Happy Birthday Paige!

Happy 5th Birthday to Paige Mackenzie!! She came into my life 5 years ago at 9:14 PM after only 30 minutes of active labor. She was born in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona at the uber luxurious birthing center at Shea Scottsdale. In many ways I feel like I finally started to “get” this parenting stuff when she was born. In the years before she was born I had many health struggles with my oldest child. I knew that this go round had to be VERY different. I needed to be different.

The first thing I did was make plans to quit working after she was born. I worked right up until I gave birth and then I left my career in marketing and advertising to spend every day with her and her older brother. I started researching natural childbirth as soon as I found out I was pregnant. I ended up going with hypnobirthing and was really happy I did. Here is a blurb from my first hypnobirthing story.

My labor painwas so non-existent that I asked my mom to take me to Barnes and Noble to go book shopping. I only ended up at the hospital because the maternity entrance was about to close and I didn’t want to have to walk through the ER if I waited any longer. SO I reluctantly decided to have them check my progress…that was about 8:00 PM and I was SURE I had hours to go yet. I truly thought that perhaps I wasn’t even in labor yet. It took about 30 minutes before they even checked me and then my daughter was born just after 9:00 PM and they made me wait to push until the doc got there….which was kind of agonizing because they gave me Pitocin without asking me. They just snuck it in there on me about 5 minutes before I started pushing. I am now fully convinced that Pitocinis EVIL. But my daughter was born after only 2 pushes and I did rip just a little. The sewing part hurt because I was not anesthetized like last time. Strange that the most painful part of the whole birth was getting stitches afterwards. It was the perfect birth IMO….easy, painless. She was almost 9 pounds.

This was my one and only pregnancy where I did not know the sex. I decided to leave it as a surprise and the waterworks flowed when they told me I had a little girl. After she was cleaned up a bit they gave her to me and she went to the breast immediately. She camped there for the next two years.

She never received any vaccines and she breastfed exclusively until 8 months. When she started eating solids they were organic and homemade. Unlike her older brother she was sick only once in her first 2 years and she has never had an ear infection ever. She slept in a bassinet next to my bed until she was one month old and then she moved in my bed until she was 4 years old. For daytime naps she slept in a pink beanbag covered with a blanket.

She wore cloth diapers right from the start and since I also started a cloth diaper company that year she was also my top model. Here she is wearing one my creations:

She is growing into such a strong, determined, opinionated young girl now. She amazes me every day how smart, talented, and kind she is. She is also VERY dramatic which I am sure will be far less cute when she is a teenager. Her current aspirations include running a day spa that serves delectable chocolate while pampering the guests. She also hopes to marry her chocolate supplier.

She loves fairies, princesses, swimming, dancing, singing, and speaking different languages. She loves being the life of the party and she will strike up conversations everywhere we go with adults and children.

She has brought unbelievable amounts of sunshine and joy to our home. Happy birthday baby!