6 Months!

So I had a five month post ready, but by the time I was ready to post it, Clara was already six months! Time is going WAAAAAAAY too fast!  Some glimpse of Clara from the past two months. 

Clara ONLY sleep on her tummy or side. 

 Clara's first trip to Lake Michigan.

 First time in a high chair.  She loves the idea of eating (puts EVERYTHING in her mouth), but hates the texture of food and spits it all out.

 First time swinging....

 First time meeting Grandpa Great

 First time meeting Grandma Great

 Clara loves to sit outside and watch the big kids play.

She also loves to splash in the bath.  By the time her bath is done, most of the water is gone!

 Beautiful girls! This is Clara and her second cousin Sophia.

Clara thinks Caleb is pretty hilarious. 

Fancy girl and her Aunt Laura. 

We love this little munchkin to pieces!

Clara is 4 months old! She is full of personality and already so much fun to be around! She has mastered several skills in the past few months like rolling over, laughing,  and breaking out of her swaddle. : )

Caleb loves to talk to Clara and she thinks he's pretty funny!

Now that Clara has figured out how to roll over, she doesn't spend much time on her back. 

Corinne loves to read to Clara.

We take Clara everywhere and she's really good at napping on the go.  We spent several hours at the pool the other day while she napped poolside. 

She loves baths and usually kicks almost all of the water out of the tub!

Love this quilt that aunt Mary made her!

I found her the other day on her tummy in her crib.

We love her so much!

2 months

Clara's cheeks are growing by the day!!  It's been over 2 months now since we brought this little bundle home and every time we blink she changes!

Clara weighs 12.4 (75th percentile) pounds and is 24 inches long (98th percentile).  I can't get enough of her little rolls.

She is smiling a lot, crying a lot less, and sleeping so well at night! The kids absolutely adore her, especially Calvin who likes to be about 1 inch from her face whenever he talks to her. : )

We're finally getting back into our normal (sort of) routine around here which has been really nice. 

Now if only we can get Clara to take a bottle.  I'm going away on a girls weekend in a few weeks and she wants NOTHING to do with the thing.  Hopefully she'll get it soon or my girls weekend may include an addition girl! 

We love our Clara Elizabeth to pieces!!  

Spring break "staycation"!

We almost took a trip this spring break, but decided that since Clara was only a few weeks old and didn't love the car (she's better now!) that we should probably do something local. We got a hotel a couple towns away and had a great time eating out, swimming in the pool and just hanging out together.  After our evening in the hotel, we headed to the city for a fun day at the Navy Pier Children's museum. 

The kids love Red Robin (and we kind of do too) so that's where we headed for dinner.  I don't think I have many pictures of Caleb with his tongue in his mouth these days.

They swam for hours and gave Glen quite a work out!

Clara did this all weekend. 

 Some very serious building going on here….

 And bubble making…

and dinosaur digging….

I think Cal would have sawed for hours if we'd have let him! 

We had such a fun time!  2 days away with our newly expanded family was just enough.  Maybe next year we'll venture a little further.

1 month

Just a quick snapshot of our 1 month old!!  Her cheeks are growing chubbier by the day!
Clara weighed 9 pounds at her 2 week appointment so I bet she is close to 10 now.  We're starting to get into a routine around here which feels nice.  Clara has moved from out bed to the bassinet which allows us to sleep MUCH better.  Next project is working on spacing out the night meals- but for now I don't mind our night visits to much.  : )

2 weeks!

Clara is 2 weeks old already!! Slow down time! She's a sleepy little one- probably 23 hours a day! She's starting to settle into a rough schedule, but honestly I haven't taken time to keep track. Corinne had about five different scheduling charts logging her every move when she was two weeks old. Oh how times have changed!

Nights are still kind of a blur, but I think Clara wakes 2-4 times to eat. She's in my bed for now, but we'll start transitioning her to the bassinet soon.

No smiles yet (on purpose anyway) but soon I'm sure!!

She's very content and loves to eat and poop- what babies do best!!

We're loving every minute with Clara and love our new family of 6!!!

Introducing Clara Elizabeth Schneider!  She came into this world at 6:18pm on Wednesday, February 26th weighing 7 lbs 9 ounces. She is just perfect and we are so in love!

Meeting Clara for the first time.  I wish I could bottle this feeling.  Love at first sight. 

The miracle of birth never ceases to amaze me.  The way baby knows just how to enter the world on her own. The way she knows her mama right away.  The way she knows how to nurse from the minute she's born.  The way labor pains instantly fade away the moment mom meets baby. Of course this is all by God's perfect design, but I'm still so in awe.

Clara's birth story: 

At 39 weeks 4 days, I went to my weekly midwife appointment.  The midwife listened to baby's heartbeat as usual which was beating at a healthy 120 beats per minute. She then decided to try and get the heartbeat to accelerate by rousing baby a bit.  After not getting much of a response, she sent me to lunch and told me to come back for a NST just to make sure everything was Ok. 

The NST showed lots of movement and several contractions.  During one of the contractions, Clara's heartbeat dropped below 100.  It only happened once, but this alarmed the midwife enough that she decided to measure my tummy (for the second time that day) to make sure amniotic fluid levels had not gone down.  The measurement she got at that moment was a bit smaller than the one she got in the morning. Because of this, she sent me to get an ultrasound the following morning to make sure amniotic fluid levels were OK.

The ultrasound showed that fluid levels were fine and that baby looked great but that there was a bit of fluid around her heart.  My midwife recommended that I be induced that day or head to the city to a specialist have have a higher level ultrasound.

Because I was due in 3 days, it seemed silly to go to the city for further evaluation.  I figured they would most likely tell me to be induced anyway, so that is what we chose. 

I met Glen at home (luckily Grandma was already there with the kiddos), grabbed my stuff and we were off to the hospital to have a baby. I was pretty emotional as things were not going as I had planned. It's so easy to forget sometimes that OUR plans pale in compassion to God's.

I had been practicing hypnobrthing techniques for several months in hopes that I could have a natural, relatively pain free birth.  This method teaches you to relax and focus on how a woman's body is meant to give birth, which in turn makes intervention less likely.

 Adding pitocin into the equation made me fear that I would not be able to handle the pain and would end up with an epidural.  Pitocin was started at about 2pm, but not very much was needed to get labor going.  My water broke while the nurse was checking me which made things go even faster.  I was able to breathe through my contractions and things were very calm.  

When my water broke, there was quite a bit of blood which concerned the midwife. Even though I was only 8cm, she asked me to begin pushing during the next contraction.  This part of the labor was not calm, or pain free, but 3 pushes later, Clara entered the world! 

Because the ultrasound showed fluid around Clara's heart, she had to stay in the NICU overnight for monitoring.  She was to receive and Echocardiogram the following day which would show if the fluid was still present. Glen and I held her all night in the NICU, taking turns sleeping in the room. She had no issues at all during the night.  Her ECHO was at 9am but we did not receive results until around 2pm when we were praising God that the fluid was no longer present! 

I have gone over the situation many times, wondering if everything that happened was simply because our midwife was being overly anxious.  I wonder if the ultrasound was read wrong and if fluid really did exist around her heart?  

 Or maybe the midwife being overly zealous that day in her check-up was all part of God's plan.  Maybe there WAS fluid around Clara's heart that would have not been detected had I not been sent for an ultrasound.  And had it not been detected, the MANY MANY people that prayed for Clara could not have prayed for it to go away.  God's plans are so much bigger than mine.  He holds the script and sees the big picture.  We just have to trust.

No matter the events or circumstances surrounding the birth, Clara's entrance to the world was perfect.  

 Corinne is so thrilled to have a sister.

Now if I can just figure out how to slow down time…..