Photo Credit: Angie Fronzaglia Photography
Isla Victoria Squires was born on February 12th at 9:17 a.m. She was 6 lbs 13 oz. A few months before Isla was born, a friend told me that one of the fun things about having children after your first, is learning the difference between typical baby behavior and discovering what was just Marshall's personality and what is Isla's personality. Let it be known: Marshall and Isla are two totally different babies!
In fact, the first week or so, I was convinced that something must be wrong with Isla. (To be fair, Marshall had a bit of a cold when baby girl was born, so I wonder if Isla has been struggling with a little virus, and if that might be explaining her behavior.) In the first few weeks Isla hardly ever cried. Even though her vocal cords have developed more now that she is almost two months old, she is still really mellow. She cries if something really bothers her. (Ex: She cried during her first jaundice blood exam in the hospital, but didn't cry at all when she had repeat bloodwork a few days later.) Isla will sleep just about anywhere, which is a pleasant surprise :)
Isla makes little wimpering noises to get attention. One of our first nights home, I thought there was a cat outside the window! While Marshall thrived on visual stimulation, it seems Isla prefers sounds/cuddles much more. She loves to be talked to, and is a snugly babe. In the hospital I sensed that she really knew I was her mom. She recognized me. I think she will have a quieter personality. She makes little girl noises and craves love and attention.
Marshall was very "communicative" about what he needed. He was pretty darn predictable, and got me into a good rhythm as a first-time-mom. Isla is tricky though. In the first few weeks, she seemed to be hungry all the time (even though she was consuming plenty of ounces....one perk of bottle feeding is measuring ounces); she gained more than a pound during her second week! I had a hard time figuring out if I was overfeeding her, or if she truly was truly hungry, because she seemed to give me feeding cues all the time! For whatever reason, I have SUCH horrible anxiety about my babies being hungry in the first few days after they are born; I can't stand the thought of them going through labor and then not having enough to eat. Combine this anxiety with a few other biological factors, and I have found myself bottle-feeding this time around...again. Which breaks my heart in some ways because I loved trying to nurse her. But I am a firm supporter for formula feeding and doing what is best for both mom and baby.
Isla is two months old now and is just starting to outgrow her three month clothing. It looks like my two-month old is heading into six month clothing!
Photo Credit: Angie Fronzaglia Photography
Her Name
It is important that my babies have meaningful names. I had wanted to use the name Isla for many years. We played with the spelling of a family name: my great-grandmother was named Ila. I remember hearing stories about her as a chid, and one story about her in particular was such a powerful influence in my life. I plan to share that story with Isla when she is bigger. But to give you a general sense of the type of person Ila was, she was widowed twice. Her first husband died when Ila was just 41. My grandma Ann, Ila's daughter, was only 15 at the time, and Ila was able to support her little family with her college degree, something that was a little unusual for women to have during that time period. Ila taught school to support her family, and was even widowed a second time in her older years and continued to work after that as well. Ila was strong, and embodied so many qualities I hope my Isla will work towards.
(My grandma is the cute little girl, and Ila is her darling mom.)
(Ila is the 4th person in the photo)
Isla is pronounced (EYE-lah). I'm disheartened that more people pronounce it wrong than I expected. I'm hoping it's rising popularity catches on though. It was Nameberry.com's #4 most popular name of 2018.
I was hoping to use a Bible name for Isla's middle name, but I think we came up with something just as meaningful. The root word of Victoria is "victory." When I hear "victory" I often think of the many hymns, scriptures and phrases that talk about how we have victory over death and transgression through Christ.
So while the name "Isla" denotes a sense of self-reliance, independence, and strength . . . I hope my little girl also knows that she is never alone. Through relying on Christ, she can find victory over any obstacle, heartache, or loneliness.
Pregnancy (and a few tangents)
Isla's story actually began in 2016. If you've followed me on social media, you may have picked up on the fact that IVF has helped us grow our family. (There are people in this world who have unkind things to say about IVF. If you are one of those people, I truly do understand your position, but in this instance I ask you to channel "Thumper" from Bambi. IVF is one of those things I don't think you really get unless you've been through it.)
Almost immediately after Marshall was born, I was asking myself how soon we could go through the process again. We had a couple embryos left in storage, and it's not much of an exaggeration to say that I would think about them pretty much every day. I wanted Marshall and the next baby to be be relatively close in age, and I knew I wanted to transfer those embryos before Cameron would graduate from LECOM and we moved from the area.
A series of events led me to start the consultation in April of 2018. I started all the medicines and trips to Buffalo while Cameron was at Navy "boot camp" during May of 2018. We found out the cycle was successful in June, and then Cameron had to leave for Kansas City for a month in August. (Looking back, that was a lot to do by myself with an active almost one-year-old little boy in tow! It may be a bit self-congratulatory to admire my own independence, but what the heck!)
I had little to no nausea with Marshall, but found myself feeling slightly sick with Isla. I craved Coke Icees and Otter Pops that summer. If "old wives tales" hold any weight, I had a hunch/guess/premonition, and maybe, if I'm being super honest, a secret wish that this would be a girl. There were also a few IVF statistics indicating it might be a girl (for the record we never did any gender selecting). Cameron also said it must be a girl, because my eating habits were super picky! When we found out the gender in October, I was excited and got a little teary in the ultrasound room. I had always wanted a daughter, but I also knew how much FUN Marshall would have had if it was a brother. Let me shout it from the rooftops...boys are so sweet and so much FUN!
Tangent: I hope this isn't our last baby, but I honestly don't know what the future holds for me. We used all remaining embryos and were lucky to get one baby this time. Side note: Twins would have been so fun...but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have left the house with three under two. Since I don't know if this will be my last biological child, I need to savor each little moment, but man, those early weeks just FLY by! Having a toddler to take care of, and moving preparations seems to make everything so much more complicated.
Confession. Having gone through infertility, I try my hardest not to complain about anything related to childrearing. I know what it's like to be on the other side. At the same time, I need to own the truth that mothering is hard work. I'm still learning how to balance the two realities. For a large portion of my pregnancy I worried about raising two-under-two. I felt some guilt for feeling this way. After all, this pregnancy was super planned. But I kept asking myself "Am I able to handle this?" So far, Isla has been an absolute dream baby, (ask me to reevaluate this when they are both mobile though) and Marshall has handled the transition better than I had anticipated. I love watching him, and it is amazing how your heart grows. If it is possible to have even more love for Marshall after adding this little girl to our family, it has certainly happened.
Anyway. I got waaay off topic. Back to the pregnancy.
Isla seemed to kick my ribs more than Marshall did. I also had more little aches and pains...but NO swelling in my legs this time! And despite what everyone says about the correlation between heartburn and hair, I had no heartburn with Isla. But like I mentioned earlier, I was a bit more nauseous this time around.
My hormones with this pregnancy were no joke. Things started to get rough rough just a few weeks before she was born. Cameron was an absolute saint to deal with me hyperventilating, ugly crying on the kitchen floor. I kind of think the stress sent me into an early labor! Cameron kept saying things would get better once the baby was out of me. He thought there was waaay too much estrogen in one body! I had to remind him, however, that with my last pregnancy, it got worse after delivery.
True to form, my first first two weeks after delivery were CrAzY town again. My deepest apologies to anyone who interacted with me for more than 10 minutes during the first two weeks after her birth. The tears. The rage. Ugh.
Although, looking back, there are sometimes funny quotes that come out during those first few weeks. After Marshall was born I yelled at Cameron for not making formula the "right way." (In hindsight, he was doing a fine job.) But in the moment, all I could do was yell "It's called FORMULA for a REASON!!! This time, I yelled "I'm not making *EXPLETIVE* blueberry pancakes!" Then a few days later, I was loosing my mind over how much I wanted a particular leftover dish. Things have calmed down since then. I can pretty much promise I won't cry at you nowadays :)
In the first few weeks after Isla was born, it felt like my mind needed to get used to not being pregnant. I still had the habit of not putting my laptop on my belly, wondering if the shower water was too hot, and I had to train my mind to remember that I COULD crawl behind Marshall's crib to find binkies if I needed to. This also meant no more pregnancy excuses!
Birth Story
I started having contractions around 10:30 a.m. on Monday, February 11. I remember sitting in the rocking chair with Marshall, and just feeling horrible contractions. But despite having gone through this before, I was in denial that this was real. I mean, I knew what contractions felt like, and these were definitely real, but I kept thinking they would stop since they were still pretty sporadic.
Finally, in the afternoon I gave my mom a call. The contractions were strong enough that I couldn't sleep through Marshall's nap. I thought she deserved a head's up since I knew she was planning to drive to PA from DC. I was worried that I was raising a false alarm, but with a second baby, timing could be different this time around. I also contacted some wonderful friends and neighbors who had agreed to stay with Marshall during the night if needed.
I spent Monday cleaning the house, nesting, and getting things ready. I finally started timing contractions sometime after 9 p.m. They were pretty regular by this point, and probably strong enough to justify going in to the hospital, but we were both still skeptical. Around 11 or so, we decided to call the friends who would babysit for us. It was around this time that I started to bleed. Yup. Time for denial was over!
We got to the hospital, and I was only 2 cm dilated, but since my contractions were so strong and consistent, they would monitor me for two hours to see if I made any progress. One of the residents who was assigned to me was talking about sending me home. That was such a discouraging thought. I did not want to get sent home to our babysitter at 2 or 3 in the morning! I would have been so embarrassed! My nurse, however, told me not to worry about getting sent home. She was pretty sure things would progress, or they would offer pitocin. (Side note: this nurse recognized me as someone living in her neighborhood. We walk our (loud) dog around the neighborhood a LOT. Truthfully, I'm a little self-conscious to walk past their house now that she has been my nurse!)
Sure enough around 2 a.m. I had progressed to 4 cm and the doctor on call admitted me to the hospital and said I could get my epidural whenever I wanted. My opinion? Always get the epidural as soon as they let you! I felt slightly bad for having to wake up the anesthesiologist on call at 3 or 4 a.m. to drug me up, but I do love epidurals. I tried to sleep the rest of the night. I'd need as much energy as I could muster for delivery. Let's be real though. Did I sleep? Could I sleep? Not really.
I always have low blood pressure, but it kept dropping too low throughout the night, so I was constantly getting IV fluids, medication, and having to change positions since the baby's heart was also slightly distressed. The baby's heart was concerning to me, but I remember the nurse being reassuring that many babies are delivered with cords around their neck and it isn't a problem. And although I wasn't in any pain, I was nauseas. I'm not sure what that meant.
The shift change was at 7 a.m. and that's when things started to progress a bit more. The nurses used a birthing ball to try to help me dilate more. I remember feeling a lot of pressure, but no real urge to push. The nurses would ask if I wanted to be checked again, and I was in NO RUSH to begin the pushing process. I hate that part. My doctor had to go into an emergency C-section, so they sent the midwife to check on me. She said I was at 10 cm and helped begin the pushing phase of labor. I loved having a midwife there. I'm pretty pro-OBGYN (you never know when something will go wrong, and I generally feel like midwives are for people who are more crunchy (read: no epidural) than I am), but for an uncomplicated delivery like mine, it was kind of neat to have her begin the process.
Eventually my doctor finished her C-section and came back to finish my delivery. Cameron said that my deliveries are almost comedic because I have a tendency to tell the delivery team they are lying to me. When they say I'm almost done, I keep thinking they are full of it. Cameron was a great help, he would hold by head for me as I pushed. Between contractions, I kept asking if there was anything I could do to push more effectively. In hindsight, I think it's funny that I was asking for advice during this process. I also remember drinking so much water! Eventually there came a point when I was begging the doctor to just cut me. She wouldn't. They said I only pushed for 30 minutes or so before Isla was born. But those 30 minutes of were horrible.
Then we met Isla. She was incredible. I feel like they let me hold her on the table for much longer than I held Marshall. She seemed so smart. Her little features seemed so elf-like those first few days. And all that hair! My goodness. We love her and are so excited to learn more about her personality.
Photo credit: Mom365
Photo credit: Mom365
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