Mommy Advice

Ok, all you moms out there....can ya help a sista out? I need your ideas. If you have more than a 2 week old, I'll consider you a "pro" and someone who probably has some great advice.

I can't get this girl to bed at night! When she finally falls asleep, she sleeps for about 3 hours till her next feeding and then it's torture to get her to fall asleep again. Any ideas? Currently, I'm feeding her on one side, burping her, changing her, re-swaddling her and then giving the other side a try if she's still hungry. My hope is that she'll fall asleep while nursing on side #2 and then I can just put her down. Sometimes it works, lately it hasn't. She falls asleep and then wakes up again when I burp her. Then we rock some more, she falls asleep and then usually wakes up the minute her hid hits she sheets in her crib. Ahhhh!

We've started a mini bedtime routine. She changes into her pajamas, rocks, eats etc. Always in her room, always in the dark (or as dark as I can make her room at 8pm) and we don't come back out of her room. So, all you pros out there, help a sista out! Any advice? If you don't want to post your advice to the blog, shoot me an email at the2gores@comcast.net

If your advice is to keep her up more during the day (which I've already heard from my mom) tell me HOW to do that. Let me tell you, this girl does what she wants, when she wants. If she wants to sleep, there is no waking her. Aaron has even been hammering away as he frames doors inside the house and even that doesn't wake her if she needs to sleep.

All in all, I really can't complain. At least she's gaining weight (just 1/2 ounce short of a 7 pound baby!!) and already grew 1/4 of an inch. She's also sleeping for good stretches at night, providing she goes to sleep shortly after feeding. She's been doing anywhere from 3-5 hours at a time! However, when it takes 40 minutes for our feeding and then another 45 minutes to get her to sleep, the 3 hour stretch just isn't enough for mom.

OK, all you pros...send me your advice and let me know what worked for you!

2 Week Birthday

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since we brought G home from the hospital. We are getting into more of a routine now - or as much of a routine as a 14 day old infant will allow. She has started to regulate her own schedule and is eating about every 3 hours during the day and at night has gone for as many as 5 hours without waking. She's gaining weight (at a fairly rapid rate) so the 5 hour stretches aren't concerning. I love them! I have yet to actually sleep for the entire 5 hours. I usually find myself waking up at least once to go check on her.

Here are a few recent pictures. She enjoyed her first real bath last week. It wasn't quite the hit we were hoping it would be. She was good for about 3 minutes while she was still trying to decide whether she liked to sit in the bath or not. She soon decided that she didn't like it and wanted out ASAP. Oh, should I mention that this was after she peed all over Aaron? Hey, better him than me :-)
Is this an elf or is it Grace?
Grace and mama. She wasn't in the mood to have her picture taken. I think she would rather be eating!

Glamor Shots

Here are a few more pictures of little Grace. She's been such a good baby today. She has been up for almost a 2 1/2 hour stretch, so hopefully she gets good and tired by bed time. She even slept in a 4 hour stretch last night. It was wonderful....aside from being up with her for over an hour on both ends of that 4 hour sleep. I'll take it though!

Here are a few additional pictures of our little girl.

Enough of this cuddle time. I'm hungry!!!!

I'm totally biased, but is this not the cutest picture ever? Is that Gracie or an Ewok??

I think she's working a little something up for daddy in her diaper....

Welcome Grace Elizabeth!!!

Hi Everyone,

So sorry for the late announcement. We have been quite busy this past week.

Grace Elizabeth was born last Sunday, July 13th at 7:34am. She weighed in at a small 6 pounds 12 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. Not bad for a week and a half early.

Oh, I forgot to mention she also arrived after 27 hours of labor (that's right folks, count 'em...27 hours!!) and 4 hours and 15 minutes of pushing. Not that I'm counting :-) The whole time I was in labor I thought she must be HUGE since it was taking so long. Imagine our surprise when we saw her! She was so tiny!

Since last Sunday we have been getting more and more acquainted with our little bundle of joy. She is SO adorable and just such a precious little girl. She already has Aaron wrapped around her tiny little finger as you can see from the pictures below. The two of them are so cute together. It just warms my heart.

We are so sleep deprived but don't really care because we are really enjoying the time with our little Gracie. She is a great eater and actually not a bad sleeper. She usually eats about every 3 hours which means I'm usually getting sleep in about 1.5 hour incements. It is so strange to think that I was sleeping about 12 hours a day.

Our priorities are now Gracie, Sleep, Food, and everything else. The blog and other communication has really fallen from the priority list, but I do have some pictures to share. More to come!

My sister made this for us. Can you guess what our screen saver is now??

First Family Picture just after delivery. Don't let the picture fool you, we are completely exhausted and had been up for at least 35 hours by the time this picture was taken.

Gracie and Mommy..

Daddy and Baby G

That's all for tonight. Hope to post more pictures soon.

Ready or not!

Thought I'd jot down a quick blog to update everyone. I just got back from my doctors office and I'm apparently 4cm dilated and 80% effaced already....and not one contraction! My doctor thinks I may end up having the baby over the weekend. At this point, if I was in active labor I would be admitted to the hospital. Obviously, I'm not in labor so I'm at home chilling watching Oprah. Ironically, todays show is about the lengths people will go to in order to conceive their own child.

My doctor isn't on call until Sunday, so I'll be sitting on the couch cross-legged until then because I really want her to deliver my baby. I asked if she had some sort of batman call sign that I could shine over P-town to let her know when I'm in labor over the weekend. Unfortunately, she does not. What's the deal?! Does she have an actual life outside of my pregnancy?!

In other news I FINALLY stopped gaining weight in my pregnancy. It was a nice little surprise. I celebrated with a Carmel Frappuchino from Starbucks. It was wonderful :-)

That's it for now. I'll keep you all posted. Who knows, the next post may include pictures of little Baby Gore.

Week 38

Hi Everyone. No, I didn't have the baby. I've just been to lazy/busy to post my week 37 updates. Actually, week 37 was fairly uneventful with the exception of yet another Asian woman at the Chinese Restaurant by Nike telling me that she thinks I'm having a boy. I was there with my friend Rache, who can vouch for it. Crazy I tell you!


After that, I came home and did a quick inventory of the baby clothes we have. I think there were something like 6 items total that are gender neutral. We did get the cutest True Tree Camo onesie from my friend Laura a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know what True Tree (I think that's what it's called) Camo is, you may consider yourself lucky. For those of you who know what it is, you may consider yourself a hick from the sticks and in good company with the Gores!



Baby Gore is busy growing and making me more uncomfortable by the day. By the end of the day my stomach feels so tight that I have to lie down for a bit to just take some of the pressure off of it. I haven't been having many contractions, so apparently baby Gore is hanging in there. At my last doctor visit, she estimated the baby about average weight (which is about 6 1/2 pounds or so) but she thought the baby would be long. I have another doc appointment this Thursday, so we'll see if I've made any progress. So far, so good.


A quick cankle update...I haven't had a nasty episode since the one I documented on my blog for all to see. I have really been puffy lately though. I can't believe the amount of water I can retain. It totally grosses me out. I went for my appointment last week and was shocked when I stepped on the scale! I was HUGE and actually a little surpised. I was pretty puffy that day, but not as bad as my last cankle incident. I decided to weigh myself the following day at the same time of day to see if the scale was wrong (I prayed for that) or if I was just puffy that day (prayed for that too). Can you believe it was a 5 pound difference! I weighed 5 pounds less the following day when I wasn't puffy. Hmmm, what do you think the chances are that I lose 20 pounds of water weight after the baby is born? :-) I know, wishful thinking.



I was very bad last night. I've been really craving sushi (unfortunately the 'cooked' sushi will have to do while I'm pregnant) and satisfied that craving...and then some, last night with my friend Anglea. Our husbands hit the casino to try their luck and black jack and Angela and I went to Todai to basically eat our weight in sushi. It seemed like a good idea at the time but we walked away from that place seriously sick. Nothing worse than O.D.ing on sushi. Not good. We totally gave in to our gluttonous ways and just punished that place. I think this is the first time I've ever gotten my monies worth. I'm still full and totally regretting that move. Ugg!



Hmmm, what else.....



The nursrey is finally complete. I took a few pictures of the latest additions.

Aaron has been busy with house projects. That guy is such a handyman! He's been busy replacing all of the interior doors in the house. A project that has seemed to take much longer than expected because he always finds nice 'surprises' everytime he rips into this house. Seriously...how can every door hole be a different size? I hope he never comes face to face with the builder, it could get ugly. I took a picture of him in his element. I call this one "I'm too sexy for this saw". He was not thrilled about the picture, but he doesn't really read the blog, so I thought I'd post it.

I decided to see how much of a 'handy woman' I was and assembled the new baby swing we received from my team at work. Thanks again ladies! I was so excited to get this, I've heard they are true life-savers. Since Aaron is always busy assembling or fixing something around here, I decided to assemble this. Of course, the directions totall sucked. I think there was more information in the Spanish and French version of the directions than the English versions. But, I managed to get it together. Never fear, Aaron was not totally sold on my handywork and decided to 'double check' my job. He gave it two thumbs up.

And finally, my pictures. I cannot wait to be done taking these pictures! Maybe I should take some of me getting thinner after the baby is born just to counteract the blow to my ego that these 'expanding' pictures have caused. Note to self....white is not a good look. Always wear black!