Mary 1 Month

I can' believe Mary is already one month old! She is such a happy baby. We started to give her toys and when we give her all of them at once she gets so excited and I think overwhelmed. Brian has gotten her to put her weight on her legs and stand up with his help. She looked so concentrated and then really happy that she did it. She sleeps for about 3-5 hours at a time at night. One day we were out running errands and she messed her pants and it exploded so I had to change them but the only ones I had with me were three mont size so they were so huge!

Mary 3 Weeks

Mary is 3 weeks old today. She is learning how to use her face muscles and sometimes makes the strangest faces. She gets the scared or cross eyes look a lot but I don't really think she is scared that much. We have seen her smile a few times. It is great. We have tried giving her a pacifier but most of the time she doesn't like it. That is ok though. She sleeps for at least three hours at a time at night sometimes four and sometimes five. It is not that bad at all. She is such a good baby. She mostly only cries when she is hungry or if she wants some attention.



We took Mary outside on Sunday when she was wearing her pretty dress from Grandma Satko. The weather was so nice. She likes being outside if the sun doesn't get in her face because it is so bright. This was the first week we stayed at church for the whole three hours. We also took a trip to Brian's school and walked around while he was taking a test. She likes being in the stroller but most of the time she is asleep because of the car ride.

Mary 2 Weeks

Mary is 2 weeks old tomorrow! She weighs 7lbs 7oz and is 20" long. She does have some white patches on her tongue so we are giving her the nystatin for her thrush but it is getting better. She also had a goopy and crusty eye the other day but that went away after massaging and wiping it with a warm washcloth. It looks so nice now! She is already acting like a big girl sometimes. She likes sitting up against the couch and watching us a lot. That is her favorite.




Sometimes when she is very awake she likes laying on the floor with this toy that plays music and looking at the things we hang from it. She will just lay there and stare at it while moving her arms and legs a lot. I love this picture, she fell asleep in her crib one day with her arms sticking straight up and we were thinking how can she sleep like that. We were just glad she was sleeping.



Mary’s very first Easter. We all went to sacrament meeting and Brian sang in the choir. Mary was so good and slept in her car seat the whole time. I was still feeling a little weak and hot from having the stomach flu but it felt good to get out of the house because our bedroom smelled like sick people. I am doing well now, still pretty tired but I feel like there are parts of the day where I feel like normal again. My maternity jeans feel comfortable again so I don’t have to wear sweatpants but my hips are still too wide for my regular jeans. She likes listening to Brian talk. If she is fussy and Brian talks to her she calms down almost instantly and just looks at him. She likes to stick her tongue out at him and sometimes it looks like she is smiling a little.



This middle picture is pretty funny. I propped her up on the bed and slowly she just fell over and there was nothing she could do about it. She just lay there like “what do I do now?”. This was Brian’s first attempt at clothing her all by himself. He found the clothes that matched and everything without my help. That was also her first time wearing pants and socks instead of a sleeper.

Mary's Post Birth Story

So it turns out that I had a partial placental abrubtion which was causing all of the bleeding. That means the placenta was already separating from the uterus and if it came all the way off then the baby would not be getting any oxygen. We are so grateful that I was able to have a c-section or Mary would probably not be with us right now.


I could still not move any of my lower body when they took me to a recovery room. Brian and I just sat there for a long time while the nurse did a lot of paperwork. It was actually taking longer than expected for the drugs to wear off enough to get myself into another bed. Mom arrived shortly after Mary was born and came to see me. I was getting so anxious to hold Mary that I kept trying so hard to move my toes so the nurse would let me go to another room. Brian kept taking trips to the nursery to see her and found out that she had low blood sugar. Eventually she got better though and they finally moved me to a regular room where we could bring Mary to.

I was so happy to hold Mary for the first time. We were both happy to be with her. She is such a good baby. Then Mom and Brian's parents came in and saw her too. Over the next few days at the hospital there was a lot going on. It seemed like once a nurse left the room somebody else would come in with a survey or to take pictures or for the birth certificate. That was so tiring. Brian was there most of the time except for a little while when he went home to study but then Mom stayed. We even watched conference on my tablet while Mom made some really nice hats. I couldn't really get out of bed for the first two nights so Brian was very tired from getting up and handing me the baby to feed and then changing her diaper. He has a lot harder time getting back to sleep than I do. It felt so good once I was able to walk around a little and to even take a shower.

Well Mary passed all her tests except for the bilirubin test on Sunday which meant that she needed to be kept for 24 hours for the phototherapy treatment. Brian and I went home Sunday afternoon and got some nice sleep after returning to the hospital a few times to feed her. Monday morning we came to feed her again and were happy to hear that we could finally take her home. Yeay! Mary enjoyed being in her car seat and was so good the whole ride home. We felt so happy to have Mary at home with us.

Mary's Birth Story

Thursday I woke up after a nice night of sleep disappointed again that things had not progressed enough to keep me awake. I got up and took a shower because I was bored lying in bed. I ate some cereal and a lot of orange juice because the last time we went to the hospital they said I was dehydrated. Brian was still in bed so I layed back down to be with him for a while. I was feeling a little tummy sick and thought maybe it was from drinking too much oj. Not many minutes later I felt a ton of liquid shooting out while I was laying down and told Brian that my water broke. That was about 7:45am. I ran to the shower to let it drain out a bit before we got in the car and that is when I noticed that it was very bloody.

We got to the hospital and I was hooked up to the fetal monitor in their evaluation room where they decide whether to keep you or not. After testing the fluid they knew it was amniotic fluid and then took me to a delivery room. We sat there for a while waiting for the doctor to come. The nurse was noticing that the baby's heart rate was dropping a lot every time I had a contraction and that was not good. The doctor got there and decided to order an ultrasound. The ultrasound did not show any reason for the baby's heart rate to be dropping. It was at that point that the doctor decided that I needed a c-section.

From the time the doctor decided to do the c-section to when the baby was born was so fast. It seemed like there were so many people doing different things to all of my body parts and I had no idea what was going on. It wasn't until they put the curtain in front of my face that I asked where Brian was because I was getting worried that he was not there. I think they forgot to go get him. Mary was born at 12:34pm and a few minutes later the nurse let me see her as she held her to my face. I was so happy. She weighed 6lbs 14oz and was 18 1/2" long.

Mary Pre-Birth Story

Tuesday morning I started to feel contractions. Before I had never really felt any and weren't sure what they felt like. It was not painful, just a tight feeling. They started at an hour apart and throughout the day got closer and closer together. I went with Brian to school at noon for an ultrasound workshop. It was to let students get a bit of hands on with the ultrasound machine and I was used as a patient so they could see the baby. By 3:30 they were ten minutes apart and still not painful; it stayed like that for the rest of the day. We had dinner at Hometown Buffet because I really did not feel like cooking. I slept well Tuesday night and was a bit disappointed that things did not progress and keep me awake.

I had a doctor's appointment Wednesday morning so Brian and I went to that and the doctor told us to go to the hospital to have them check how far along I was. We headed straight to the hospital and stayed for a few hours on the fetal monitor and after a cervical check I was not even dilated at all. So they sent us home. We decided to go for a walk because Brian already skipped school so we walked around The Block and outlet stores in Orange for a while. We also went to Toys R Us for fun to look at girl toys. I even got Brian to walk down the pink aisles. I was really tired of walking and it didn't seem to be progressing much except that it started to hurt a little. But that may have been from being tired. After dinner Brian realized that he needed to go to mutual and drove off a little worried about leaving me alone but i just sat and watched Netflix. I slept very well that night also.