12 months: Happy 1st birthday Rowan!

month 1 vs. month 12

I'm typing this with a lump in my throat. This picture makes me cry.

My daughter is one! How the HECK did it go by so fast? This year truly has been life changing. I'm not going to lie, in the beginning it was hard and crazy. Her early birth stunned me and I battled some MAJOR baby blues. Honestly, I think I may have had a touch of PPD (may blog about this later). Our lives were turned upside down caring for a tiny premature infant with horrific reflux issues. We were up all night, worn out, and exhausted. Throw in the struggle to breastfeed and you've got yourself a big problem. There were many times I broke down, not sure how we were going to do it. However, with the grace of God, things got a little easier and MUCH better. What's funny is I miss those tiny newborn days. I wish I could have it back, lol!! I have been a teary mess for the last few days now. I know that sounds cheesy, but seeing how far my child has come, well, it overwhelms me in a good way. Rowan has brought a joy to our lives that honestly can't be explained. Our lives were quite fabulous before her, but it has gotten even better with her in it. I can't believe that I almost swore off having kids. I love being a mother, and she is truly a gift from above. This year has been monumental, busy, joyous and crazy. I wouldn't trade this life for all the money in the world.

Name: Rowan Decaris Potter

Rowan's age: 12 months old, 10.5 months adjusted age

Weight:
At birth: 5.2 pounds
Now: 24 pounds! Holy tank! This blows me away how big she has gotten! She is in the 92% percentile for her weight. Some people get all offended when people say their baby is chubby, but I LOOOOOVE it! Anyone who knows me well knows I love my chubbies! I love all her precious fluff and rolls! I know it will melt off soon, and honestly, that makes me sad :(

favorite foods:
Pretty much everything EXCEPT frosting. At her cake smash, she got frosting caked on her fingers and she about lost her mind. She threw the biggest diva fit, LOL! More on that later. At her well baby appt, we were given the green light to start whole milk, so we will transition her later this week. Other than that, Rowan eats a lot of what we eat!

Clothing size:
At birth: preemie size clothing, size 1 diapers (sniff, sniff)
Now: size 4 diapers, 24m clothing size and starting to wear 2T! Still super tiny feet!

Rowan milestones (for her adjusted age, 10.5months):

-Army crawling like a champ and is getting better at pulling herself up.

-Now she has officially 8 teeth

-Rowan can stand for longer periods of time. She of course has at least one hand on something.

- Can say : mama, dada, baba, dis, dat. Can say a whole slew of other sounds and blends that I can't quite make out quite yet.

-blows kisses

-When daddy asks "donde esta la luna" (where is the moon in Spanish) She immediately looks up and finds the moon! Also points a lot to her nose as we are teaching her where certain facial are. Points to everything and will say "dis" or "Dat"

-With the above statement, we are teaching her to be bilingual and is now responding to both languages. She can respond to a variety of different phrases. I credit this to my mom, who speaks to her in Spanish all day when she is watching her. Rowan is half Salvadorean, so it is important to me she knows her culture and language. It is incredible to me how quick she is learning!


-Rowan also tries to mimic our arm and facial movements. If we point to our nose, she will do it.

-When you take something away, she is extremely aware of it and will track where you put it, LOL!

 
 Rowan loves: 

-Lambs, thanks to Baby Einstein. She got a lamb who we call Goldie, and Rowan loves her. 

-HANGERS. Why on earth have we bought this child any toys? Rowan is the happiest when she is playing and eating hangers. SIGH.

-Loves her father. I know, a big fat DUH but seriously, this girl is ALL ABOUT daddy. I'm kinda jealous lol! SHe can be super crabby with me, but the minute her father walks in the door, she goes crazy!!

 

-ANy toy that lights up or plays music. Also loves her stackable cups.

 

-Despite thinking cake is the devil, Rowan LOVES ice cream. Oh boy...

Rowan doesn't like:
-being woken up in the morning. For the last few months, we have had to wake her up to get ready for work. She HATES it (don't blame her) and straight up acts like a teenager about it.

-Very demanding about food and throws major fits when it doesn't come fast enough :(

-Being held too long. She wants to be on the floor. This makes my heart ache a little.

-HATES being changed and getting a fresh diaper. She is apparently much too busy to be still!

New things/happenings this month:

Not a ton of "new" things, but still, it was a great month!

-Rowan celebrated her first birthday party! It was this past weekend and we partied hearty! A HUGE post will be dedicated to this.

-We did our final 12 month shoot on April 19, Rowan's actual birthday! We have been seeing Jamie Cardoza for all of our every 3 month sessions! She has done 3-6-9-12 months and IS AMAZING. A post is being dedicated to her! ANyway, we did our final one and Rowan did pretty well, considering she partied too hard the night before (already living the supermodel lifestyle, lmao!). At the very end, we did the cake smash and she SCREAMED like she got spanked! Oh my land, this girl!!! Somehow, Jamie STILL managed to get decent shots!

- We celebrated Rowan's 1st Easter! I can't believe I haven't blogged about this! GAH! It was so fun, and Rowan definitely enjoyed it! Did great getting her picture done with the Easter bunny, which shocked me!

-This isn't super new, but we have been getting busier with playdates. Rowan super enjoys them and really loves babies and kids.

-Becoming more a "fixture" at Daddy's practices and meets! People seem drawn to her and she gets lots of attention, which she of course loves.

 

How is Rowan's spit up?: Well, oddly enough, she was spitting up a good few times this month, even spitting up her whole bottle. Not quite sure what was going on, but thankfully it passed.
 

Sleep:
Still doing decent on sleep! If I am tired its because I chose to stay up! I am a little worried we had it too easy with her, and next baby (Lord willing we have another) might be crazy hard, LOL!

Rowan's personality so far: 
A sweet, joyful spirit is how I can describe Rowan. While she has a HUGE personality when she is upset, she is very good natured and joyful.

This year has been the most beautiful year of my life. It has had plenty of its ups and downs, but I wouldn't trade this job for the world. I can't wait to see what the next year brings! I'm debating if I will do monthly posts, mainly because I don't want to annoy people, LOL!

I am so thankful God picked me to the mother of this extraordinary baby girl! I love you forever Rowan!

My Rowan dump...on the very bottom is a picture of her at the birthday party (WAY more on that later) and some sneak peeks of her 12 month session:

adjusted part 2

Welp, I have written on this subject before, Rowan's milestones.

When we are in public with our precious human, we get lots of compliments, like most parents do with their babies. It always starts off with "oh she is so chubby/pretty/beautiful". Of course, this mama's heart feels like exploding! Then 90% of the time, this is the follow up question:

well meaning stranger: "Is she walking yet?"

me: " No, not yet"

well meaning stranger: "Oh she must be crawling, how's that"

me (starting to feel foolish): "Actually she's not yet".

Then, I KID you not, comes the gasp, or horrified look. Or this, because its happened a few times:"What!?! Really, that's crazy". I have had the same comment said to me by some people we know. If you are reading this, don't worry it wasn't you.

Thanks stranger, because its not like I am already not stressed about it.

It makes me feel like a worthless mama, so then I feel obligated to dive into her story. I explain she's a preemie, that her adjusted age is really barely 10 months, etc. etc.  Usually then, the stranger then feels bad, launches into a story about so-so who didn't crawl till 12 months, etc.

On facebook, there was a bunch of us pregnant at the same time (I think 11 of us?), and I had about 4 friends due in the fall. All but me were born at term. All of those babies crawled between 7-9 months, one even at 6. Some of those said babies were walking well before they turned 1. Seeing these posts, seeing these babies be on the crazy move makes my heart ache and worry. It made me feel something was wrong with Rowan, I am not doing enough, etc. etc. I recently ran into this quote and totally felt it was from God:

                I think I need to tattoo this on my head. Just sayin'.

Comparing Rowan to other babies, is so incredibly wrong. And it sure has stolen my joy. She is her own unique, beautiful self. I keep repeating that quote to myself quite often!

Even with this, I felt in my heart we need to get checked out, just in case. So I scheduled an appointment with her physical therapist. She has always been great and is a massive help.

She first observed Rowan play. She then picked her up in different ways and felt her hips. She then explained her muscles and hips felt just fine. Phew!

Next, she showed us different ways to help encourage crawling. 

Then she shared this bit of news....

Rowan is not delayed.

Let me repeat that to myself, Rowan is not delayed. She shared with me that the "norm" for crawling can go from 7 months to 12 months. I felt like cheering. I felt like shoving that info into people's faces who unintentionally made me feel like crap.



Rowan is mobile, but not in the traditional sense of crawling. She also shared a huge nugget...

SOME BABIES DON'T CRAWL. PERIOD.

I held on to her every word, feeling relieved there wasn't anything wrong with my sweet pea.

Then, something crazy happened...

Dr. Hixon had a colorful, tall, noisy toy that Rowan didn't have. It played loud music and it peaked her interest immediately. She then started to pull herself, and move her thighs. Within a second, she started army crawling, which is technically another form crawling. We all looked at her move, stunned. Dr. Hixon shook her head and laughed. She said "It's almost like she needed motivation". As she was saying this, Rowan was now army crawling to different toys. This mama was ELATED!!! Finally, something!!!!

You have got to be kidding me though, she needed to be motivated?!?! Is she lazy?? LOL!!!!!!!!

The funny thing is, we DO work with her. She has awesome toys. However, this girl needed a boost from a stranger to get her going. OH ROWAN.

Rowan is now on the prowl even more than ever, army crawling and rolling every which way, getting into even more mischief. She is more confident in pulling herself up, except she likes to pull up on things that aren't sturdy and/or they are light weight, which makes her mad. Rowan still very much loves to stand and bounce.

I am overjoyed and thrilled. However, I had to have a "come to Jesus" talk with myself. I have been pretty disappointed in myself and getting all worked up over this milestone crap. Comparing truly is a thief of joy. Instead of obsessing about her crawling, I need to be enjoying her, because babies sure as heck don't keep.

new doctor, hopefully a better second time...

It is insane that on Saturday will mark 1 year since I was admitted for my scary hospital stay which led to Rowan's early birth. That situation was so scary  and frightening, however, I could see where God was holding our family so tightly. With that being said, I am wanting to take action in event we even have a 2nd baby.

Before we continue, please note WE ARE NOT TRYING FOR A SECOND BABY, ESPECIALLY NOT NOW. Okay, let's carry on....

A while back, I decided to switch my ob/gyn doctor. It was a decision I didn't take lightly.
I did like my former doctor. She also knew my pregnancy and history. I also credit her for catching my preterm labor. However, she is TOO RELAXED about things.

If you know me at all, I am super OCD and total hypocondriac. Relaxed doesn't work for me. Throughout my pregnancy little things were bugging me. AT my 6 week postpartum, she didn't do a pap. She breezed through the pathology report about my placenta. I asked if we had a "next time" if I would be monitored and she gaily replied "nah, you weren't that early". Um, WHAT? That was it, I was done.

I knew if we got pregnant again, I needed a doctor who be concise, concerned, and thorough. I wanted to monitored carefully, nothing willy nilly. Per recommendation of a friend who had serious woman issues, she recommended her doc, Dr. Nolte.

She did let me know it was a guy doctor, which I wasn't a fan of. HOWEVER...upon meeting him I knew right away he was "the one", LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He did the routine pap, and I had a million questions. I wanted a re-reading of the pathology report. This was important, because when I had Rowan, the nurse noticed it seemed pretty calcified, meaning my placenta was done. This is normal if you are 40 weeks, but when you are barely 34 weeks, this is not okay.

He read the report verbatim and happily reported that my placenta was 100% fine, and it wasn't the cause of Rowan's early birth. I was so pleased, but also frustrated as I of course wanted the cause of my early labor.

I briefed him of my entire pregnancy and labor, A to Z.

Here's the good news, in some ways:

-Despite being dialated at 2 cm, that wasn't necessarily a concern. Most women can be like that and not go into preterm labor. That wasn't a concern. While it was right of my former doctor to send me to L&D, this solely wouldn't have warranted a hospital stay.

-basically the only reason I had the stay was because of her heart decelerations. However, had I not been "caught" I would have been sent home. He says about 90% of women especially late in pregnancy would show heart decels if they were hooked up. I was just one of the lucky  ones that got caught. So insane!

-SInce techinically I didn't go into labor myself (water never broke on its own, I was induced), this was a positive sign. Meaning that the only reason why she came out was of her horrible decels the day before she was born.

So, what does that mean? Dr. Nolte explained that I was in a weird gray area with all of the preterm labor. There didn't seem to be a specific cause, and that pretty much  it was a freak of nature incident.

HOWEVER (and this was music to my ears) if I was to get pregnant again, I would be watched like a hawk, begin progestrone shots in 2nd trimester (basically to keep baby in) and do stress tests later down the road. This is exactly what I wanted.

To be honest, I am SUPER nervous about even having a second child. We shall see if that even happens. What gives me peace is knowing I will have a doctor who is completely on my side! I feel so thankful for that!