Lillie 0-4months

Before I stated getting into the blog thing Mike and I would just type up little things each month that Lillie was doing. I have wanted to post it just to put it in the same place as all of Lillies other mile-stones. Sorry it is such an long one but here is Lillie 0-4 months

Labor and Delivery

Mom had a Dr. appointment the day before at about 11am. Since mom was already dilated to a 3 the OB stripped her membranes said "I think you might have a little one by tomorrow," and sent her on her way. Mom when to work and within a few hours asked to be sent home because she was really uncomfortable and thought she might be showing the first signs of labor pains. Anna got home from work and her neighbor asked if she could watch her son while she ran an errand, Anna agreed telling her "I think I'm going into labor though." Mike was still in class, the neighbor ran the errand really fast then came back and told Anna to stay on their sofa. Anna was there for the next few hour timing my contractions with them until Mike got home. At about 8pm Anna was saying "We need to go to the hospital NOW!" At the hospital they told Anna if she wasn't dilated past a 4 they couldn't let her stay, that's Provo labor and delivery for ya. She was ALMOST a 4, so they gave her a morphine shot said "We expect to see you later tonight," then sent her on her way. Anna felt awesome and convinced Mike they needed to go grocery shopping. Then they went home and got a little sleep. At 1am Anna woke up with such strong contractions she was throwing up and really missing that morphine high. They ran to the hospital, the anaesthesiologist was right there, Anna got her epidural (which she didn't even feel) and both her and Mike fell asleep. The nurses would come in every half hour or so to check up. Just before 7am they said it was time.

Lillie 0-4 months

Lillie Evelyn Gardner was born in Utah Valley Hospital at 7:13am Dec. 1, 2007. It was also the first snow of the season. When Mom was in labor for about 18 hours, pushing was only about 15 min six pushes and she was out of there. She came right on her due date. She weighed 8 lb. 4 oz. and was 19.5 in. She had a nice head of hair and a great pair of lungs. The first thing we noticed was she had dark hair of the top part on her ears. She was born with a strong neck and from day one hated to be on her tummy.

Mom pulled on her sleeper to straiten it out when she was five days old and pulled off her umbilical cord belly button. Mom freaked out, baby cried a lot, but there wasn’t any blood and they both survived.

Lillie would make little grunting noises when she first came home from the hospital. We called her our little horsey because that is exactly what she sounded like. Mom was still in school when Lillie came to our family so we chose to have her sleep in our bed to try to keep our sanity. Mom would feed her in bed lying down then fall quickly back to sleep. Like most babies she had little gas bubbles that would get stuck in her tummy. Dad would lay her on her back and move her legs in motion like she was running not only would she stop crying but she looked like she was having a blast.

Around one month she got her first baby acne, a beautiful social smile and would babble a little. Up until this point she didn’t mind a bottle and would take a binky pretty freely. That very quickly changed. She soon would rather starve then take a bottle and developed quite a temper when it came to sticking a binky in her mouth. It was skin or nothing. We soon found that if we put our pinky in her mouth with the nail toward her tongue she would quickly be soothed. It was an uncomfortable thing to do but not as uncomfortable as listening to her cry.

Lillie got RSV the first part of January. For new parents this was quite a scare. She was never admitted to the hospital, but we had the humidifier going day and night and we were using the bulb syringe, what has come to be known in our home as the nose plunger, like there was no tomorrow. We found out she had RSV when the clinic called us on our cell phone as we were on the road to California. The trip went fairly smoothly on the way there until we got further into Nevada. Then the wind started picking up and an army of tumbleweeds blew across the highway as we drove, taking off the paint on the bumper of our car. Lillie seemed to do fine in the car seat for her first road trip and not worry too much about the weather. We ended up having to stay in Reno overnight and drive through the snowy mountains the next morning. Lillie enjoyed herself and had fun visiting Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Marc and his family in Sacramento. The trip back to Utah was miserable weather and took twice as long to get home than expected. Mom and Dad missed the first few days of class, and then Lillie got into a more regular routine of back and forth from home and campus and napping.

We waited a few months before we started bringing her to church because of the cold season. We had her blessing on Feb 3, 2008 in the Bonneville 5th ward. There was a huge blizzard that rolled in that day making it very difficult to travel. Mike gave a beautiful blessing. We had a lot of family come to support. There were 13 priesthood holders in the circle.

Around this time Lillie also started to really love to look at her hands and talk to them. She loves to start to hold on to things and shake them a bit for short periods of time. At her 2 month well-baby check up Lillie was 11 lb. 12 oz. and 22.5 in putting her in the 52% for her age. She also got her shots around this time and did great she didn’t get a fever and she just slept it off. Her babbling really started to pick up a lot more around this time and her hands were non-stop in her mouth which means there was non-stop drool coming out of her mouth. She was still not a big fan of tummy time though we did it anyway. And this is about the time we gave up on the binky idea. Lillie also had a very hard time being in the car seat. The pediatrician suggested she was just a social baby and felt lonely when she was all by herself so we got her a little toy that hung across the handle of the car seat with a frog that played music and had flashing lights. It helped… a little.

We started having Mike’s cousin Rachel watch Lillie for us around this time. So Anna could get to class. Lillie also would go to work with Anna since she worked at a day care. Mom loved the time to be with her daughter and just be a mom.

At about three months Lillie really started to bloom. No one could make Lillie laugh like her dad. She started to become ticklish and found other silly little things funny. We started her on a little bit of rice cereal at this time she really didn’t like it at first. With only wanting about a spoon full before she wasn’t interested. She started to get great use of her head and always had a very intense look on her face. We found out about this time that she really didn’t like clapping and cheering. It would always make her cry. She started to grab at things more in this month as well. Lillie also started to move her legs like she was running all on her own. When we tried to move them our selves she would stiffen up until we let her do it herself.

Month four was a fun month. At her four month well-baby visit Lillie was 15lb 8 oz and 24.5 in putting her in the 98% for her age. One again shots were on the menu, she was a little more fussy because she didn’t sleep as much but once again she didn’t have a fever or any other bad side affects. Before this month Lillie was always as straight as a board even when she was held, when we had her on our knee the only way we could get her to sit down was to straddle our leg like a hoarse. Once she learned she didn’t have to be stiff all the time she learned a lot of new things. Lillie started to sit up pretty well on her own. She still had her moments were she would very suddenly went to straiten out her body and end up bonking her head so we always sat behind her. Lillie also learned how fun it is to bounce and loves it. The most fun thing that happened in this month was Lillie learned to roll over. We put her on her tummy to see how she compared to mike’s cousin’s son and she just flipped herself over just to see if it was a fluke we put her back on her tummy and she did it again. No more tummy time for baby Lillie. She loves to try to look at her feet and chews on everything like crazy. She seems to love to look at the words and pictures on people’s shirts. She likes to try to drink out of a cup; we don’t think she knows what it’s for she just wants to put it up in her mouth.