Nothing can ever be easy...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Jacob's feeding has been a little crazy lately. During the day he actually hasn't been bad, but evenings have been awful (sometimes feeding only an hour apart, multiple times) and nights haven't been much better. Last night I fed him around 10:30, put him in bed before 11:30, and he was wide awake at 12:30. Back to sleep around 1, up again at 4:15, back to sleep around 5, awake again at 6. Not very conducive to good sleep, unfortunately. The craziest part is that when I sleep soundly during the long stretch, I'm that much more tired when I actually have to wake up. I could hardly keep my eyes open for the 4:15 feeding, so when he started crying again at 6, I was so incredibly frustrated.

To make matters worse, it has been seeming like he's not getting enough to eat despite feeding for up to 40 minutes sometimes. He's also been really fussy when feeding lately, doing this odd bouncing off the breast thing where his mouth is wide open but he just can't seem to latch on. If it goes on long enough he gets extra cranky. It was so bad this morning that I decided to get up and break in the new breast pump. Much to my surprise, I only got about an ounce out of each side, which was less than I was getting during my first week. Based on his growth I would think he's getting a heck of a lot more than a couple ounces at each feeding, so I'm not sure if the pump just wasn't at the right setting (finding the right suction level can be challenging...stronger isn't always better), the last feeding had drained me, or if my new method of birth control is having an effect. Yes, I am back on birth control because Jacob doesn't need a sibling quite yet. Not that there's a heck of a lot of opportunity for creating a sibling just yet, but I got the prescription at the doctor on Monday and figured I'd just get it going. It's a pill that only has one type of hormone, and it's generally what breastfeeding women use. It's possible that it can cause a reduction in milk supply, though according to the nurse at my doctor's office, it's supposed to just be temporary. Neither the nurse or the lactation consultant thought it should be a significant decrease, so I'm just plain stumped about the pumping this morning. That could explain why Jacob has seemed incredibly hungry all the time, though. He also may be going through his six-week growth spurt (6 weeks as of 2:40 am Friday...hard to believe), so that could be adding to it as well. Bad timing all around, if nothing else.

I'm a little frustrated because I wanted to pump enough milk today to take some with me on a couple outings tomorrow. I wanted to stop by my office and show him off, and maybe go to lunch with my Friday lunch buddies (two guys from the Amerks game production staff) if Jacob cooperated. I also wanted to take him to his first sporting event tomorrow night, the Rattlers game, and show him off to people there. However, I'm not sure I can pump enough to have bottles available for both trips. I suppose I could find places to nurse in both cases (there's generally enough empty seats at the Rattlers game that I could climb to the top row somewhere and cover up), but it's a scary prospect all around. We shall see. I'm going to try to pump again before Jacob wakes up for his (hopefully) last feeding of the night, and maybe things will be better now that I'm less stressed than I was this morning. Just when I thought I had this breastfeeding thing down...ugh.

The good side of parenthood...

Let me say it right off the bat...parenthood is exhausting. It can be frustrating at times, and I'm sure that's made that much worse by sleep deprivation. I won't lie...hearing Jacob screaming at 3am isn't my favorite part of the job. When he screams inconsolably from hunger despite having eaten an hour earlier (like our past few evenings), it can get incredibly frustrating. I'll admit I like when he falls asleep during the day because it means I can either fall asleep with him, or get some stuff done around the house. Dragging him out on errands is tough because the carrier is so heavy...like today, when a quick run to the doctor's to drop off paperwork and to the post office for a couple things took way longer than it would have pre-baby just because I had to pull him out of the car each time. Darn those people who leave their kids in the car for hours on 90 degree days and ruin it for the rest of us who would love to do it on cooler days for one minute (Does that make me a bad parent that I would even think of doing it?). The diaper blowouts and spit-up episodes can be trying, and there are days I half wish we could go back to the old days, where we could go out to dinner on a whim and not worry about what to do with a screaming baby in a restaurant.

But parenthood definitely has its better moments. Jacob is getting cuter by the day, and I can tell we're on the cusp of real smiles sometime soon. Once in a while he smiles when he's not falling asleep (the only time he'd really done it previously, other than passing gas), though it's not based on any stimulation so I think it's still just a reflex...but it's progress. And he seems to be getting this bright look on his face more often, like he realizes who he's seeing and is happy to be there. He's adorable when he falls asleep, and even his faces while he nurses are cute. He has his cuddly moments, which are great, and we're both looking forward to when he's willingly cuddly. Sometimes I just look down at him and marvel that we created him. Babies are truly miracles...that with minimal human intervention, babies start out as a single cell and generally come out perfectly formed. Amazing. And ours has the added bonus of being incredibly cute! It's funny...I go back and forth between seeing this tiny little baby and a big boy. There are times I look at him and he still looks so little...but then other times I can't believe how much bigger he is compared to when he was born. It makes me realize all the more how fast kids grow. Even over the course of a couple weeks things can change so much! It's been quite the adventure so far, and I know it's only going to get more interesting!

Mommy's Afternoon Out

Yesterday I finally got to go out for a decent amount of time, for the first time since Jacob was born. I think I left around 3:30 or 4 and didn't come home until 6:30. Craig got to feed Jacob some of my frozen breastmilk (from the week he was still in the hospital) from a bottle for the first time. It went ok, though he got fussy near the end. He's been doing that breastfeeding lately, too, so I guess it wasn't surprising. But at least he ate out of the bottle...one less thing to worry about when he heads off to daycare two weeks from today (yikes!).

I went to the mall, primarily to make a couple exchanges, shop a little for myself, and do some scouting for future purchases. It was nice to be out without having to worry about Jacob screaming or having to tote his carrier around. That thing is heavy. I felt a little bad that I didn't miss him more, though most of my shopping somehow involved him--either because it was for him or because of him (in the case of the new clothes for me, having to fit my post-baby body). I decided that it was okay that I didn't miss him too much, because we've pretty much spent the last five weeks attached at the hip and I was overdue on "me time".

Shopping for new clothes was a little odd. I will say that with clothes I look pretty good right now, all things considered. I still have a little belly that's tough to hide, though my chest tends to balance that out. Of course, the chest also tends to make me look a little bigger overall, but there isn't much I can do about that. The belly, however, I really need to get rid of. What few clothes I have that do work with my chest tend to show my belly a little too much. I'm not saying I need to look like I did before I got pregnant, but the jelly belly just hangs there and I don't like looking at it. It's too reminiscent of those gross, wrinkly, hanging skin pouches some women get...it's not like that, but the way it just hangs there reminds me of it. I'm definitely looking forward to getting back in the gym with a goal. I may just get one or two opportunities a week to work out, but I want to make them count. Anyway, the shopping wasn't awful but I'm definitely dressing a different body right now. I was a little baffled by empire-waisted shirts...too maternity-ish, or a style I should just embrace now that I've spent months getting used to it? There are way too many tops out there that are supposed to camouflage a bigger belly that just made me look bigger. Half the shopping trip was like an episode of "What Not to Wear", because I kept looking at stuff that I might have worn before and thought of Stacy and Clinton standing there saying, "You're a mom now. You don't have to look old but you shouldn't look like you're trying to be a teenager." I still need a new bathing suit (my bikini days are over, at least until I figure out if I can get rid of the belly and until my linea nigra (the skin pigmented line a lot of pregnant women get) fades away), and that was a bit of an adventure, hoping my boobs didn't leak while I was trying a suit on. In the end, I did get a couple things, but I'm hoping that my return to the gym will do me some good! Maybe I'll even lose weight out of my chest...isn't that where most women lose it first?

Today I'm hoping to start laundering all of my maternity clothes and start putting them away. I also need to figure out that pesky breast pump that I bought on Saturday. It's my key to freedom! We'll see if Jacob cooperates :)

Visitors and more...

It's another busy few days for all of us this weekend and heading into the new week. Today Craig was working, but Jacob and I had visitors! My former co-worker (at two places) Erin and her husband Mike came over to see Jacob. Erin worked with me at the Amerks for part of a season before I left for my current job. At the time she was looking for a change as well, and I referred her to the same employment agency I used. A couple weeks after I started my new job, she joined me at the same company. She just left a month or two ago for a new and better opportunity, and it was fun to see her! Jacob was a hit as always :)

We're hoping Jacob will get a chance to meet our friend Dave this weekend while he's in town from North Carolina. He worked for the Amerks as well and left a year ago to work for a soccer team in Cary, NC. We miss him a lot but are happy we got a new start away from the teams here. On Monday we may get a visit from my friend Heather, who I've known since I was five. She just had surgery a couple weeks ago so she's been advised against driving here herself, but she may have the opportunity to hitch a ride with a friend of hers and stay here for a few hours in the evening. It would be fun to have her here.

Tonight Jacob and I took a quick trip to Babies 'R' Us to pick up a breast pump (thank goodness for a big gift card we got from Craig's co-workers!). Tomorrow Craig has off and we may give Jacob his first bottle (from us, anyway...he had a couple in the hospital). We're two weeks away from the world of daycare (I decided to take an extra week of vacation at the end of my maternity leave), and they suggest starting breastfed babies on bottlefeeding a couple weeks ahead of time to make sure they figure it out before they're stuck somewhere all day without mom's milk factory. I'm going to head off to the mall to shop for a while, which I've been dying to do for weeks. The experts actually suggest that mom be out of the house and have someone else offer the first bottle. Babies can smell mom, and if the boobs are in the vicinity, they're less likely to be satisfied taking a bottle. I'm a little nervous about leaving Craig alone to deal with a potentially frustrated, hungry little boy, but hopefully he'll take to it ok. He's been taking a pacifier a little bit in the last couple days, so a bottle shouldn't be much different. For the record, I'm not a fan of pacifiers, but when he's inconsolable and/or I'm trying to put off a feeding for a bit, the pacifier can work wonders. Half the time he falls asleep after a couple minutes of sucking. Not planning on making it a big habit, but when it comes in handy I'm not afraid of it. And honestly, there are few things cuter at this point than when he uses his clumsy little hand to keep it in his mouth! I'm not looking forward to getting back to pumping, but being able to do bottlefeeding will hopefully make us a little more mobile! We'll see how that goes!

Monday morning it's time for a doctor's appointment for mommy, for a change! It's time for my six-week checkup to make sure that all has healed well. I'm hoping to officially get clearance to start working out and get rid of this belly I have left. I'm hoping that I might lose a little weight out of my chest as well, so my shirts fit just a little better. I'll keep my fingers crossed! As of last weekend I was only up five pounds, by the way!

Anyway, I'll leave you with one of the cuter pictures I've captured of Jacob, taken this afternoon.

Have a nice weekend!

Nursery improvements

For those of you who survived yesterday's post, you're rewarded with some pictures today :)



He's been a little cranky while awake (hence why I'm typing this post with one hand--looks like I need to go back to no cereal in the morning (because of the milk)...he's gotten progressively worse this week since I started eating it again), so the sleeping pictures are the cutest I have right now. I love the second one where his tongue is just sticking out :)

In other news, the nursery has had some improvements! I finally got around to doing the "crib bumper as wall decor" project I had been wanting to do since before he was born. It's a little odd, but it serves a few purposes: 1) Not wasting a perfectly good crib bumper (no bumper or breathable ones are recommended these days due to SIDS); 2) More themed decor for a pretty bare nursery; 3) It prevents the chair in the picture below from hitting the wall. It covers a good portion of two walls. It's basically like a 3-D border.

Now for a cool story...In my room at my parents' house, there used to be this big yellow shelf. It was probably about 6-1/2 feet tall, with a big cabinet in the bottom and three shelves up top. It held a ton of stuff over the years, from all of my toys (big enough for a laundry basket in the bottom, which was great for small stuff--the old school version of today's bin obsession) to my many books as I got older. When Jacob was born they got a crib for free and wanted to put it up in my room so he had a place to sleep when we visited. However, it meant the shelf had to go. I really wanted it for Jacob's room here because it was so great for storage, but when we checked the measurements, it was really just a little too big. It could have worked, but might have been a little overwhelming for the room. Darn. Well, the other day our neighbor across the street came over to ask if I could bring Jacob down to the sidewalk to show her mom, and as we were walking down the driveway she was telling me about a toy box that she had in her basement that was free for the taking. I went over to see it and pretty much instantly knew it was exactly what we needed! Good storage capabilities on a scale more appropriate for the room. It serves a great purpose right now, holding Jacob's books and some of his stuffed animals, as well as a CD player for some of the calming music we have (but haven't used yet). When he's older it will be great for larger toy storage in the bottom, and the shelves will be at the right height for him to pick out a bedtime story or grab his favorite animal. Not bad for free, eh? Just shows God provides, even for something as little as this...I couldn't use the one from my parents, but we got something just as useful, and still for free! Our neighbors are really great. Anyway, I thought it was a cool little story. Better than yesterday's, right? ;-)

My Retrospective on Labor

Since I never really got into specifics about my labor experience, and because I'd like to document it for posterity, I figure I'll just get it out there today. I'll try to keep the icky stuff to a minimum, but inevitably there will be some, so I apologize in advance. Defintiely a TMI (too much information) post :)

So...it was the evening of June 18th, just after 11pm. Craig and I had just finished watching "She's Got the Look", one of our guilty pleasure reality shows of the summer. I made a trip to the bathroom, partly because I had to pee and partly because I felt a little "damp" down below. Pregnancy tends to bring on a discharge now and then...basically the body getting itself nice and lubricated for delivery. Anyway, this one seemed a little more than usual, but I didn't think much of it. After I peed, I stood up and felt more liquid exiting my body. Again, not to be gross, but pregnancy also screws with your bladder. The baby rests on it the further it drops, and it can make things interesting. For about the last week of pregnancy, I had to pee a lot and just changing position on the toilet might shift things internally and allow me to pee just a little more. Originally I thought that was what was happening, but when I had exited the bathroom, went to get into my pajamas and had it happen again, I knew something might be up. The fluid was clear and had a little more substance than urine might, so when little trickles kept happening, I finally told Craig that my water might be breaking. Hello, panic. Craig wanted me to call the doctor, and when the on-call doctor called me back, she suggested that I hang on until the morning to see if contractions started. If they didn't, I should come into the office in the morning to get checked out. At that point it was about midnight and I had begun packing my hospital bag. Nothing like the last minute!

It was a pretty sleepless night, since I would leak a bit every time I moved. I had plenty of waterproofing going on on the bed, but it still made me nervous. Labor didn't start, so the next morning I called the doctor's office and we went in for a check. They confirmed it was amniotic fluid leaking out and that I was now four centimeters dilated. They sent me for a non-stress test, which basically means that I had to sit in a chair and have my belly monitored for a while, to see if I was contracting and to make sure the baby was okay. I was having contractions that I couldn't feel, but they weren't regular yet. Fortunately, everything looked fine. The doctor suggested we keep ourselves busy for a while and wait for a call to find out when we should go to the hospital. So, since we had one car for the two of us, I dropped Craig off at work and went into work myself. If nothing else I figured it would be nice to get my desk cleaned off and get my out-of-office messages up and running. Just as I was starting to do a project, I got the call that we should go into the hospital right away. Yikes!!

I called Craig, wrapped up things at work, and left. We drove to the hospital, had to wait a bit to get checked in, and finally got settled in our room in the early afternoon. By then my fluid was leaking pretty steadily so I changed into the lovely hospital-issued undies (disposable cotton mesh) and maxi-pads (HUGE--though after a while even those couldn't contain the fluid leakage). They started me on pitocin to get my labor going. I still wasn't feeling anything, but by around dinner time (when I posted my last blog before the baby), I was starting to get really uncomfortable. The contractions felt like bad menstrual cramps, and mine were mostly in my back. Eventually they were using hot packs to try to give me some relief. My parents stopped in later that evening, as everything was starting to get unbearable. They left pretty quickly and headed out to my cousin Lori's (just five minutes away) to sleep for the night. Shortly thereafter I got the epidural. Next time I will know to get it sooner because it was really hard to relax my muscles as they were giving it to me. I was having camelback contractions, which means that they were strong, then they'd back off a bit, and then get strong again before ending. It didn't leave a lot of time between contractions to recover, and it was hard to know when one was really ending, which made it difficult to give me the epidural.

The epidural didn't hurt as bad as I thought it would, and I felt relief almost immediately. It was unreal to go from horrible pain to complete comfort in about five minutes. The feeling was pretty surreal, though. I was still aware that my legs were there, but I couldn't feel anything that was being done from about the waist down. It was so odd. It gave me a bit of a loopy feeling, though, and from that point on I pretty much didn't care what happened to the lower half of my body. Need to check me? Ok. Put in a catheter? No problem. Honestly, at that point you just don't want to know! I felt pretty good for a decent amount of time (past that point I think I lost all concept of time), and eventually I started feeling a lot of pressure. It started to bother me almost as much as the contraction pain did before the epidural. By the time it was getting unbearable again, they checked me and I was fully dilated. Time to push!

The first hour of pushing wasn't bad. We had a good nurse who cheered me on, and once Craig got through his initial freakout (totally unnecessary since I wasn't in pain at all), that hour wasn't bad. Lots of talking and joking in between contractions, and as a whole it just felt good to do something about the discomfort. All seemed to be going well, but then it just seemed like I was doing a lot of pushing without making much progress. The pressure was getting worse, and by the third hour of pushing they started talking about doing something to my epidural (sort of a refresher, I think...up the dose for a bit), just to give me a break and regain my energy to push more. However, that didn't seem to do much, and eventually they decided to use the vacuum to get Jacob's head past my pelvis, which was what was holding things up all along. That last bit of pushing was pretty awful. It was one of those dig-down-deep moments in life, finding the energy for those last couple pushes. I hoped to feel relief the second he came out. Not so much. It was great to know he was out, but I was in some pretty nifty discomfort, which I later found out was from a hemorrhoid. Yippee. That turned out to be the worst part of the recovery, too.

Craig was the one that broke the news that it was a boy, and by the way, for those of you who remember my posts about his reservations about labor, he saw way more than he wanted to. For all his best intentions of avoiding seeing things and not wanting to cut the cord, he ended up doing and seeing it all (and he's still eager for the six-week healing window to be over! Whew!). He was most surprised at how much coaching he really had to do (the nurse would leave and he'd have to count me through contractions).

Once Jacob was out and they were checking him over, Craig was busy fiddling with the camera and filling me in on things. I was in agony, which I initially thought had to do with them stitching me up but was actually the hemorrhoid. I feel bad because I never had that happy relief moment that you see almost every mom have on the baby shows...the discomfort was that bad. Still, holding him for the first time was pretty cool, even if he was screaming his head off. Eventually they transferred us to our room for the next couple days, and I eagerly scarfed down a meal at about 4am. That was the best turkey sandwich and cookies ever!

The whole experience was pretty surreal. The next day or two was just weird...not a lot of sleep, Jacob going to the special care nursery, dealing with the discomfort, being happy it was all over...just a boatload of emotions. A good few years or so will dull the memory of the pain and help me get up the guts to do it again. Obviously the end result is worth it. Hard to believe he'll be five weeks tomorrow!

Ok, sorry for the icky post, but I hope it was informative for anyone who was wondering...back to happier stuff tomorrow!

Baby's First Hickey

So, yeah...Jacob has his first hickey :) Yesterday afternoon I looked down at his arm and there was a mark on it. It was sort of purple. I thought maybe it was just an indentation in his skin from how I had been holding him, but the more I looked at it it just didn't look that way. Then I started thinking that maybe it was a bruise. He wiggles around a lot these days so I thought maybe his delicate skin just bruised from him being held too tight when he tried to wiggle out of my grasp. I felt bad, obviously, but he didn't seem phased by it when I pressed on it a little. But then I started thinking...hmmm...if it was a bruise from holding him, it should be higher up on his arm, around the bicep...not on his forearm. And then last night it hit me...it was from him sucking on his arm! Yesterday before we went to the doctor, Jacob was hungry. He'd already been fed but he's been eating a lot lately (hence the weight jump, I suppose), and I was planning on feeding him right before we left anyway. I just wanted to get myself ready ASAP so Craig could get back to the air conditioning people (still no A/C, by the way...our furnace's fan apparently wasn't A/C friendly so they have to add a part...supposed to happen today...though right now we really don't need the A/C anyway) and I could just feed him and go. Well, Craig was doing everything he could to keep Jacob from screaming while I was finishing getting ready (he's inconsolable when hungry), and had him on his belly on the Boppy pillow. He was sucking on his arm, which he tries to do a lot, but rarely gets a good suck going. Apparently he got a pretty good grip on it this time, because he left a mouth-sized purple mark on it! I knew babies can give themselves sucking blisters (one of the babies in the special care nursery had one on his arm, and I saw on a baby show where a baby was born with blisters on both arms from sucking on them in utero), but I couldn't believe he'd managed to give himself a baby hickey!

Knock on wood, he's been pretty good (though very hungry) the last couple days. He's had a couple diaper blowouts recently, which probably means he's almost ready for the next size diaper...and based on his weight yesterday, I suppose he is. Of course I just bought a new pack of the small ones, so we might have to suffer through them for another few days. The other ones seem so huge (we have a huge box of them waiting in the wings!), but I guess he'll grow into them! Even though the changes I see in him are subtle, I can definitely tell he's changing fast. He's a lot chubbier than he was when he was born, even though he still looks pretty skinny. He's definitely more of a handful. I feel like I need to be taking more pictures of him because he'll never be this size again, you know? I just can't wait until he starts smiling so the pictures have a better chance of looking really cute. At this point he's got two looks--awake or sleeping--so the pictures are tough to make interesting, but I know I should be taking them nonetheless!

Speaking of which...he's getting fussy so it's time to go. Have a great day!