Sienna's Nearly 8 Months Old!

If anyone has been checking this blog, I apologize for having abandoned it! Honestly, we've cancelled our home internet and my office blocks blogger.com... so not only don't I have time to keep up two blogs, but I can't access this one on a regular basis anyway!

I'm still writing regularly at Health Central.com and Sienna is growing up so fast! I can't believe she's nearly 8 months old already. It's gone way, way, way too fast!

Six Months Old!

This has unofficially become the "Baby Sienna" picture blog! Thanks for visiting :)

As for my diabetes, I'm still blogging over at Health Central. Lately my diabetes management has not been the central focus of my life, as it was while pregnant. However, learning to balance diabetes and motherhood has its own set of challenges, which I'm eager to tackle!

Happy 4th of July everyone!! Here are a few pics of Sienna... she's growing so fast!!

The latest...

Hi O.C.ers,

I've been so MIA lately! Life is busy with a 3 1/2 month old!

So, I returned to work full time at the beginning of April. It's been a fairly smooth transition, although I miss Sienna like crazy during the day. Luckily, my mom watches her during the day, so at least I'm not missing her and worried about her being in some stranger's care. Ga Ga (that's what we call Grandma) loves Sienna to pieces and dotes on her all day long. What a lucky kid!

In diabetes related news, my pump broke about a week ago. I went on Lantus for a few days. This marked my first period of going pumpless in over 18 months. I blogged about my experience over at my HealthCentral site, but they're not quite posted yet. Suffice it to say, I missed my pump quite a bit. While it was nice to have a break from being tethered to it all the time, my control suffered greatly. I was actually low a lot. Apparently my Lantus dose was too high. What a pain to have to eat so much to avoid going low.

Anyway, life is wonderful, if hectic for our little family. The weekends are precious to Dennis and me now because we get to spend two whole days with Sienna. She's a delightful child, so smiley and happy!

She's growing so fast!

She's very fun and smiles all the time!

My Little Valentine

This year I have a new appreciation for Valentine's Day. Sienna is our little love bug! Here are a few recent pictures of her... she's six weeks old already!

She's starting to smile a lot (and it's not just gas), she has rolled over from her tummy to her back at least four times, and she's getting bigger everyday. It's so exciting to watch her personality appear and see her learn new things. Today she was captivated by one of the stuffed monkeys in her bedroom (see photo). She looked at it with these big eyes and giggled when I had the monkey kiss her on the cheek. Oh, so fun!

A Little Scare...

Here are a few pictures of our little one. Looks pretty healthy huh? Except, she's not a huge fan of baths yet... we're working on it!

The day after I last posted, Sienna gave us a little scare. Around 7:00 p.m. I noticed some swelling below her right eye. We kept an eye on it for about 20 minutes and it seemed to be getting redder and more swollen. Since it was late, we took her to the pediatric urgent care center. Luckily, because of her young age, they let us wait in a private waiting room, so she didn't have to be exposed to all the germy kids at urgent care! The pediatrician sent us over to the ER at Children's Hospital because she was able to squeeze some puss from Sienna's eye. They don't take any chances with infections in newborns! At the ER, they did a full septic work-up on her... again, taking every precaution because of her young age.What a long and terrible night! Dennis and I sat helplessly as they took four attempts to get an IV in and then had to get some fluid from her spine to test for any serious infections. Sienna put up quite a fight! She peed and pooped on the poor nurse who tried to get a urine sample! One nurse who had to hold her down during the spinal test said she could barely hold her still. She's incredibly strong! In the end, it turned out just to be a little eye infection. She likely had a clogged tear duct that became infected. Must run in the family, both my brother and I had clogged tear ducts as infants. Apparently it's a fairly common thing. We spent that first night in the hospital ER and finally got transferred to our own room at 5:00 a.m. We then spent one more night, while they gave Sienna antibiotics through her IV and waited for the culture of her eye puss to come back from the lab. Happily, she's made a full recovery and is just taking an antibiotic twice daily. She loves it! It's strawberry flavored and she gulps it down :) Anyway, this whole experience was a little unnerving, but ultimately everything is fine. It's nice to know that we've got such amazing medical care here in San Diego. Children's Hospital really, really impressed me!

Sienna

She's 2 weeks old today!

It's simply amazing how suddenly your life changes completely when the baby arrives. I'm starting to really identify with being her mom.

Right now she's sleeping in my arms, so I'm typing very inefficiently with one hand! Her little arm is curled up next to her face in her usual sleeping position. She's sleeping so peacefully... what a doll!