Long time…

I can’t believe how long it has been since I last posted! I give credit to all of those busy working moms that are able to keep up their blogs! So much has happened in the past few months! I’ll give you the quick and dirty of the last few months (in list form) and then just try to pick up where we are now.

Here is the list of some topics or things that happened or feelings that I had to face over the past few months (in no particular order). If you’d like to know more about anything that is on this list let me know and I’ll write a little more about it.

• new parent anxiety
• boob success! bottle trouble
• non bio mom jealousy
• tantrums due to missing a nap
• trouble going back to work
• baby and me swimming!
• realizing we already know a donor sibling (and that there are 19 more!!)
• transitioning our families (our families of origin are no longer our immediate family)
• juggling life with a baby
• rolling over (and other fun milestones!)
• cloth diapering adventures! (we <3 cloth!!)
• holidays
• baby sign language
• establishing a bedtime routine
• the mommy/mama confusion

I’m sure there are a few more things I can include in there but this is all I can think of at the moment. I have a feeling that I may take some of these topics and make them into individual posts.Until then, feel free to ask about things through the comments!

The baby has arrived!!

Just a disclaimer: I started writing this post the day after we got home from the hospital and did not finish it until now. I have not gone back to reread anything because…well because I have other things I enjoy doing more these days. =) Here it is:

It is a good thing we got the pregnancy photos done because B did not stay pregnant for much longer! Our baby boy decided to grace us with his presence in 2011…barely.

As we were packing the last few things into our “go bag” B bent over and squeezed her legs together and said, “oh my god, I think my water just broke” and ran into the bathroom. She wasn’t positive that it was her water breaking. I thought she may have peed herself from the baby kicking her in the bladder. She called the doctor to tell him what is going on and he said that the only way to tell for sure was if she came in. He was actually at the hospital so he told us to just go there so he could examine her. After she hung up the phone another gush came. And then another. By this time we are sure her water has broken.

I immediately went into high gear gathering all of the last minute things that we needed to bring to the hospital. B wanted to take a shower before we left because she felt gross after her water broke so she did that while I was running around frantically getting everything together. What she didn’t realize was that it was all going to keep coming out anyway. We got in the car (I made her sit on a plastic bag hehe) and started toward the hospital. We spoke to both of our moms to let them know what was going on and that we’d let them know if they should come to the hospital after she was examined.

When we got to the hospital B went to stand up to get out of the car and she had another gush and was wet down to her knees. We went into the hospital and registered really quick and got her into the examination room. The doctor made quick work of confirming that her water had in fact broken and she was being admitted into the hospital.

I feel like our parents got there so quickly! They were all in the room with us while B was experiencing her first few contractions. The doctor asked them to leave while he checked again to see if she was dilated any more and she was still the same as the first examination, about 1cm. He then explained that he would consider inducing but he’d like to get the cervix open a bit more before he did that so it would reduce the risk of the whole thing ending in a c-section. To get it to start opening up he put cervadil next to her cervix to get it moving.

After that B started to get some good strong contractions. Our families were in and out of the room throughout the whole process but I really couldn’t tell you what they were there for and what they weren’t. All I know is that I was there trying to coach B with Lamaze and she was taking it like a champ. She was starting to reach her pain threshold and they checked her dilation again and she was at 3-4cm…in just about an hour. It was somewhere around this point that she had gone a bit beyond her limit and was ready for an epidural. I figured she must have been in so much pain because she was really afraid of the epidural.

They let me stay in the room with her while they were doing the epidural because they said that I looked like I could hold it together. I think that made it much better for B to stay relaxed. After the epidural our family came back in and hung out for a little bit looking at her monitor. The Dr. came in and kicked everyone out again to check to see if she had dilated any more and he found that she was 5cm!

More contractions, burred memory of what was happening, then the nurse checked and she was between 8 and 9cm. By time the doctor came to check for himself she was a solid 9 and almost ready to push. It all happened so fast! Next thing I knew she was pushing and I was seeing little swirled up black hair on the top of my baby’s head! The plan was that both of our moms would be in the room with us when the baby was born so in between contractions and pushes after we’d gone beyond the majority of the work I ran out into the waiting room and called in our moms to witness the birth.

It was probably 3-4 more pushes and out came a squirmy little baby. The doctor caught him and flipped him around and the first thing I saw was his little bum…and that he was a boy! I couldn’t find the words to tell B but the Dr. yelled it out while I was busy crying and snorting uncontrollably. I turned around and both of our moms were doing the same.

His cord was cut and he was put skin to skin on his mommy’s chest. He stayed there for a while and we were just looking at how cute he was, looking at his little hands and feet. They took him away just for a minute to get him weighed and gave him right back. The little smart guy was breastfeeding within the hour.

After arriving at the hospital at 12:00pm, a speedy labor, and amazing strength and courage of his mommy, our amazing little boy, Paxton was born on New Year’s Eve at 7:05pm. He weighed 7 lbs 14.5 oz and he was 22 in. long. He, his mommy and I stayed in the hospital for 2 nights and all came home together on January 2.

I’ll leave you off with some choice shots from Paxton’s first couple of days.

    

The Waiting Game

Just a week left until the due date. We just had some pregnancy photos taken by our friend, the super talented Rhys Harper. The photos came out amazing! Here is a small sampling of them…

   

  

Isn’t she beautiful?!?! What is most amazing is that these were taken right in our house!!

Now that we’ve gotten the photos done there’s really nothing else to do but wait. My birthday was yesterday and we had a small gathering of family and friends and I kept trying to get B to eat spicy food to see if she would go into labor. I was only half joking haha.

I’m kind of getting into a space where it has been so long that the baby has been in the tum-tum, it almost seems like it may never come out! I know that’s not going to be the case but I almost feel a little less prepared than when I was running around like crazy trying to get everything in order for the baby’s arrival. Now that everything is done and waiting I almost feel like we’ve done nothing to prepare! Cognitively I know that we are probably over prepared if anything but it is such a funny feeling. Before my thought process was thinking about the baby arriving in a few months/weeks, but now my thought process is more along the lines of “holy crap, I could be a parent tomorrow” and that’s a little scary. I feel like we’ve gotten very accustomed to being “expecting parents” and there’s going to be a bit of a transition from “expecting parents” to “parents.”

I’m also getting increasingly nervous about our pup Jasper. Not that he’s going to try to hurt the baby or anything like that. I just don’t want him to feel neglected at all because he is so special to us. He is still a baby after all. I’ve always treated him like a spoiled little baby ever since we got him so he’s used to a LOT of attention. I’m envisioning him being a great furry older brother and super protective of the baby but I can’t help but think that he may be sad if we don’t give him as much attention. The guinea pigs could care less if we even look at them. Most of the time they run away anyway. As long as they have food, water, and a clean cage they are happy little campers romping around in their piggie mansion. I just hope we’ll be able to give our whole family as much attention as they individually need.

All I know is that I want our baby to come out sooner than later because I can’t wait to meet him/her/hir/zir.

15 Days left…

This week is the last hump we have to get over before we can concentrate 100% on the baby! B is going to be done with work after Friday! We’ve finished the room, washed all the cute little clothes, washed all the cute little diapers, all we have to do now are a few little last minute things and then have a baby! I posted some pictures of the baby’s room on my Facebook page. What is funny is that the bathroom has baby robes hanging from the hooks on the door and a little potty seat on the floor. I know its super early for a potty seat but we didn’t really have anywhere else to put it that made sense.

The baby is now 7lbs 6oz and the head is in the 87th percentile. I guess that means its on the larger side. Hopefully the baby won’t be too big because I don’t want B to have a particularly hard delivery. We went to the final sonogram last night and we got to see our little smushed up baby doing little suckling on its hand. I can’t wait to see the baby’s face with my own eyes and not through the electronic “eyes” of the sonogram.

It is really amazing to see B and her belly. She’s so beautiful! Every time I look at her it makes me smile. Even while she’s 9 months pregnant she’s still cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, wrapping presents, and planning a little birthday get together for me. I keep telling her to relax and let things go but she insists on “being useful” while I’m busy moving heavy things, climbing up in the attic, setting up the christmas tree, going on the roof to hang lights, hanging shelves, and all of the other things she’s not able to help with. I think we make a pretty good team. Now that everything is mostly done I’m really looking forward to spending a little down time with her. I feel like we’re together any time we’re not at work but we’re so busy doing other things we haven’t had a lot of time to enjoy one another. I’m imagining this is just a bit of a sampling of what life will be like once the baby is here so I definitely want to take advantage of the down time when we have it.

Obsession: Cloth Diapers

I’ve wanted to write a blog like this for a while now and I’ve come to a point where I can no longer contain my excitement about diapering. I know it sounds super weird but I’m totally obsessed with it! Have you seen cloth diapers lately? They are so friggin cute! There are a zillion (ok I’m exaggerating) different kinds of cloth diapers with cute names like BumGenius, Fuzzybuns, Thirsties, Happy Heinys, etc. B and I have gone nuts over figuring out which diapees are going be best for which stages and sizes of the baby. We are trying to find out what is the most economical, effective, and easiest to use.

So far we’ve got 14 BumGenius 4.0′s in our diapee stash but we are expecting a few more things in the mail in the next few days:

2 – Kissaluvs Newborn All-In-One’s (AIO)

2 Packs of Bummis Organic Cotton Prefolds (the old school diapees that our grandparents probably used)

A pack of OsoCozy Unbleached Prefolds

A Baby Beehinds Diaper cover

2 Econobum prefold/diaper cover sets

2 Thirsties Newborn Diaper Covers

12 Chinese Prefolds

A lot of the reviews are saying that the BumGenius 4.0 diaper doesn’t fit well until the baby is around 10-13 lbs. (depending on the review) so our newborn solution was to find either small pocket diaper (like BumGenius), AIOs (Kissaluvs), or covers (Thirsties) for prefolds. I’m a little nervous about the prefolds being too big or too small because I didn’t really realize there were different sizes until after I ordered them. I think we got bigger sizes which I suppose will just mean a fluffier bottom for a little while.

I have to say we’ve gotten so much crap from people about cloth diapering. Everyone we talk to says something along the lines of “Oh good luck with that” or “That will last a week” or “Are you getting a service?” or ”Ew, what do you do with the poop?” To all of you who are reading this and have said one or all of those things to us, we still love you, but your nay-saying will not change anything. Thank you for wishing us luck although I don’t think luck will have much to do with it. We will be cloth diapering until the baby doesn’t need diapers any longer. We will be washing them ourselves, and the poop solution is different at different stages. The meconium just needs to be rinsed off with a sprayer that is attached to the toilet (you know, where your poop goes), breastfed baby poop is water soluble so it can just go straight in the wash and when the baby starts eating solids, the solids are sprayed off too. Stains you ask? You know what takes out stains? The sun. How cool is that? Let them dry out in the sun and the stains are gone! Yes, we are having a winter baby and if we put a wet diapee out in the sun it will most likely turn into a giant ice cube but the reality is that stains are not going to stop the diaper from catching peeps and poops. When it gets warm enough we’ll put them out in the sun and watch the stains vanish.

I found this blog called Dirty Diaper Laundry that is amazing for diaper reviews and how-to’s. (She also talks about baby wearing, natural birth, and co-sleeping if you’re interested) Any question you may have about cloth diapers I’m pretty sure you can find on her site. A lot of the time the sites that sell the cloth diapers have a ton of information about cloth diapering too. I have to say that I am endlessly thankful for all of the cloth mommies out there that have been blogging and youtubing cloth tips, tricks and reviews. We have spent many evenings watching youtube video reviews of diapers, covers and newborn solutions. All of the posts have given us so much information that we feel super confident going into the whole process. I’m convinced that if people did the research they would be more understanding of our decision if not interested in trying it out themselves!

 

 

Holidays…ready, Go!

Thanksgiving is in two days. How the heck did that happen? So much has happened in the past few weeks it is hard for me to even remember. I wish I had an opportunity to write in this blog every day so I could keep things in order in my head! Although if I had time to write in my blog it would probably be less things to remember and less of a necessity to write in the blog to remember. Ah its a vicious cycle.

Lets see…not this past weekend but the weekend before was our baby shower! Yay! We got sooooo much stuff. When we walked into the restaurant I was sure that all of the stuff that was there was not going to fit into the baby’s room. Not to mention while we were there our dads and my brother were building baby furniture in our house so we got another surprise when we got home. It turned out to be more of a surprise for them and our pup Jasper because they set off the alarm at our house which is ear piercingly loud. ADT was calling everyone in our emergency list to find out what the story was so they could turn it off. Luckily my brother put Jasper outside so his little ears were saved which is more than I can say for our dads and my brother. At least they can put their hands over their ears.

I think what was the most fun about the shower was seeing everyone who came out. There were folks there that we haven’t seen in a long time and I’m so glad we had an opportunity to hang out even if it was for a very short time. It was like a kick in the hiney that we need to slow down and make sure we make some time for our friends and family.

Also, in the past few weeks we have toured different day care facilities and finally chose one. We chose this one because it was SUPER clean, they had really cool play rooms, they have video surveillance in every room, they follow a curriculum even for babies, they teach sign language, AND they are willing to use cloth diapers! What is even more impressive is that they were the cheapest place we looked at!

On Tuesday of last week we started our Lamaze class. We were really impressed with the class and felt enlightened of the whole process by time we left. I think after this class B is leaning more toward going natural. The stipulation still stands though, if she needs the epidural she will get it and not feel disappointed or defeated. I do think she is really strong and has a very high tolerance of pain. She also is really good at meditation. I think if she can get herself into the zone she’ll be able to work it out. We have another class tonight after our OB appointment (I told you we were busy) so we are excited to learn some more.

Last Saturday the 19th we went for a tour at the hospital and saw the labor and delivery rooms and the nursery and the new babies. We brought our moms who are hopefully going to be in the room with us when the whole shindig is going down. After seeing some of the babies we were all in awe of how small and cute they were. I just can’t wait until our baby is here!

This week I’ve been going nuts trying to find some stuff for cheap on craigslist. I have to say, I love craigslist. We got a $300 rocking/gliding chair and ottoman for $50. We took all the cushions off and washed them with with oxyclean (even though it looked pretty clean to begin with). Its beautiful and it matches the baby’s furniture. We also got a bumbo for $5 with a quick wash of that it’s good as new too! I do enjoy a good deal.

Along with all of that good stuff somewhere in there I painted our bedroom and hallway to put the final touch on our house before the baby gets here. We figured that once the baby is here there will be very few days (if any) that I may feel motivated enough to paint.

So that’s a wildly incomplete list of what we’ve been up to for the past few weeks. What is really interesting is that the business has made time fly by. We only have 44 more days before this baby is supposed to be here. Somehow I feel really ready and not even the slightest bit ready all at once. Things aren’t slowing down either. I mean we have Thanksgiving this week and then the entire month of Christmas! I know, Christmas is not a month but try convincing the retail stores of that! We also have so many family functions throughout the month that before we know it, it’ll be over and we’ll just be waiting on the baby!

Wish us luck! It’s going to be a wild ride!

9 Months to 9 Weeks

This post was written on 11/9/11:

How did we get from 9 months all the way down to less than 9 weeks? Actually as of tomorrow it will only be 8 weeks left before our little bundle of joy-and-poop graces the world with his or her little presence. I can’t help but think of that Ani DiFranco song that goes:

“hey little bag of sugar
floating in your biosphere
summon the courage
to put down your landing gear
and come out here”

I know. Its still too early to be hoping the baby comes out to play.

We went to the Dr. yesterday and we had an ultrasound! The little munchkin was moving all around. We were watching it do some practice breathing with the little belly going up and down. The baby was doing suckling stuff with its mouth sticking out its tongue at us and opening its eyes to see what was poking at it. It was really cool. The pictures here just don’t do the experience any justice.

B is such a champ by the way. She is still hiking up 4 flights of stairs several times a day at work. Her little ankles are not even showing the slightest sign of swelling. This I would like to point out is something that people like to scare you with. While some women do get swollen feet and ankles, some do not. People have been trying to scare B out of her shoes (literally) telling her that she’ll never be able to wear her shoes again and that she may as well go out and buy new shoes now. For the record people, B is still rockin’ the cons at 32 weeks! It is really impressive to me that B is doing so well with this whole brewin’ a baby thing. I’m so lucky to have such an amazing wife that I can feel 100% confident that she taking good care of our baby.