a while it was touch and go.  Yes, I took a class. Yes, I requested a lactation consultant visit us in the hospital after her birth. Yes, I paid a different lactation consultant after my milk came in to help us. It's still hard for Mom and baby to learn, and it's also hard for Dad to stand by listening to his baby scream and not be able to help. And I completely respect why many women (especially women who have to/choose to go back to work) don't breastfeed.  It. Is. Very. Very. Hard. And I certainly don't think I would have had the wherewithal to continue if I was headed to an office every morning.

3.) Baby clothes are expensive, and we have rockin' friends.

Virtually right after our friends and family found out that we had a girl, we were inundated with beautiful brand new pink duds. Wow. Dresses, jumpers, sparkly shoes, sweet onesies, bows, swimsuits.  Even yesterday At seven weeks, I got another package with two beautiful outfits from Greg's sweet Aunt.  Still, one of the most touching gifts we received arrived a week after PJ's birth: two huge Rubbermaid tubs packed to the brim with already-loved Newborn and 0-3 Month girl clothes. A few families we know, all with daughters older than Piercy, have been adding to these (and successive the boxes) that circulate as the girls grow. Genius. We are so thankful to have been included!

4.) I've never loved my parents, nor appreciated their love for me more than I do now.

My heart has changed forever.

5.) It really does go by quickly.

And no, I still haven't put Piercy Joye's footprints in her baby book.  I'll get on that this week.  Our tiny little baby has only just now started to out-grow a couple teeny things we got her when we brought her home and she was simply swimming in every newborn outfit we had. Wah! She'll be going to college, like NEXT WEEK!

6.) Sorry ladies, but Piercy Joye and I've already snagged #1.

Seriously, I have a better man than I could have ever dreamed of having.  It should be known that having a child will stress your marriage, mostly due to lack of sleep and raging hormones. People who have babies to fix their relationship are in for a rude awakening because even folks whose marriage stands on solid ground are in for a rude awakening. At the end of the day, I'm really proud to have somehow tricked Greg into marrying me.  He's patient beyond words, and loves me even when I'm mean and sleep deprived, smell, am 30 pounds overweight, and haven't had makeup on in a week. That, dear friends, is good love.

The Brownes at home at last in Bryker Woods

And for my parting thoughts, thank you to Leah Roy for your encouragement.  Now go check out Gordy Quist's (of the Band of Heathens) "Green and Blue." With a green-eyed Daddy and a blue-eyed Mommy, little Miss Thang is still trying to figure of which way she'll go.