Where did September go?

The Daily Ruby should be called The Monthly Ruby, at the rate I've been slacking! Needless to say, I've had my hands full. I keep meaning to back post, but at this rate I'm so far behind that I wouldn't be able to catch up to present day till 2010.

I had probably the best labor and delivery of anyone I know of (that has ever explained their experience to me). It was almost entirely pain free thanks to an awesome epidural. It was almost a festive atmosphere with Cary, my folks, and Shashar in the room. I gotta say, I was pretty proud of myself for popping out my little angel. I also probably had the most painful recovery of anyone that has ever explained their experience to me. Not because of extenuating circumstances, but probably because no one really tells you in detail what happens down there after all the trauma. It won't go into detail, but lets just say that it was a good 2 weeks before I felt like I was even 50% healed and on my way to recovery. It's such a distant memory right now, and probably for the best.

Layla is awesome. She turned 8 weeks yesterday. She just got over a 5 week long diaper rash that turned into skin ulcers. So sad! This doubled our sleep deprivation because she required extra care. I never found out or understood the cause of it, and never got solid instructions on how to fix it. Each of the 3 pediatricians we talked to had a different plan of attack and kept saying we should see improvement in a couple of days, which never really happened. The most effective thing we could do was leave her diaper off completely and let her hiney air out. That sounds good and simple except that newborns don't poop 2 to 3 times a day. They poop in little or big squirts ALL DAY LONG! Needless to say, Cary, me, my Mom, Sher, all got pooped and/or peed on. Not to mention various walls, floors, and bits of furniture in our home. The worst part was she would poop, it would burn her raw skin, and she'd get upset and bare down and poop some more. Plus we had to keep her clean so the wounds wouldn't get infected. It was really challenging and it suuuuucked. It would get better, then worst, and finally 2 days ago it looked about 95% gone. Today I'd say she's about 99% good, knock on wood. Her poor hiney has scars on it though. It was that bad.

Then this morning, Layla seemed to be getting her first cold. Stuffy nose, watery eyes, dry cough. Thankfully no fever. She's sleeping an awful lot. I should be happy that she's sleeping longer and deeper, but any change in her behavior due to a possible sickness freaks me out. I called the doctor and she gave me some things to do and look out for. So now we wait and see what happens.

Aside from all the worry about these simple, relatively nonthreatening health concerns, she's the coolest thing that has ever happened to me and Cary both. She's just now smiling and making a few new sounds. This morning she (unintentionally) said Mama while she was mumble-whining. Both Cary and I got really excited even though we full well knew that it wasn't for real. Oh well.

I've taken probably 700 pictures of her and a decent amount video and I keep meaning to post the good ones. I might go back and do some back blogging, it's been 8 weeks and 1 day since my last post! Yeah, there's too much good stuff to not back blog....