Baby needs surgery

How to stress out new parents:

1. Tell them their 7-week-old baby needs surgery. (What? Yikes!)

2. Let them sweat it out for a week trying to schedule a consultation visit with an unresponsive surgeon's office.

3. Get their appointment scheduled for the soonest possible time (with a big push from the pediatrician), and tell them it will be in THREE WEEKS.

4. Give them a list of things to watch for in the meantime that would necessitate an immediate trip to the Emergency Room.

Trust me, this works.

I had noticed some strange swelling just below Rosemary's abdomen a few weeks ago, and was not sure what to think about it, but kept an eye on it at each diaper change. Sometimes it was there, sometimes not...and sometimes it was two swollen lumps, sometimes just one. Last Sunday, she had two very swollen lumps, and I asked Todd and mom to look and see what they thought. The three of us agreed that it would be best to take her to the pediatrician ASAP. We took her in on Monday and found out that Rosemary has a hernia, probably a double hernia, and the solution for that is surgery. (Surgery?? This is not something I had expected to hear!! Yikes!)

I called the surgeon's office on Tuesday morning to schedule a consult (per the pediatrician's instructions), and was told they were working on the schedules and would have to call me back. I hadn't heard anything by Wednesday, so called back and asked when I should expect to hear from them. Their response? "By the end of the week." (umm... Ok... What? Are you kidding me?) So Friday rolled around, and Todd had taken the day off work and we were heading out to run errands, so I called the surgeon's office to give them my cell number... At which time they told me they'd probably call me by the middle of the next week. What?? By this time I am quietly freaking out. Our girl needs surgery, and I can't even get them to call me back to schedule an appointment for the consultation!!! Aaaaaaargh.

On Monday, the bulge looked and felt esprcially bad, so I called the pediatrician's office and they asked me to bring her on in. By the time we got there, Rosemary looked normal as can be... So no real cause for alarm, but the doctor was surprised to hear of our scheduling difficulties and asked her assistant to make some phone calls. Apparently, we were on page four of a list of people to schedule. Thanks to the pediatrician's intervention, we were moved to page one and are scheduled for a consult on June 14. This still seems like a long time to wait - I hate to think how long we would have had to wait if we'd stayed on page four!

So for now we wait. And keep an eye out for the indications that she needs to go to the Emergency Room (if the bulge looks red or purple, or feels hot to the touch, or if Rosemary has a fever). We don't think it's causing her pain right now, but it's kind of hard to tell since she can't really tell us what hurts or why she's crying. The good news is that she doesn't cry ALL the time, so even if it is painful once in a while, it is not a constant pain.

Birth Announcements Coming Soon

Well, it took me forever, but I finally put together a birth announcement. That's right - the baby is here! She's been here for over a month, so it's probably time to get some birth announcements out the door, and maybe update the blog while I'm at it. Procrastination at its finest. That's how the Macy slackers roll, although now at least we have a semi-legitimate excuse... we have a newborn!

In case you missed the Facebook postings, Rosemary Lea Macy joined our family on March 27 at 11:59 a.m. She weighed in at 6 lbs, 11 oz, and was 18.5 inches long. She has now gained over a pound and is a very healthy little one month old. We will post more information (such as the story of Rosemary's entrance into the world)... but I won't say that we'll post it soon. I can't make those kind of promises. Let's just say this: Eventually, more details of Rosemary's little life will make it into blog-land.

A little advertising for Shutterfly means I get $10 off my next order... hey - what do you want from me? I was thrifty already, and now I am a mommy and we have college to save for! So, here it is. An ad on our blog.

Photo Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Time to Get Serious... There's a baby coming!

We're at T-minus 12 weeks, give or take, and are sort of kind of starting to seriously think about getting started on the nursery. We did buy a crib mattress a week or two ago, and I ordered the crib today (in white, if you're curious). It should be here in 6-10 weeks. So... I guess that's progress! There's no actual "room" to put these items in, however, and that is the daunting project that faces us. Well, not so much US, more like ME. The future nursery is filled (to the ceiling, it seems) with boxes of my stuff that needed to move out of the way to make room for Todd. I determined that this room would be tackled after the Christmas stuff was put away... and, shockingly, there are still Christmas decorations adorning our home. (What's that? You're not shocked? Rude. Justified, of course, but still rude.) So, I suppose step 1 is to get Christmas put away... and I'd better get moving, since my belly isn't getting any smaller and April isn't getting any farther away.

Going to Class

It has been a mostly uneventful pregnancy so far (hooray!)... and now it really feels like we're heading into the "home stretch." April 16 has felt so far away, and now it seems so close!

I've read all the pregnancy books I care to read (and more), several books on caring for newborns, and have finally decided that the time has come for seeking out a parenting book or two... which, as it turns out, is much more difficult for me than finding the other types of books. With pregnancy and newborn care, I have a pretty firm idea about what will fit my style and can easily discard books that don't seem like a good fit (I know that I want a natural birth, I know that I want to breastfeed & use cloth diapers, and in general I want to keep things as simple and "natural" and inexpensive as possible).

With parenting books, it's not so easy. What is my parenting philosophy? I don't really know. What about Todd's parenting philosophy? Hard to say. What are the big issues that could easily let me know that a book is wrong for us? I don't really know. I don't want to read a book that will put a bunch of ideas in my head that are contrary to "my style," or will steer me down a path of weirdness... but how will I know those books when I see them? I DON'T KNOW!! It's overwhelming. So for now I shall procrastinate... (SOP for indecisive Karisa!) there are plenty of things to keep us busy, anyhow.

Speaking of keeping busy, our childbirth classes start tonight. One of the many pregnancy-related books I read early on was Husband-Coached Childbirth, and I was not too far into the book before I realized that THIS is the birth experience I am hoping for... so I read the book cover to cover, Todd is currently reading the book, and we will be taking 8 weeks of classes on The Bradley Method of natural childbirth. I'm pretty excited to get started. :) I don't think "excited" would describe Todd's thoughts, but I'm glad that he (without any begging from me) agreed to go. I kind of took that for granted at first, but after a great deal of internet research on natural childbirth I was surprised to see how many women had husbands who refused to go to a class or read a book. I already knew Todd was awesome, but this is certainly further evidence of his awesomeness!

10 Weeks

There really is a baby in there! And its heart is beating! And it has arms and legs and a head! Yay! Go, baby, go!

Baby wants...

We went to the Oregon State Fair a couple of weeks ago with Brad and Ann. Of course, while we were there, baby wanted... funnel cake!




As you can see, baby gets what baby wants :)

So far Karisa hasn't been too sick, mostly a general icky feeling. Certainly not as bad as many of the stories we have heard. Hopefully this is as bad as it will get.

Knocked Up

Well, we have not been very good little bloggers. Our poor little blog has been completely neglected, because, well, we've been busy. Doing stuff. Like riding motorcycles (Todd). And gardening (Karisa). And sometimes we do stuff together, too... like cooking dinner.

In a completely unrelated story, we'd like to share with the world our very happy news... there's a baby on the way! The stork should be dropping by mid-April sometime to pay us a visit and bring us a bundle of joy.


So, maybe we'll post some updates along the way, or maybe our next post will be a picture of Baby Macy. You never can tell with the slackers who write this blog.