Sophia Grace

Well I don't have anything to specific to post about seeing as we are all living in newborn land consisting of no sleep and a serious lack of schedule. Lack of schedule = nothing to intentional happens. Well, at lease nothing aside from nursing, changing diapers, and pacing around the house... outside... well anywhere that seems to serenade little Sophia to sleep :). So I will take the chance to update the Milar world on our beautiful Sophia Grace seeing as we are also a little anti social (more than normal... who knew that was possible).

She was born Sept 15 and Ben actually caught her in the water at 3:35 that morning. Yes, we did a water birth and it totally ROCKED! Going from epdidurals and being induced to an all natural water birth was a little more hippie-ish than we both were expecting in the beginning but it was an awesome journey!

Once we decided we wanted to go natural we started asking around with people who had done natural births. The book "Hypnobirthing" came highly recommended as a birthing strategy so we picked up two copies seeing as we only had 4 weeks until she was born (which she actually turned into 5 with her being a little late... thank you Sophie) and with the time crunch we didn't want to share books.

If you have ever read it you will totally know what I am talking about and for those of you who haven't, here is the download. Basically the idea is that 1 - child birth isn't a painful experience if you understand it. 2 - learning to control your mind and body through proper visualization and meditation.

Actually, there is sooooo much more in that book and holy smokolies we LOVED the book. Cover to cover I would totally recommend it to everyone! Rather they are interested in birthing naturally or not... I wish I had read it before we had Mason! But for times sake you will have to read it yourself to see how incredibly awesome it is :).

Anyways, each book comes with a meditation CD that you listen to everyday and "practice" meditating. Well most people said they listened to it as they went to bed. Seemed logical enough. So thats what we did. The CD is entitled Rainbow Relaxation... (I refer you to the previous hippie comment) and this very calm lady asks you to lay down and relax. Next is adjusting your position to relax. Goes through some breathing exercises and then she takes you through visualizing the colors of the rainbow as they engulf different parts of your body into total relaxation.

Well after she asked me to relax twice I obeyed and.... fell asleep. (mostly thanks to my secret sleeping while pregnant tool)
Ben however... listened to the entire audio twice. Well, I don't know if listen or analyzed is the right verbage because the next morning all he had to say about it was... "I am just glad she at least went through the colors in the right order". Okay....

So finished the book. Ditched rainbow lady. Practiced what the book talked about many times a day because I was determined not to die with out drugs. Turns out fear of death with motivate you to practice anything :). Now we are waiting for baby who at this point didn't have a name to get here.

After 4 days of contractions around 10 minutes apart (shoot me now) they went from 10 mins apart to having a much stronger "attitude" about them and decided to pick up the pace to 2 minutes apart with out much warning. But me being a little bitter about the last 4 days took some convincing that it was time to go. But half way to the murray hospital I was in agreement. Got checked in, they blew up what looks like a large kiddie pool (see pic below), filled her up, and in I went. Hour or so after we got in the water out came little Sophie :)! 8 lbs 4 ounces and if I remember right... 20.5 inches. And seriously bright eyed!

The entire birth was AMAZING! I would not use the word "painful" to describe it at all. Loved every minute of it and needless to say IF we have more kiddos... we will do a water hypno birth dealeo again!

I was showered and ready to head home with in hours of her being born. However, pediatrician had a concern about her having a fever. And what the mess that lovely woman started...! Due to keeping this PG we won't go into to much detail on how Ben and I felt about that pediatrician. But regardless her lack of asking questions, quick assumptions and lack of communication she managed started a snowball effect of investigating sophias case of meningitis. Yes.

After 24 hours of many tears, prayers, and begging for a doctor to speak with to answer questions.... we had also gone through 24 hours of IV antibiotics at this point and still no one had taken the time to get their little doctorate degree butt into our room and answer questions.

At this point we are two things...
1 - REALLY MAD
2 - Felt very comforted through much prayer that there was nothing wrong with sophia and it was all fine and we felt entirely comfortable calling it all off and heading home.

Now here the visual for you. Ben and I are both certain that nothing is wrong with Sophie and we are ready to take our baby home. Now, we have also decided that if things took a turn for the worst and we were wrong  (which we knew we weren't so it wasn't up for much discussion) that we sure as *@%! weren't treating her there :). So now we are both ready to let the pediatrician know that thanks but no thanks we are out of here. When... (drum roll) they come in and tell we us how wrong we are and what our "options are".  Which the options included a spinal tap and 14 days of IV antibiotics. Now... for anyone who has the opportunity of witnessing what happens when you tell either one of us really... but in this case Ben what his "options are" after he has made up his mind can guess how this all ended for these poor medical folks just trying to do their job. But at that point we had pretty much everyones attention on the entire floor and finally got that face to face appointment with the doctor we wanted from the beginning. Confirmed that nothing was wrong with sophie. Whew... ! Now we are headed home!!!

Through out the whole thing which was entirely stressful, it was an amazing testimony builder. The second we turned to God for answers they came faster than we could have asked for and followed by much comfort and courage to take on the entire medical floor ;). We where reminded of (once again) how silly it is to stress out over something God as already answered and taken care of.

Bringing her home was so great! The boys are totally in love and she has quite the personality already...!!!

Since being home I have found a new love for freezer meals! Check out some of these recipes!! They aren't all your typical freezer lasagna :)

Calling all nursing mommies...!! Check out this invention! Called the milk saver. Its like a little boobie tuber ware that catches all the milk that leaks out of the side you aren't nursing on while baby is nursing. Instead of it all leaking into a pad and being thrown away... at the end of the day I have a couple ounces of milky goodness in a freezer bag without pumping! Go me! I bought ours through our website with buy buy baby :)

Anywho.... Love you all!