It is so crazy how fast Liza is growing and how fast time flies.   I really can’t believe that she is 2 months old.  Life with Liza is a lot of fun.  She is smiling and somewhat laughing… it usually turns into a cough, but its still sweet.  She makes lots of noises, her piggy noises but also her happy noises.  Sometimes it seems like she is trying to get in on the conversation.   I think she is a pretty social baby.

She went to the doctor last Friday and we found out some interesting facts about her size.  She weights 13 lb 4 oz which is like 90th percentile for weight; she is 24 inches long which is 75th percentile for length and her head size is in the 3oth percentile (I can’t remember the measurement).  So we have a big baby with a little head!  Which I think makes her pretty darn cute.   Mark had said before we went to the doctor that he thought she had a small head, I guess thats why she was holding her head up so early!

She is still a great sleeper at night and even in the mornings.  The afternoons are more of her awake and play time.   She is also now using a pacifier something that I had put off because of breastfeeding.  But, she has decided that her thumb is way better and spits out the pacifier for her thumb.  I was a chronic thumbsucker until 1st grade.  The denist was desperate and put a retainer with metal spikes in it to get me to stop.  So I guess Liza is just taking after her mommy.  Well, we love this kiddo and really enjoy her a lot!

While Mark was out of the country, Liza and I stayed with my parents in Denton.   I had a great time seeing my family and I think they really enjoyed seeing Liza.  I miss getting to see them often like we did when we lived in Ft. Worth, but really they aren’t too far away.   While we were there Liza discovered her feet.   She really enjoyed staring at them and watching them move.  She also began to enjoy tummy time a lot but that quickly ended when we got home    If anyone has tips on how to make tummy time enjoyable for Liza, I would love to hear them.

Here are a few pics!

I have fallen behind on posting but I figure better late than never!  Mark and I both had the joy of being a mom/dad on mother’s/father’s day this year!  Liza is definitely blessed with a great earthly father and an even greater Heavenly Father.  Mark really enjoys holding Liza and doing fun things with her.  Mark has been out of the country for the last week and half.  We were able to skype and when Liza heard him over skype she would try to figure out where he was.  When he got home, she smiled at him!  They really have a great bond!  Mark is an awesome dad and I am so thankful to have him as my husband.

Here is a pic of them on Father’s day!  Liza made Daddy a special card (with mom’s help)!

Something I have come to think a lot about, and read a lot about is birth and pregnancy.  I am an idealist and very much a thinker so when we choose not to go the normal route for birth and pregnancy, I personally needed reasons for doing it.  The beginning of the decision was more about personal comfort than anything else.  I didn’t want a huge needle in my back (I’m kind of a wimp), I didn’t want people I didn’t know seeing my most private parts (turns out during labor that really doesn’t matter) and I really have a negative feeling towards hospitals because in my mind they are for sick, dying people.   What really encouraged me to look into midwives was when my doctor in College Station said she thinks most babies should be delivered by a midwife.  I read research that showed that the mother mortality rate and infant mortality rate for low risk pregnancies were the exact same if you had a home birth or had a hospital birth.  What I came to learn though was the C-section rate was vasting different.  My birth class instructor told me that by having my baby out of the hospital, I had a reduced my chance of having a c-section by 40%.   Crazy stuff.   I think that had my labor happened like it had with an OB there is a great chance I would have had a c-section.

A lot of people ask me what a birth center was like and what I thought about using a midwife.  When I tell them that I labored for 29 hours, most people make a comment about me using a doctor next time.  I don’t know what we will do next time, it will be a matter of prayer but I do know that I am so thankful for my experience with the midwives and I would like to try to use one next time.  Here are somethings I really enjoyed about using a midwife/ birthing center:

• Relaxing and home like atmosphere that helped me deal better with the pain of contractions
• Tub – I loved being in the tub
• Being able to move around and deal with contractions however I needed to – I wasn’t hooked up to any monitors
• The personal relationship I had with my midwife duirng pregnancy and getting to ask lots of questions and be asked questions.
• The accountability I had from my midwife with excercise and nutrition
• I personally really like all the natural remedies for problems that came up.  Even as a child, I wasn’t a big fan of taking medicine.
• The support, love and encouragement I had during labor – the midwife that delievered Liza wasn’t even the one I met with duirng pregnancy but she still poured herself out for us.
• I loved laboring with believers around, the biggest blessing!
• Being able to make decisions about what was happening
• I liked the responsibility being put on me for my own health and health care decisions.  My midwife constantly encouraged me to research decisions I had to make and I really enjoyed learning all of that stuff.
• The encouragement in breastfeeding and bonding with Liza after she is born.  I really think my midwife was great at this and I am so so so thankful for that.   I think Mark and I bonded really well with Liza and I am still able to successfully breastfeed because of their help.  I know that hospitals are encouraging in breast feeding too so I don’t want this point to sound like you can’t breastfeed well if you have your baby in the hospital.  I know plenty of moms who had hospital births and continue to nurse for a long time.

From this birth experience, I have really come to love the Lord more because I see how awesome our bodies were made.  It is so neat to see how He made our bodies to have babies naturally.  Yes, there are complications that come up in births and doctors/ medical interventions are very necessary but some complications can be prevented.

What brought this all up was watching a trailer for a movie on birth that will come out soon.  It has opinions for all kinds of medical professionals about birthing and medical interventions.  As a warning, the trailer does contain clips of breastfeeding.  Here is the link: http://reducinginfantmortality.com/

Liza is now sleeping through the night.   When we visited the doctor about 2 weeks ago, he told me to stop waking her up to feed her so I have partially taken that advice.   I stopped feeding her around 2 or 3 AM.  Now I just wake her up at 10 PM to feed her so that she eats 7 times a day.  She now sleeps from 10 PM till 7 AM.  She usually would wake me up with her cries around 6:30 or 7 but now she just lays peacefully in her bed.  Today Mark brought her in to at 7:45 and said she had been awake already.   I think she could have slept through the night sooner but I was too scared to let that happen.  I have heard that bigger babies sleep through the night sooner.   It is nice for me to get a full night of sleep and then through out the day she feeds about every 2 hrs to 2.5 hrs.   She has gotten a lot faster at nursing so I no longer feel like I am spending my whole day feeding her.  I think I am being spoiled with her!

sleeping beauty

Opps!

No more headband

So, I (Mark) will try to be brief, but I just want to say that what you are about to read was seriously the funniest and one of the sweetest things that has ever happened to me in my life. With that said, here was the situation…

Jenn was offered a free ticket to go to a Women’s event up at the church tonight. She planned on taking Liza with her, but as dinner came and went it became more and more obvious that she wanted me to keep Liza at home so that she could go by herself. So, on her way out the door, she went through the “mom checklist” just to ensure that I would take care of Liza properly. She told me when she might get hungry, where I could find her milk, how I was supposed to heat it up, and so forth… Then she got in her car and left. 

After about 5 minutes, I decided that it would be a great idea for me to load Liza up in her car seat and take her for a ride in daddy’s truck. I had a few errands to run, and she had never been in my truck, so I thought it would be just perfect. And let me tell you, I had so much fun. It was great! So, we get to Wal-Mart and it is time to get her out and go in. Personally, I really like just getting her out and carrying her in my arms wherever I go instead of lugging around her whole car seat, so that is what I did. As we are walking in, I look down and notice that she only has one purple sock on. I think about how funny this must look, but it doesn’t really bother me at all so I just kind of laugh to myself and keep going… with one sock… 

After finding what I needed, I head up to the cash registers to check out, and I get in line behind this lady who also has a young baby. She turned back and noticed that I only had one item (and probably felt pity for my daughter with only one sock on), so she kindly let me go ahead of her since she had a full cart. As I get to the front, the cashier takes my item and scans it. Well, since it was for work it was supposed to be tax-exempt, but I had not gotten my tax card out of my wallet yet. So, with Liza in my left arm, I get my wallet out with my right and hand him my tax card. He has to unscan the item and start over to enter the church’s tax info, which he didn’t know how to do, so we had to wait for the manager to come help him out. While this is going on, I turned to the kind lady behind me and thanked her again for letting me go ahead of her and apologized for taking so long.

Well, they get it all straitened out, he scans the item, and gives me the total. At this point, I still have Liza in my left arm, and I swipe my work credit card with my right hand. I put the card up and put the wallet in my pocket just in time for the cashier to tell me that my card had been declined. So I get the card back out and tell him that I will swipe it again. After doing so he kindly tells me that it was declined again.

Being the stubborn person that I am, I swipe the same card again, and as I do it, I feel this splash of warm liquid on the top of my foot. I look down and realize that Liza was peeing out of her diaper and it was literally streaming onto the floor. Not knowing what to do, I just stick my leg out to stop it with my jeans so that it didn’t get anymore on the floor. All the while, the cashier is telling me that my card has declined again and that I was going to have to use another form of payment. Realizing that nobody else had seen her pee on the floor, I grab my wallet and use my personal card to finish up the transaction and apologize again to the lady behind me for taking so long. After my card was approved, the cashier gives me my receipt, and in any common check-out this is when everyone thinks I am supposed to finally leave. Right??? Wrong.

The lady behind me with the little baby boy is eager to take her place at the front, but I am not moving. She looks up at me, and all I could think to say is “Do you happen to have any wipes on you?” With this kind of confused look on her face she tells me that she left her diaper bag in the car, so she didn’t have any on her. So then I have to turn to the cashier and tell him that my daughter just peed all over the floor in front of his register. Not knowing what to do, the cashier panics and takes off and runs all the way to the bathroom to find something to wipe it up with.

It was at this point that the manager (the same one who helped us before) sees a register with a long line and no cashier there anymore so she comes by and asks if there was a problem. I calmly explain to her that Liza had peed all over the floor and that I didn’t have anything to wipe it up with. By this time, everyone has heard me explain what was going on, so they are all just looking at me. Thankfully, the manager turns to the register behind ours and finds a large roll of paper towels and hands me some to wipe it up with. So with a pee-soaked baby in one arm, I lean over and sop up all of her urine from the floor. She kindly opens a plastic bag for me to put the towels in, and at this point the cashier is sprinting back towards us with his arms full of unrolled paper towels from the restroom. Seriously, he panicked… it was great!

So I finish wiping it up, and I turn to the lady who let me go in front of her in line and thank her and apologize again for taking so long. By this point I am red faced and am literally sweating because I felt bad that it had taken so long. So after apologizing I asked the cashier if I could leave (we didn’t have anything to spray on the pee… we just wiped it up… thats Wal-Mart for you!), and an older lady in line behind her looked up at me and in that great old lady kind of way said, “Hey, did you realize that your baby only has one sock on?” At this point so many things are going through my mind. I am thinking, “This lady lets me go in front of her only to have my card be declined three times, the manager called over here twice, my daughter peeing all over me and the floor while I don’t have anything to clean it up with, and you really think that I care whether or not she only has one sock on! You have got to be kidding me!” But kind of laughing inside, I turned to her and kindly just explained that my wife had left me with the baby so that she could get some alone time.

She just kind of looked at me with pity, but it was at that point that I was so glad that I could just laugh at the fact that I didn’t have it all together.  I am sure that they just pittied me as a poor new dad, but that was just okay to me. As I turned to leave, I just smiled and looked down at Liza, and soaked in the moment. As crazy as those five minutes were, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I kissed Liza on the head, walked out to my truck, loaded her up in her car seat, and off we went to Starbucks… A proud daddy and a wet Liza!

Liza went to the doctor today.   It was a good appointment and we feel really good about the doctor we are using here.  She weighs 11 lbs. 14 oz. and is 22.5 inches long.   She is definitely a big, healthy girl!  We are really thankful for that.  She is already losing her hair and is growing in some new hair which is a lighter color.  I can’t tell if it is blonde or maybe red or maybe a really light brown.  It is funny though because she has really dark, longer hair on the back of her head and it kind of forms a mullet.  She looks a lot like Mark in her facial features but she does have my nose, mouth and dimples.  She is smiling at us and making happy baby noises.  It makes it so fun to be her mom.  She has also rolled from her stomach to her back three times and likes to kind of stand up on is.   I think maybe her size enables her to do this.  She is tracking things with her eyes and can recognize Mark and I.   We are really enjoying being her parents!  The first weeks were hard but now things seem to get easier and more fun.   Our doctor told me today that “a crying baby is a breathing baby.”  That is a really good way to look at her fussy times.  My other comfort is that I know it will end because she always sleeps at night.   She is a really good sleeper!  It is hard for me to believe that she has been with us for 5 weeks.  I am thankful for the five weeks, the easy and hard times, the Lord has taught me a lot and has been near through it all!

Liza in her Princess Outfit

I just read this post on the Girltalk blog website and found it so encouraging and funny.   As I am facing the world of motherhood, I am finding out that there are so many opinions on how to care for your baby (and have your baby).  Some people feel guilty if they aren’t able to live up to their expectations while others become prideful if they are…  take for instance birth options – drugs or no drugs.  I have been thinking about how neither way is more spiritual than the other, they are merely options that people should be educated about.  The same thing happens with breast fed vs. bottle fed, or routine parenting vs. attachment parenting.  Some of these things have been made into spiritual issues but truthfully I don’t think they are.  One way could be physically better but that doesn’t mean the Lord isn’t blessing and using parents who chose another way and it doesn’t make them bad parents or any less loving.  Anyways, I found this post as an encouragement to my own insecurities as a new mom.  It is refreshing to know that life as a believer is really about the gopsel.

We have been living back in College Station for about 2 weeks now!   We have really enjoyed being back and definitely feel at home here.   It has been so nice to go to church and know people, not every conversation is awkward.   It has been neat to already get to be a part of people’s lives here and get know people.  The Lord has given us places of ministry here and we are really thankful for that.  We also just like how slow life is here.  When we moved to Ft. Worth, we noticed how fast paced everything was there and it has been nice to slow down… we even bought some cheap lawn chairs so we can sit outside in front of our house (a lot of our neighbors do it too).   One thing that hasn’t been so great here is how immodest girls dress here.  It really has been kind of a shock to us and I think it comes a lot from the college culture here.  We are so thankful to be here and look forward to what the Lord has for us here.

An update on Liza:  She is doing well and getting pretty chunky.  We really didn’t know how big she was till we saw our friends baby (who is only a week younger than Liza) and realized that Liza had never been as small as that baby and that baby wasn’t even that small.   When people ask how old she is, they always tell me they thought she was a couple of months old!    She is doing really good a recognizing Mommy and Daddy and can follow us with her head if we move.  She is making some cute happy baby noises and is even smiling.  The other day she started smiling at Mark when he was talking to her, this made our day!  One other thing she can do is roll herself over.  If we put her on her stomache, she can push herself over on her back!  I am not sure if this is normal at this age (4 weeks).  I am really enjoying being her Mommy and am thankful to get to stay with her.   It is really a joy to get to be with her all the time!

Here are some recent pics, for more go here!

Before Liza was born I bought her a Mother’s Day outfit at Old Navy… nothing fancy, just cute. I kept hoping she would come in time to wear it (and for the sake of our sanity with moving) and she did! Here are some pics from my first Mother’s Day… 3 days after Liza was born.

4 Generations

The Dower family plus two Straz's

Our little family

My beautiful little sister with Liza!

I just really love this picture!

Liza Piza's Mother's Day outfit

Her onesie says “I love my mom” cheesy and cute!