May 16, 2022

Ok, ok, these are the last Lily is 1 photos I will post:)

Now when I look at these pictures I’m a little sad that I didn’t add one of Lilys’ 4 (or more..?) big Baby Sharks to the picture. The theme for her party was “Lily in ONEderland“, and I wanted it to feel like we were in Lily’s dream world, her wonderland, and Baby Shark is a big part of that world. But when I set up this little photo station it didn’t even cross my mind, I just wanted to set something up quickly and take the pictures as fast as I possibly could once she woke up from her morning nap since she wasn’t feeling well. But the pictures are cute regardless if Baby Shark is part of it or not:)

May 14, 2022

How is she ONE already?! Feels like she was born a month ago. And now she is walking!

I saw similar pictures like this on pinterest few years ago and I thought it would be so cute to have our own. I had originally scouted out a perfect spot in a park nearby but it’s getting pretty hot down here in Florida now and I knew we could only do a photoshoot after her first nap, not before, and that’s when the sun is high. It would take too much time to put baby in the car, drive to the park, walk and pick a spot and take photos. So instead I decided that we should do it outside our house. We live on the corner of the street of our neighborhood and on the other side of the street is nothing but bushes, some trees and behind that is a pond, this is what we look at from our kitchen window, it’s pretty. 
This morning, once Lulu woke up, I looked outside and there was no wind so I thought it would be perfect to do a shoot. We came out and well…it was windy. You really couldn’t tell there was any wind, you couldn’t feel it, but the balloons where flying sideways. Oh well… I took 80 pictures and 3 came out ok-ish. But they are cute and I’m happy with them!

If anyone is wondering, it’s Lily’s bunny Ninnie who is holding the balloons, not just a random cloth hahah.

May 12, 2022

I finally got a chance to look through the pictures I have from Lilys birthday. Both Lilliput and I are currently sick so every time she takes a nap or spends time with her daddy, I go lay down cause I feel like crap. But now I decided to take a moment and log on here and share her special day with you. 

About a month ago, I sent out an invitation to our closest family for a virtual birthday party and I wanted to set up something cute just like we did for our baby shower. I also ordered a cake….and that whole cake story just turned into a shitshow (excuse my language). The cake we finally got was very cute, but not what I had ordered. I wanted a ‘tea cup with baby shark swimming in it’ cake topper and the baker (also our neighbor) said she could do it. Later on she suggested all these other kinds of cakes and said we can buy a toy cup and put a toy baby shark in it. Since I didn’t have one and we were running out of time to order anything I just told her to do something else. But I still wanted that topper. So I went to buy gum paste and tried to make my own tea cup. Hahhahaha, oh my, it looked like crap (package said it dries fast…which it didn’t and it kept melting so it didn’t have a good shape) and not cute enough to put on the cake, but I kept it on the table anyway. And then I made some “Eat Me” cookies. 

Thor ended up at the vet on Friday (the vet ER didn’t want to take him in the night before) so we had to deal with his poop issues all weekend. Jims dad and wife drove down from Chicago and spent the weekend which was very nice. They too unfortunately ended up a little sick. Lily woke up with her very first cold on her birthday. I had a runny nose and soon started to cough. My sister, John and Lilys cousin Mila were one of two who had scheduled a time for video call. We had to keep it a little short since Lily wasn’t feeling well. Then I got L to take a nap, so the other scheduled call, with J’s aunt, got delayed. Jim’s mom and stepdad were in West Virginia to celebrate Mother’s Day and Lilys other cousin, Sam, who’s birthday is May 6. They ended up wanting to call at the same time. Then all of a sudden my dad asked if they could call at the same time as well. And Lily just slept. We ended up talking to everyone but L was not her best self. Being outside in the backyard made her a little happier though.
In the afternoon, we grilled some food and then I brought out the cake. Lily’s very first cake and first time eating something sweet. She seemed to enjoy it:) It also got her some energy and she was having a good time for couple of hours.
I tried to have Lily open her gifts from the person we talked to but of course it was a bit hard. We had to just try our best to have her open everything (that I had wrapped beforehand) before it was bedtime. She got so many new toys, I don’t even know where to store all this hahah. And somehow everyone got her different things. When you have a theme party like this you’d think something would be duplicate but no. And she seems to actually love them all, she’s been having so much fun with each gift all week.
I’d like to thank everyone who joined us, in person or on the phone.

I had an idea of how to celebrate my daughters first birthday and obviously when a child gets sick you have to respect that, give her what she needs and take it minute by minute. I still think it ended up being a good celebration. I do think I was the only one who enjoyed all the decorations that I set up, but oh well, it was cute. A person only have their birthday for the first time once, and I wanted it to be special even if she won’t remember:)

May 9th, 2022

On May 7th 2021, I woke up at 4:30am with wet underwear. Jim was convinced it was baby time but I went on with my day haha. I kept getting wet pants all morning and when the mucus plug had plopped out I called my doctor. Skip forward to 2pm and a couple of more phone calls to the clinic later, we were asked to come in. Jim had to stay in the car while I walked around the waiting room with wet pants (apparently everyone in CT were giving birth that weekend, they had no rooms available).
At 4:30pm I finally got a room, it was confirmed water had ruptured, I took a covid test (apparently I needed to do it but not my husband), I messaged Jim to come upstairs with our stuff, it was Baby Time!
Because I had zero contractions, was overdue, only 1 cm open and baby had pooped they had to put me on pitocin, which I wasn’t happy about but whatever.

It wasn’t a totally smooth experience but I can honestly say that giving birth was overall pretty easy. Going to the bathroom was uncomfortable, gushing water everywhere in the room was weird, vomiting as a first reaction to the pitocin wasn’t fun, other than that I felt pretty ok throughout. No pain medications needed, I just used my breath.
I was actually so relaxed that hubby sometimes didn’t even know that I was having a contraction haha. Sometime closer to the end I was listening to guided meditations in headphones and kept falling asleep in between contractions. Nurse soon came in and said that contractions had started to fade so she put a higher dose of pitocin. It didn’t take long before I started to feel the urge to push but I was only 7cm so they told me to hold back and they started to prep my room. Closer to 5am I was finally about 10 cm open and it was go time. I had told them beforehand that I wanted to try different positions but to be on my back for the last push, so I started on my right side with my left leg up. After the first push everyone in the room yelled

“Lie on your back, the baby will be out on your next push”

Wow, is it really that easy to have a baby? Well, no, babys head was a bit stuck so for about an hour, everyone had to stare at the top of babys head. Baby girl arrived in our world at 6:22am, May 8th💖

I had such a great experience of giving birth..

..but then, once the cord was cut and all that it was time for the placenta to come out. I’ve never been in such pain before. My doctor had to take it out manually in pieces, it was brutal!!! I couldn’t help but scream right out when my doctor had her arm (yes arm!) inside my belly. I would have gladly accepted death at that point. At the end they gave me morphine but it didn’t kick in until after. I found a video where Jim is asking me how I’m feeling and I answered “Well, this is painful, otherwise I feel good, now I have energ…AAAHHH”. It was seriously the most horrible pain imagined, I can’t even describe it. When I finally had baby girl in my arms again I asked if I could punch the placenta, cause it deserved it! It made me feel so much better haha. 

My biggest surprise during the pushes and getting her out was that my “area” didn’t hurt. My second biggest surprise was how tired my arms and legs were and this made me disappointed cause I have pretty strong muscles. But I kept saying out loud “Fanny, you can do this”. The hardest part of getting baby out was to feel my tummy gurgle. I was so hungry at this point (I hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime the day before) and it was very uncomfortable. Baby must have been very annoyed by the tummy sounds cause she was kicking up a storm, she kicked my ribs so hard that I could barely focus on taking deep breaths in between pushes. She wanted out! 

You can never plan your birth and I didn’t get everything I wished for, some things I’m still in process of accepting, but the most important wishes (other than a healthy baby of course) was to have a vaginal birth without pain meds, and that’s what I got. Everyone kept telling me how impressed they were about how calm I was and I have to say that I’m pretty impressed myself. I’ve heard afterwards that pitocin makes the experience so much worse and very painful, but no. I actually don’t like to use the word pain unless it is in fact really painful, like getting the placenta out, that was beyond pain. I always describe things as uncomfortable, and I had moments of being uncomfortable during labor but I’m happy to say that overall this was a joyful birth story that resulted in our beautiful baby girl 💖 Lily 💖

May 9th, 2022

 

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A post shared by || Fᴀɴɴy Suʀᴀ || (@fannysura)

How has it been ONE YEAR already since I gave birth to our beautiful daughter? One year since the funniest, cutest little dancer entered our world. One year since since we became parents. One year since Thor became a big brother (and after one year he sadly still doesn’t seem to approve of her existence). One year since our lives changed forever.

I’ve heard of parents being really sad about their babies turning one, not being ready to let go of the baby stage, and I always thought it was a weird thing to be sad about. But I get it now. Or, I’m not sad really, I can’t wait to explore this world with my girl and see her grow up, but I am already missing the baby who is now entering toddlerhood. It’s even crazy to say that we have a toddler. 

This first year with our little love has been filled with happiness, challenges, some tears, some worries and most of all laughter and joy. Our girl is so funny and now she’s at the stage when she realize that she can cause us to laugh and she has become quite the clown haha. We love her so much and we will do anything we possibly can to make sure she has a wonderful life.

Happy first birthday my child♥