One Month

12/20/2011

Today, you...

are 1 month old
sleep all day and cry most of the night
smile in your sleep (and sometimes when you toot)
are just barely moving from your newborn clothes up to 0-3 month clothes
hate socks, having your diaper changed, the dark, and being naked
love baths, bottles, your bouncy seat, and the sound of water
weigh 9 lbs 2 oz and are 21" long
have found your thumb (but we're really encouraging a pacifier!)
are feeding mostly from Mommy but are supplemented with formula (we're working on this)
love hearing your Daddy's voice and especially love his singing
hate being left alone and you much prefer to be held and cuddled
are only slightly aware of Bella and Dakota
have GERD (Reflux) and are taking baby Zantac (which breaks Mommy and Daddy's hearts)


Dear Kinley,
We have experienced many things in the past month and are still getting used to each other! We try anything and everything to make you happy (and hopefully always will!). You keep us up most of the night but with each random smile and rolling toots, you melt our hearts and forget how bad the nights are. We are going on our first trip this upcoming weekend and are nervous about how you will do. I think you will do perfect at Oma and Doodah's house but am worried about the car ride. You often times get unhappy when you realize that you aren't being held! This weekend is your first official Christmas. We feel so blessed to have your in our lives and cannot imagine our life without you in it!

We love you with all of our hearts!
Mommy and Daddy

Arranged Marriage

Yesterday we found out that my best friend is having a baby boy in April! We have been saying since we were in 7th grade that we had to have our children at the same time so they could grow up and be the best of friends just like us! Instead, Miss Kinley gets a best friend and a husband! Yep, I am that person who will strongly encourage an arranged marriage! Here's to hoping anyway! Congratulations Angie and Bryan on baby boy Morris!

Sneak Peek

www.lbluntphotography.blogspot.com

Picture Post

 Kinley and her Great Grandma Kovach.

We went to visit Grandma on Friday and to show off how much our little angel has changed since she had seen her in the hospital.  Grandma jumped right in and asked to hold her.  Kinley looks huge in Grandma's arms, but really, Grandma is just very tiny!  We are so lucky to have our grandparents that want to be involved in Kinley's life! 

Kinley and her chair...

Pardon all of the pictures of Kinley in her bouncy chair, but this is a freaking lifesaver!  We knew it would be based on our nephews, but could not have imagined how much we would need it!

As of today, she is starting on baby Zantac for what they believe is acid reflux.  It is very difficult to watch your baby eat and spit up and scream each and every time she eats.  It will literally break your heart!  However, one of the requirements for treating acid reflux, especially in infants, is to have them sleep at an incline (30 degrees, to be specific) and to remain upright for 20-30 minutes after eating.  So low and behold, the bouncy seat works perfectly for both of these settings.

Miss Kinley loves her seat and makes herself right at home in her chair.

She looks quite pudgy in the following picture, but she just barely has gotten back up to her birth weight.  I just love this picture because we had undressed her to keep her awake enough to eat and after she was finished, she just passed right out.  And nearly slid out of her magic chair!

And just to reinstate our awesome parenting skills, we took our 2 week old to a tattoo parlor last week.  Yep, we're those people!  I am already in the tattoo club, but Josh was itching to join.  He thought the only appropriate thing to permanently put on his body was the name of his child.  I think he got the birthdate just so he wouldn't forget! :)

Daddy's little girl.

Miss Kinley loves her Daddy, especially when he raps to her.  No really.  She finds great comfort in his voice.  She always has, even when she was still in my tummy.  I captured this picture while Josh and Kinley were napping some random day while I cooked dinner.

And just a picture to prove that she really does have eyes under those eyelids!



This past weekend we had professional pictures taken of Kinley!  We cannot wait to share those pictures wtih you, but you will have to wait until we get the CD from our photographer!  And PS If you need a photographer, you should most definitely use Lyndsey Blunt Photography!

Kinley's First Week...and then some.

Miss Kinley has had her ups and downs.  Literally.  Her weight was a concern even before we left the hospital.  Since then, we have been to the doctor 3 times and had a home health nurse twice to do weight checks.  Because of this, we have had to supplement forumla.  I was VERY against supplementing but after they scared the crap out of me about her weight, I caved.  We started with finger feeding and tube feeding.  It was exhausting.  If I wasn't breastfeeding, I was pumping or begging her to eat.  Monday, we bit the bullet and bought some bottles.  Epic fail.  However, on Friday, we gained weight!  Woo hoo!  Our doctor was so excited that he allowed us to go two weeks before following up again!  This is excellent news since we were going twice a week!

Her sleeping habits have also been up and down.  Some nights we'll have a good 3-4 hours in between feedings and other nights we'll have none.  No seriously.  Friday night she slept maybe 3 hours all together.  It was miserable.  Josh and I looked at each other several times and said, "I don't know what else to try."  It is very frusturating to not be able to help your baby.

Each day continues to be a challenge.  We are learning as we go.  She seems to be a happy baby for the most part so we feel we're on the right track!  Now, if only we can get some sort of sleeping arrangement down...

Kinley is two weeks old today.  She has started making tears (and using them!).  She seems to have lots of tummy issues and gets very upset when she toots.  She smiles in her sleep and sometimes when she's breastfeeding.  She has been out of the house a few times (the first was to a doctor's appointment and lunch at Mi Ranchito).  She will not sleep unless she has a warm body holding her.  Her belly button fell off after one week.  She weighs approximately 7 lbs 10 oz.  She is the light and joy of our lives!

Birth Story (long and TMI)

Sunday morning (November 20th) at 3:30 am, my water broke and our adventure began... I woke up Josh and he got some clothes together and we headed for the hospital. We even took a picture of us leaving the house in front of the clock on our microwave. This could be the last picture of me smiling for about 15 hours!

Once we arrived at the ER, they quickly steered us towards the Birth Place. We hadn't brought in our bag because I genuinely believed that I would beq sent home to wait (that is what everyone told me would happen). Except it didn't. After arriving in the room, the wonderful nurse checked me and finished breaking my water. I was only at a 3!

Josh and I dozed in and out for several hours and worked through some very mild contractions. By the way, there is nothing good on tv at 4 am. 7:00 am rolled around and I was starting to get some back pain and pressure around my lady parts.  They suggested I get a "boost" to take the edge off.  The drug is called Heaven, no just kidding, its actually Nubain (I think that is how it is spelled).  Best drug ever.

Around 9:00 am, I decided to get my epidural.  I was feeling pretty uncomfortable but not out of control.  However, I was dialated to a 5 and they were afraid that I may miss my window of opportunity if we didn't get it started.  At about 10:00 am my mom arrived. Which I felt terrible about because she had just left Olathe the day before!

Around noon, while Angie and my mom were there, I started to feel what they referred to as a "hot spot".  Something that people clearly forget to mention when discussing epidurals.  This "hot spot" is when the drug is not working on a certain spot of your body.  My spot was on the left side of my lower abdomen.  It was hurting pretty good at this point so I suggested that everyone leave (I am mean, I know).  I needed to concentrate and did not want anyone to see me being a wuss.  After 30 minutes of suffering, I asked if there was anything I could have.  They called in the anesthesiologist and he gave me a bolster.  Not sure what that was, but it worked.  Knocked the pain right out!

However, it didn't last.  Instead, at about 2:00 we had realized that the "hot spot" had now spread to the entirity of my lower abdomen and can feel each and every agonizing contraction. 

I am begging at this point for a C-section.  It is 2:30 and I am dialated to a 9.  They suggest that we start pushing to finish thinning out my cervix.  I didn't want to push.  I didn't want to have a baby anymore.  I was done. 

After begging for some sort of relief, they had the miracle drug man come back and give me another bolster.  I don't even remember seeing him.  At 3:00 it was time to push.  I couldn't feel my legs at all but sure as the sun comes up everyday, I could feel my hot spot on my left side.

An hour and a half, a broken tailbone, forceps and an episiotomy later - Kinley Josephine came in to the world.  It was 4:30 pm and she weighed 7 lbs 15 oz and was 20" long.

If that hour and a half wasn't bad enough, my uterus wouldn't stop bleeding.  I received at least three shots in my thighs, one in my arm, and one through my IV to stop the bleeding.  Nothing seemed to help.  So all of those nurses out there, what do you?  Yep, brutally assault me by kneading my stomach like bread dough.  It was excrutiating.  I screamed out loud.  I am that person and I didn't care.  I grabbed the nurse's hand and begged her to stop.  She didn't.  I think she hated me. 

Another hour later, my bleeding slowed down and they had me stitched up.  Then I got sick.  I had held my beautiful baby girl for approximately 3 minutes.  It was depressing and I felt like a horrible mom because honestly, I didn't want to hold her.  I was miserable.  To make matters worse, the dang Nursery nurse kept trying to get me to breast feed.  Witch.  Was she trying to make me feel like the worse mom ever?  Well, it worked.  

Finally, at about 6:00 pm I held her and even fed her (or tried).  It was over.  It was the longest day of my life and probably of Josh's life.  I had survived and received the most wonderful gift in the world.  She was perfect.  And she was mine.

  

Going home...sporting our KSU stocking hat!

**More things happened once I got home - but I'll save that for another TMI post someday.

Kinley is here!

Hello, this is Emily's sister Kendell.
I am hijacking her blog to make sure that all of her friends know that Kinley Josephine Perkins arrived on 11/20/2011!
You can give your congrats and see some pictures on Emily's facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2420721

8 months and counting

8 months (36 weeks)

So our little bean was 8 months on October 23rd.  I'm a little late in posting her update.  I am sure I wrote down all of her stats from October 23rd but since the move, I have no idea where that is at.  For the past three weeks, we have been having "exams" with our appointments to check how close we are to delivery.  As of last Wednesday:

Heartrate: 138 bpm
Weight gain: 24.6 lbs (yes, that is less than 25) - 159.6 lbs total weight
Estimated weight: 6.5 lbs (gaining about 1/2 pound a week)
Dialated to 1+ centimeters ("less than 2 but more than 1" is what our doctor said)

He also mentioned that "baby is VERY low and you are thinning out nicely!"  I suppose that is a compliment! :)  He is still expecting her to come close to my due date of November 23rd, but says that if my water breaks or I start having contractions to go immediately to the hospital because she is in the ready position!  Woo hoo!

Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly!  I will try to update more pictures as we get closer for my family to keep tabs on what I look like.  If I get brave enough, I may even post a picture of my bare belly per some requests...

Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Perkins

Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Perkins

This weekend, Josh's little brother, Brad, got married.  He married the most patient and selfless person, which was perfect for him!  Julie is from a small town, loves the lake, and works in the medical field.  She is a perfect fit for my only sister-in-law! :)  And she looked absolutely stunning on her wedding day!

Brad looked pretty handsome too!

Sorry for the poor quality pictures, but apparently 10 megapixels don't get you much these days!

Saying "I do"

Josh giving his best man's speech!  It was flawless and funny!

Who let the fatty patty in?  Oh wait, that's the 9 month pregnant sister-in-law!

Hold on a second?  Did she do the Soldier Boy dance?  Yep, she's the one!

Brotherly love!  Josh is so proud of Brad and so happy that he found someone so perfect for him!  We are truly blessed to have such wonderful siblings!

And of course a self portrait!  My mother-in-law and myself taking a breather from the dance floor!  Her dress was beautiful and was exceptionally flattering!

This is the only picture I had that included Julie's full dress!

She is dancing to Miley Cyrus with our friend's little girl Charli.  She was adorable!

Please also note Julie's step-grandma Dorothy also getting down to a little "Party in the USA"!

We had an absolute blast and are so thrilled to have Julie in our family!

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Perkins!

Just Pictures...trying to catch up!

Update

Well, let's see what has been going on since September 27th...

Kendell and Chris came up with Ledger-man for the Chiefs game the first weekend in October. The weather was perfect all weekend so we got to really enjoy the game...plus, we won! Who knew Chiefs were going to be awesome this year?!?! That Saturday, Josh and I had our child birth preperation class. Um...we left early. It was overwhelming and a little ridiculous. Wish we would have spent the day with family instead!

We had a baby shower/bbq with our family and friends the second weekend in October. All of my parents came up and so did my sister and her family. It was a crazy weekend with Football Friday watching Josh kick some major butt against the top ranked team in Kansas in 6A! It was awesome! Saturday, we watched football and prepared for our shower. We got a lot of loot! It was incredible to see all of the goodies we had! I can't believe how loved this little girl is already! It was a blast to see my family and friends all gathered around to show their support and excitement for her arrival!

October 14th, we closed on the house, signed a bunch of paperwork, and packed up. Well, sort of. Josh had a brilliant plan to use his football players to help us move (this part of the plan actually was brilliant) by bringing over laundry baskets, loading them up, throwing the boys and the baskets in the back of a UHaul truck and driving them to our new house (this part of the plan was not). In theory it would have worked. We literally had one day to move because we had an upcoming event at our new house the next day. So the piles of stuff from the old house that was unloaded in our new house, became piles of things I HAD to put away right then. Thank God for my in-laws for helping me hide things long enough for the party!

We hosted Brad's bachelor party on October 15th at our house. It was crazy. The guys were very well behaved...until 2:00 am. I was so embarassed that our new neighbors would think this would be a regular occurance at our house. I can hear them now... "A party bus, beer cans in the yard, puke all over the sidewalk, and cars left on our street for days, there goes the neighborhood!"

October 17th, I started at my new location for work. I was sooooo pumped! I moved from Independence, MO (about an hour from home) to Overland Park, KS (about 20 mins from home). I hadn't worked with this group of people for nearly 4 years so it was a nice change and really exciting to be so close to home! I will be splitting my time between the OP office Monday through Thursday and then on Fridays, I will be out in the Wyandotte office (by Legends - only about 30 min drive). This is an AWESOME change and I cannot wait to settle in!

October 18th, we had a doctor's appointment. This was the "big" third trimester appointment where they test you for Strep B and Hepatitis. It was actually a really quick appointment and Josh barely made it in the room before they started! Our doctor said (during the "exam"), "Oooh, baby is really low!" and also mentioned that we should have our bags packed as she is very low, my cervix is thinning out, and my belly has appeared to have "dropped". Um...doesn't she know she has 5 more weeks!?!?

This past weekend (if you have made it this far), my parents came up again. The original plan was to build a fence but as you might have guessed, our timing was way off. Nothing was ready to be done. Our sod is just now growing roots, we had no time to set the posts the week prior, and we don't have any materials! So instead, we worked on organzing the garage (not even half way done as of Monday) and figuring out a way to watch KSU/KU and OU/Texas Tech play on Saturday. Turns out, living without internet and cable is much MUCH more difficult than I had ever planned. But fear not, we get cable on Tuesday so I'll add pictures and stay on top of blogging! Saturday afternoon we took a tour of the birthing center. That was a waste of 20 minutes of my life. Except to find out that we were supposed to make a pre-admission appointment between 30-33 weeks to establish care that we wanted and fill out all of the necessary forms. Oops...36 weeks is on Tuesday and we have not done this yet. Awesome.

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 25th, I have another appointment. He warned me that I might need to be "checked" each week to see how we are progressing. What great fun that will be! I think this week, we will bite the bullet and have a fence installed for us. Saturday night we discovered that there are a bunch of coyotes in our neighborhood and that our dogs feel that they can take on this bunch by themselves. Great! I am sick of putting them on a leash and walking them down to the open field and in 4 weeks, I'll be more concerned with other things rather than their bowel movements! :)

If you made it this far, sorry I haven't blogged or organized my life until now. I would still say it is in shambles, but we're working on it! Pictures will be added once we get internet at home and I promise to include pictures of the new house and 8 month pics!

So...we bought a house.

We have been looking for months (maybe longer) to buy a new house. We had initially wanted to build a house. Then buy a model house. Then buy an already built (used) house. Then we got pregnant.

Don't get me wrong, we were planning the pregnancy, but it did put a twist on upgrading our house. However, one random Sunday when my parents were in town, we were cruising around one of our "desired" neighborhoods and saw a couple of houses that we liked. Once at home, we looked up the price and thought that that was going to be too much of a difference between our current mortgage to the new mortgage. At least, that's what we thought. Unfortunately, we cannot let anything lie and thought we'd pursue the house if they were willing to do a house swap...



A month later, we have "swapped" our starter home for a new home! A house swap is where we buy a new house and the builder of that house buys our house. The benefits are pretty much a win-win for both the builder and for us. We didn't have to list our house, pay a realtor, clean our house, have our house inspected, or worry about the listing price. The builder got nearly full price for their new home (obviously making a profit) and they are going from a larger mortgage to a smaller mortgage. We did have some difficulties with the negotiations but finally settled on a price for both the new house and on our house! We close on October 14th!

7 months and counting down!

Tuesday we had our follow up doctors appointment. We are 31 weeks which roughly translates to 7 months! I still have pregnancy acne ( yes, that is real) and vericous veins. Besides that, everything is going pretty well. I much prefer to wear maternity clothes (or no clothes at all) to my scrubs because the elastic is too tight on my belly!

Stats:
Heart rate: 156 bpm
Approx weight: 3.4 lbs
Approx length: 16.5"
Total weight gain: 19 lbs (though the doctor has it at only 15 lbs)
Waist circ: 41" (agh!)

Mary Margaret Miller

This was a crazy weekend full of fun! My dear friend Mary married her best friend on Saturday and I was lucky enough to be a part of their special day! There are so many pictures from their special day so I'm going to add a video slideshow of "some" of the fun we had...

Customize your own free slideshow

3D Ultrasound

We had a doctor's appointment today to do my glucose test and also to see baby Perkins in 3D! We were very excited and anxious to see what our little girl was going to look like. The sonographer took over 50 photos and I thought I'd upload a few of our favorites. Before you get to those, our stats are as follows:

Weight gain: 15 pounds (145 lbs)
Heart Rate: 151 bpm (normal for her heartrate to alter when I lay down versus up and moving)
Estimated baby size: 2 lbs 8 oz
Estimated baby length: 14.5 inches
Estimated due date: (still) November 23rd

This first picture was as close to a smile that we could detect on the sonogram. She has her right hand up next to her face and the "blob" on the left side of her face is my placenta. Dang that placenta! It was in the way nearly the whole time!

We thought this was cute: thumbs up!

We had a hard time getting her to put her hand near her face. Please note: 4 fingers and a thumb! We are also pretty sure she has my nose!

Her mouth is open here because she was apparently sucking on the umbilical cord. Yuck? I'm not sure. But the sonographer said that there was little else to play with in there so at least she's active and searching for things to touch!

This picture is straight on. Probably one of three that we could get straight on. The little marks on the right are her reaching up towards us. She must be excited to meet us too! :)

And of course, just for proof, she has feet! We had a hard time finding her feet because the sonographer said there wasn't enough fluid around her feet. Not sure...but at least we got one good shot!

Six Months and what the...?

Tuesday I am six months along. At our last appointment, Baby Perkins was growing perfectly and so was mommy. Her heartbeat was 156 bpm, my circumference is right at 39" and my weight (gasp, can you believe I am going to post it?) was 144 lbs (which means I have gained 14 pounds!). Next appointment I am doing the glucose test which should be awesome... not really. But we do get to see the little bean in a 3D sonogram. We are so excited about that!

We are so excited! Only a few more months/weeks til we get to meet her!

But wait... what the heck is that? Excuse me? What did you say? VERICOUS VEINS??? Only old fat people get those (right?), not me! Oh wait, yes I do. What a horrible joke to play on pregnant women. Seriously, not only do we actually have to birth a baby, gain a bunch of weight, develop acne, have no clothes fit for at least 6 months, and lose any glimmer of energy, but we have the chance of developing nasty blue, raised veins all over your legs! YUCK. Silver lining? Insta-Tan!