Spring Has Sprung!

   I am officially declaring the end of winter!  (Hear me, Mother Nature?  No funny business.)  The past week has been gorgeous, even the rainy day seemed to promise changes and new life.  Sigh.  I love it.  I love the end of the bleak grey cold.  I love the end of darkness.  I love the end of a stuffy stale house.  I love the end of trying to come up with ways to entertain my toddler indoors...(only partially kidding about that last one).

   My new undertaking this season is a garden.  Not just a few bedding plants in the front yard--I'm talking grow your own food, mud up to your knees, need a tractor to till it up garden.  No, we did not move to the country, although that is my heart's desire.  My grandparents, however, already live out of town a ways, and have had a massive (half an acre?) garden that has fed the family, neighbors, church members, and anyone else who needed produce for the past fifteen years.  After last year, Grandpa declared that he was done gardening, said it was too hard on his knees and he just wasn't feeling up to it anymore--well, maybe a couple of tomato plants because, you know, the ones you get at the store aren't fit to eat.... He kindly offered his well-tended garden to me, said he'd plow it up if I wanted to plant anything.

Our blank canvas!  Love that red dirt!

   I have a not-so-secret desire to be Ma Ingalls and a dream of having a little land with a clothesline and chickens and a garden, so I jumped at the chance to learn from the master and see if I kill outdoor plants as quickly as I kill indoor ones. So Grandpa got out the tractor and tilled up the earth, and I bought some seeds.  He informed me that the first thing to go in the ground was onions, but we'd be planting sets and sprouts, not seeds.  Lesson #1 learned.  When it quit snowing and the ground dried out last week, we set to work.

Grandpa gettin' work done

   Grandpa had said he'd pick up the onions to plant when he was at the store next.  It never occurred to me that he never asked how many I wanted to plant.  When I got to the greenhouse where they were being stored, I saw this:

Baby onions!

   That, my friends, combined with the sets he had for me, is THOUSANDS of onions.  Did I mention that green onions are grandpa's favorite thing out of the garden?  Apparently they are.  So we got to work, poking holes and planting tiny little wisps of onions.  It wasn't too hard, and I enjoyed spending the time in the red dirt that I missed so much when we lived out of state.  The weather couldn't have been better, and it was a rare chance to spend some one-on-one time with Grandpa.

Putting in the elbow grease!

   I was tired at the end of the day, but it was so satisfying to look back at the work we had accomplished.  I'm sure I'm romanticizing things, but I kept thinking about all of the generations of pioneers who had come before me, who had worked this red dirt and survived by the sweat of their own brows and the strength of their own hands.  It felt right to be learning something so ingrained in the state I grew up in, sort of reverent for everyone who made it what it is.  But like I said, ask me in September how I feel about gardening and I may have changed my tune...

Look closely--can you see my babies out there?

  I also started some seeds for some other things I'd like to try growing this year.  I'm considering this my experimental garden year, learning how things grow and what does and doesn't like the weather and soil here.  I started carrots, spinach and arugula, green beans, zucchini, and corn.  I have seeds for a few other things, but it's a bit early for them, and I plan to buy young plants for tomatoes and strawberries when the frost danger passes.

Seed babies growing in the greenhouse!

   I snapped a few pictures while I was there because everything felt so alive.  Spring was whispering everywhere, from the bluebird that visited the garden to the blooms on the fruit trees.  Every time I took a picture I thanked God for making all things new!

Our colorful visitor

   Before we left, Abby Kate, who had been napping and playing with my grandma, convinced Grandpa that she needed a ride in the Mule.  It's one of her favorite things to do at their house, and there isn't much that she can't convince Grandpa of, so they loaded up and went for a ride.  I love that they get to know each other, and that she loves them the way I do.  I hope she keeps these sweet memories forever!

Waving at Mama!

   I'll attempt to keep things updated as to what my kill count is--I'm not sure these poor plants know what they're getting into!  In the meantime, I have several flowerbeds full of weeds that are mocking me... Time to get a little more dirt under my nails!

Not so crunchy afterall...

First day home!

  
   A big thank you to those of you who stuck with me through yesterday's novel of a post.  I try to keep things more condensed than that around here, but I wanted to make sure I got my memories of Abby's birth documented somewhere, and hey, it's my blog and I do what I want.  :)  It was somewhat cathartic to have to sit down and really think about those days and process the emotions and the choices we made.  Because so many things didn't go as I had planned, it was something that I've really had to make peace with.  Of course, healthy mom and healthy baby and all that jazz...and of course it was worth it to get my squishy little cuddle bug here.  I mean, look at those cheeks.  Gotta love it. And yes, the blog is likely to consist almost entirely of baby photos from here on out.  Again, it's my blog.  :)

Bath time baby!

    As I've said before, we were planning on a med-free natural birth using relaxation techniques we learned in our Hypnobabies class.  I enjoyed the classes, and really truly learned how to completely relax muscles that I never even realized were carrying tension. I had done my homework, and I believe that a med-free birth is the best-case optimal scenario for the health of both mom and baby for lots of reasons (if you'd like to discuss, feel free to ask me!), and I knew it would be lots of work and likely somewhat unpleasant for me. I didn't go into delivery unprepared for what I would face. We had planned to let our baby choose her birthday. I wasn't uncomfortable, even in the last days of my pregnancy, and I didn't mind going "late" if my baby needed a few more days to bake. Well, all of that went out the window.  Induction, IV, epidural, lots of cervical checks, not wearing my own clothes...everything I didn't want, short of a C-section.  It's a pretty helpless feeling. 

Sweet moments

    Things didn't really stop there.  Because of her rough arrival into the world, Abby had a decent amount of bruising which caused some jaundice problems after birth. Not enough that they had to keep her under the lights, but enough that we had to make frequent trips to the doctor after we left the hospital to monitor her levels. During these office visits, we began to notice that she wasn't gaining weight. Of course, it's normal for newborns to lose a little from their birth weight, but it's expected that they should return to birth weight by two weeks of age. Not only did our girl not reach her birth weight, she continued to lose weight. At her lowest, she was only 7 lb 9 oz, quite a drop from her 8 lb 12 oz birth weight. I breastfed, and she was nursing like a champ after a few bumps in the road, but continued to lose weight. They ran blood and urine tests, checked both of us out, and found nothing. I had to begin supplementing with formula--yet another blow to my crunchy plans.
   After weeks of nursing AND pumping every two hours, diet changes, lots of rest, fenugreek, and whatever else anyone suggested, my supply was still not established. I could barely pump anything, and Abby would cry to eat less than an hour after her last meal. She wasn't sleeping well (which meant WE weren't sleeping well), and was starting to look skinny.  Apparently babies are supposed to gain nearly an ounce a day, and she had only gained an ounce over the course of a week.  Last week I continued nursing, but increased the amount of formula supplemented. She began eating almost twice as much formula as we had been giving her.  No wonder she was unhappy--she was starving!  Finally yesterday at her weight check, she had gained a significant amount of weight, and we made the incredibly difficult decision to primarily formula feed.
   I pretty much cried all day. I felt like my body had betrayed me. I couldn't birth on my own, I couldn't feed my child...the blows just kept coming. I strongly feel like breastfeeding is best, but in our case, it just wasn't possible. We still nurse a few times a day, most before and after bedtime, because I can't seem to quit cold turkey, but she's a bottle-fed baby now. 
   The past four weeks have been pretty profound for me. Of course there's the learning how to care for a baby and such, but I've faced some deep stuff too. Some spiritual, some social. I mentioned on Facebook a while back that I've learned that God's will is sovereign over my best-laid plans. Even when I really truly believe that I had my baby's best at heart. I don't know why He thought it necessary that she be born how she was, or that she be fed how she is, but I hope that some day my experience will be able to help someone. I've also learned not to judge others' decisions because you never know what circumstance led them to that point.  Prior to having Abby, I turned up my nose at people who chose to be induced or have a c-section for non-medical reasons. Or reasons that I felt weren't "good enough." I looked down at people who didn't breastfeed. Why wouldn't you do what's best for your baby? You're a parent now, your wants aren't the most important! I never would have been anything less than gracious to someone in person, but that's what my heart was saying. (Maybe that's worse. Maybe I should have been judgy to people's faces.)  Now I know that sometimes those things aren't possible, even in non-emergency situations. And sometimes it's just too painful to talk about, so you'll never know the reasons.

Love that little face!

   I promise that my blog has not turned into my angsty adolescent diary.  I love being a mom, and I love my sweet Abby more than anything. There were just a few things I needed to get off my chest and think through.  Maybe I felt like I needed to justify some things, I don't know.  Anyone else need some therapy time?  Have a difficult birth?  Learn a life lesson lately?