Three weeks today! At his two week checkup, Jacob tipped the scales
at 9 lbs 10 oz, was 22.5 inches long, and received a "gold star for
growth" :) I can't remember if I posted his birth weight, but he was 9
lbs 4 oz at birth, 22 inches long, and then 8 lbs 11 oz when we left the
hospital. For a breastfed baby it is ideal for them to come close to
regaining their birth weight by the two week checkup. Jacob knocked it
out of the park! So, we know that breast feeding is going really well,
he is such a champ at eating...yes, I'm proud :)
Since
Jacob is three weeks and since breast feeding is clearly going so well
(as evidenced by his stellar weight gain), we are going to introduce a
bottle tonight. I've been pumping milk once each day for the past two
weeks and currently have over 75 oz of breast milk stored in the
freezer! Most of the experts say three weeks is the sweet spot for
introducing a bottle. Jacob is clearly well established in his breast
feeding habits, so there is not much concern that he'll get a bottle and
decide to abandon the breast. He is also still "new" enough that he
shouldn't balk at the bottle, which is a risk faced if you wait too long
to give them that first bottle. I do plan to breast feed 'as
exclusively as possible' (not a fan of extreme statements like
'exclusively') for the first year, so when he takes a bottle it will be
pumped breast milk he is drinking. But, this way I will be able to do
crazy things like be away from him for more than 2 hours, or drink wine
and still feed him. Tonight I'm celebrating the three week mark with a
bottle of my own as well, some delightful Cabernet :)
At the three week mark, here is what I've observed about my second born:
*He
is VOCAL!! Every movement has an accompanying grunt or snort or squeak
or other sound effect. He purrs and growls and hums when he eats. If you
pick him up while he is trying to sleep he will make some sort of sound
of protest. And, at the very first tiny little bit of discomfort he
will howl like he hasn't eaten in days. It is endearing during the
waking hours of the day, and when I'm not trying to get anything else
done. It is, I'll admit, quite irritating in the wee hours of the
morning. It is hard to have him sleep next to me at night because he
just makes noise all night long, sleeping or awake, he is sounding off
about something. I am excited to see if, and how, this tendency
manifests as he grows!
*He is ADORABLE! I was worried,
I'll admit, that Jacob could never possibly be as cute as Kaleb was.
Fortunately, my worry was in vain. He has his very own brand of cute,
different from Kaleb's version but just as intense. Jacob is adorable in
an expressive, animated, engaging kind of way. Not only is he vocal, he
is expressive. Everything is a production for him, from growling and
doing the "woodpecker head" when he is hungry and looking for food, to
straining and grimacing in his sleep as he tries to shift to a more
comfy position. The world is a stage when it comes to my sweet baby boy.
Again, I look forward to watching how this plays out over the coming
years :)
As the days go by I am feeling good about our
decision to have Kaleb continue attending day care during my leave. When
we are all home at night there just isn't the time to focus completely
on memorizing each and every one of Jacob's facial expressions. And I
want to be able to do that with him just like I did when Kaleb was a
newborn. I'm happy to have this gift of exclusive bonding time with
Jacob. As the weeks go on, I intend to keep Kaleb home for more days,
and to pick him up early on some days. But for these first few weeks, I
love the special time that I get to spend bonding with my newborn.
I
have so much to share about how I'm adjusting to having two kids, but
the time to post hasn't presented itself and tonight I wanted to capture
all this stuff about just Jacob.
Happy three weeks to Jacob and to our family of four...I don't know if I'll ever get sick of how cool that sounds!
About Me
- Miss Madly
- My husband, Kyle, and I are the proud and busy parents of two little boys, Kaleb and Jacob. Kaleb joined our family in December 2009 and we welcomed Jacob in April 2012. We both work full time outside the home, I am in the field of Learning and Development. I have a passion for studying the brain and how we learn, which translates beautifully to watching my boys grow up and discover their worlds. I'm also into learning about nutrition, herbalism, food-as-medicine, natural alternatives, and homeopahtic remedies. I hope to provide an uncut view of what life is really like as a working mom, minus the instagram filters and facebook bragging...I'll save that for facebook ;)
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
My Birth Story with Jacob
Yesterday was Jacob's actual due date, he is 12 days old today :) I have already posted about our decision to have a repeat c-section, and that was scheduled for last Monday, April 9. Jacob decided to join us on Thursday, April 5 instead. Here's the story of how he made his big entrance:
On Wednesday (4/4) I woke up feeling off, got in the shower and had to stop the shower early because I was feeling nauseous. I planned to rest on the couch, and then go into work a little late, thinking it was just being tired from pregnancy. Then Kaleb woke up and was clearly sick. So, my plan changed to just working from home with Kaleb. We got through the day but it was rough, all I wanted to do was rest.
As far as the pregnancy was going, I'd been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks, and I was experiencing a lot of aches in my lower abdomen, just tired and tender and really done with carrying Jacob around!
I went to bed Wednesday night and then at 2:00 AM I woke up in the middle of a contraction. I turned over and figured it was just a particularly strong Braxton Hicks, but about 10 minutes later I got hit by another one. I stayed in bed until 2:30 and then got up. The contractions got closer together rather quickly. By 3 I was pretty sure these were real contractions so I downloaded an app on my phone to track them and by 4 had determined a pattern of about a minute long and averaging 6 minutes apart.
At this point I was pretty well convinced I was in labor, so I took a shower, folded some laundry, and paced around the house. The contractions weren't slowing down at all, instead they were getting more intense and closer together. At 5 I decided I should probably wake Kyle up, so he wouldn't feel rushed if we decided to go in to the hospital. I woke him up, told him I'd been awake since 2 with contractions and that they were getting closer together and more intense. I called my doctor's office and left a message for the on call OB that I was contracting about 5 minutes apart at this point. She called back pretty quickly and confirmed that we should be heading to the hospital.
We called the Remsburgs at 6, I packed a bag for Kaleb, and Kyle took Kaleb over there at 6:30 then came back to get me and we went up to St. Mary's. They put me in a triage room and hooked me up to all the monitors. The first step was to give me a bunch of fluids, since dehydration can sometimes bring on false labor pain. The nurse checked me and I had dilated to 1 cm before we arrived. After two hours, two bags of fluids through the IV, and many more contractions, the nurse checked me again and I was dilated to 3. This was as of 9:30 AM and they made the decision at this point to keep me there and put me in the line up for a c-section that day. WOW! We weren't expecting this and it was really really exciting!
During those couple hours of taking in fluids and not knowing if they were going to keep us or send us home it was tough. I would have felt really embarrassed if it wasn't real labor and was just dehydration and we got sent home. I really wanted to stay..but I was also really hungry! I had eaten a light dinner the night before because I wasn't feeling well. When I woke up suspecting I was in labor, I didn't eat anything because I'd been told I had to fast for 8 hours before the c-section. So, our joke during those hours of waiting was that I would either get a baby or get breakfast and at that point, I wasn't sure which sounded better! However, I was quite relieved and very excited, and forgot all about breakfast, when the nurse confirmed that we got to have our baby that day!
Then we had to wait. and wait. and wait some more. That same day there was already one scheduled c-section and I was then 1 of 3 more women who had shown up that morning in labor and with c-sections scheduled for later in the week. It was a busy day for the hospital staff that day! There was a full moon the night before, and we talked with the nurse about how full moons did tend to result in busier hospitals. A nurse brought Kyle his scrubs at 10:00 and said the OB was starting another c-section right then and that I was next. And then we waited some more.
The contractions got worse and worse, and by about noon I was starting to lose patience and was really just wanting to get this show on the road. As it turns out, the OB was ready to go but the anesthesiologist had been called to another part of the hospital to handle something else, so we were waiting on him to come back before it was my turn. Finally, at 2:00 they came to get us and I walked to the operating room, got my spinal block, got prepped for the surgery, and then they let Kyle come into the room. The spinal block worked beautifully, I couldn't feel anything at all. (a significant improvement over my first c-section, where I could feel everything since the epidural wasn't working on my right side) Kyle did an excellent job keeping me distracted and holding my hand and just being that rock solid presence he always is.
At 2:36 PM on April 5 I got to hear Jacob cry for the very first time, and wow what a cry it was! I said many times during my pregnancy that I had a feeling Jacob was going to be much more demanding than Kaleb was as a baby, that he wouldn't hesitate to make his needs known and to share his displeasure at anything he didn't like...that cry was my first confirmation. So persistent! And for the first couple days he had this squeak sound he would make while crying, it was quite cute :)
After the docs had me all put back together, I was wheeled into the recovery room and they gave me Jacob to try and nurse. He latched on like a little champ and fed like he was a 3 month old, not a newborn. It was such a great moment!
One thing I struggled with in deciding to have a repeat c-section was that I wouldn't have that "honey, it's time" moment of going into labor on my own. I didn't really get that with Kaleb either, since we had the induction scheduled and I didn't start having contractions until a couple hours before that appointment. Jacob came 4 days before the scheduled c-section, and so I got to have that experience of contractions in the middle of the night, and then waking my husband up to tell him our baby was coming. I am really thankful to have had that experience in my life, one of those moments you dream about and that has now come true for me. And, I managed to "get to" labor for 12 hours even with the scheduled c-section, thanks Jacob! ;)
And now we are a family of four, and I'll post more in the coming days on how that transition has been going :)
On Wednesday (4/4) I woke up feeling off, got in the shower and had to stop the shower early because I was feeling nauseous. I planned to rest on the couch, and then go into work a little late, thinking it was just being tired from pregnancy. Then Kaleb woke up and was clearly sick. So, my plan changed to just working from home with Kaleb. We got through the day but it was rough, all I wanted to do was rest.
As far as the pregnancy was going, I'd been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks, and I was experiencing a lot of aches in my lower abdomen, just tired and tender and really done with carrying Jacob around!
I went to bed Wednesday night and then at 2:00 AM I woke up in the middle of a contraction. I turned over and figured it was just a particularly strong Braxton Hicks, but about 10 minutes later I got hit by another one. I stayed in bed until 2:30 and then got up. The contractions got closer together rather quickly. By 3 I was pretty sure these were real contractions so I downloaded an app on my phone to track them and by 4 had determined a pattern of about a minute long and averaging 6 minutes apart.
At this point I was pretty well convinced I was in labor, so I took a shower, folded some laundry, and paced around the house. The contractions weren't slowing down at all, instead they were getting more intense and closer together. At 5 I decided I should probably wake Kyle up, so he wouldn't feel rushed if we decided to go in to the hospital. I woke him up, told him I'd been awake since 2 with contractions and that they were getting closer together and more intense. I called my doctor's office and left a message for the on call OB that I was contracting about 5 minutes apart at this point. She called back pretty quickly and confirmed that we should be heading to the hospital.
We called the Remsburgs at 6, I packed a bag for Kaleb, and Kyle took Kaleb over there at 6:30 then came back to get me and we went up to St. Mary's. They put me in a triage room and hooked me up to all the monitors. The first step was to give me a bunch of fluids, since dehydration can sometimes bring on false labor pain. The nurse checked me and I had dilated to 1 cm before we arrived. After two hours, two bags of fluids through the IV, and many more contractions, the nurse checked me again and I was dilated to 3. This was as of 9:30 AM and they made the decision at this point to keep me there and put me in the line up for a c-section that day. WOW! We weren't expecting this and it was really really exciting!
During those couple hours of taking in fluids and not knowing if they were going to keep us or send us home it was tough. I would have felt really embarrassed if it wasn't real labor and was just dehydration and we got sent home. I really wanted to stay..but I was also really hungry! I had eaten a light dinner the night before because I wasn't feeling well. When I woke up suspecting I was in labor, I didn't eat anything because I'd been told I had to fast for 8 hours before the c-section. So, our joke during those hours of waiting was that I would either get a baby or get breakfast and at that point, I wasn't sure which sounded better! However, I was quite relieved and very excited, and forgot all about breakfast, when the nurse confirmed that we got to have our baby that day!
Then we had to wait. and wait. and wait some more. That same day there was already one scheduled c-section and I was then 1 of 3 more women who had shown up that morning in labor and with c-sections scheduled for later in the week. It was a busy day for the hospital staff that day! There was a full moon the night before, and we talked with the nurse about how full moons did tend to result in busier hospitals. A nurse brought Kyle his scrubs at 10:00 and said the OB was starting another c-section right then and that I was next. And then we waited some more.
The contractions got worse and worse, and by about noon I was starting to lose patience and was really just wanting to get this show on the road. As it turns out, the OB was ready to go but the anesthesiologist had been called to another part of the hospital to handle something else, so we were waiting on him to come back before it was my turn. Finally, at 2:00 they came to get us and I walked to the operating room, got my spinal block, got prepped for the surgery, and then they let Kyle come into the room. The spinal block worked beautifully, I couldn't feel anything at all. (a significant improvement over my first c-section, where I could feel everything since the epidural wasn't working on my right side) Kyle did an excellent job keeping me distracted and holding my hand and just being that rock solid presence he always is.
At 2:36 PM on April 5 I got to hear Jacob cry for the very first time, and wow what a cry it was! I said many times during my pregnancy that I had a feeling Jacob was going to be much more demanding than Kaleb was as a baby, that he wouldn't hesitate to make his needs known and to share his displeasure at anything he didn't like...that cry was my first confirmation. So persistent! And for the first couple days he had this squeak sound he would make while crying, it was quite cute :)
After the docs had me all put back together, I was wheeled into the recovery room and they gave me Jacob to try and nurse. He latched on like a little champ and fed like he was a 3 month old, not a newborn. It was such a great moment!
One thing I struggled with in deciding to have a repeat c-section was that I wouldn't have that "honey, it's time" moment of going into labor on my own. I didn't really get that with Kaleb either, since we had the induction scheduled and I didn't start having contractions until a couple hours before that appointment. Jacob came 4 days before the scheduled c-section, and so I got to have that experience of contractions in the middle of the night, and then waking my husband up to tell him our baby was coming. I am really thankful to have had that experience in my life, one of those moments you dream about and that has now come true for me. And, I managed to "get to" labor for 12 hours even with the scheduled c-section, thanks Jacob! ;)
And now we are a family of four, and I'll post more in the coming days on how that transition has been going :)
Monday, April 2, 2012
One more week!!!
In one week from now I am going to be holding my newborn son (see previous post). That has been playing through my head all day today, I just can't believe it is so close!
I've got some warring emotions going on around the idea of bringing this baby home and forever altering the perfect little world we have with Mommy, Daddy, and Kaleb. I find myself getting sad thinking about how this is the last week where it will be just the three of us together. How, very very soon, Kaleb is going to have to share his Mommy and Daddy. I'm not sitting here wringing my hands over it or anything, but just surfing some pretty crazy emotional and hormonal surges here. I keep telling myself that he is getting a new brother, that this beautiful world we have created as a family of three is just going to get bigger, better, and more amazing with the addition of another member. But I for sure am having weepy moments over all these "lasts" that will be happening this week. I think it is okay to be somewhat sad to have this stage of our family's life coming to an end. Just as much as it is okay to be really excited and happy for the next chapter to begin.
On the exciting front, the nursery is done! It is baby jungle theme and I absolutely love it. I got my green for the walls like I have wanted for so long, and it looks really good with the decor I picked out. All of Jacob's clothes (new things from the girls at work and Kaleb's hand-me-downs) are washed, folded, and organized into his dresser/changing table. I had saved the newborn and size 1 diapers that Kaleb grew out of before he could wear them, they are all set up in the diaper caddy thing that came with the room accessories. It feels great to have that room all set up and situated and to the "Just Add Baby" stage :)
Kaleb also had his room completely redone this weekend. He has a twin size bed now, it looks so big in there! And he looks so small! A friend asked if I was having a hard time with Kaleb not having a baby room anymore, with all the big boy stuff he has, and I think it would be a lot tougher if we weren't also creating a new nursery at the same time. There is nothing 'baby' about his room now, he has his big boy bed and new furniture, including a night stand with a lamp he can turn on and off himself. We also got a toy and book storage shelf thing so all his toys are rounded up and in his room now, super nice for our living room! We decorated his room with a transportation theme, including Thomas. He has Thomas the Tank sheets and I bought a wall decal kit so all his favorite engines are on the wall by his bed. The rest of the room has trucks, planes, construction equipment, and all other things that go. I am hoping to make him a little reading nook in there next to his book shelf, and still also have an entire blank wall to decorate. Currently I'm thinking a big map on the wall, colorful and educational and fun :)
It is so crazy that this is the last week of being a family of three. I can't wait for the next phase of our family to get kicked off. At the same time, I am soaking up every single moment of this week, and embracing my sentimental emotions over it being the end of an era.
I've got some warring emotions going on around the idea of bringing this baby home and forever altering the perfect little world we have with Mommy, Daddy, and Kaleb. I find myself getting sad thinking about how this is the last week where it will be just the three of us together. How, very very soon, Kaleb is going to have to share his Mommy and Daddy. I'm not sitting here wringing my hands over it or anything, but just surfing some pretty crazy emotional and hormonal surges here. I keep telling myself that he is getting a new brother, that this beautiful world we have created as a family of three is just going to get bigger, better, and more amazing with the addition of another member. But I for sure am having weepy moments over all these "lasts" that will be happening this week. I think it is okay to be somewhat sad to have this stage of our family's life coming to an end. Just as much as it is okay to be really excited and happy for the next chapter to begin.
On the exciting front, the nursery is done! It is baby jungle theme and I absolutely love it. I got my green for the walls like I have wanted for so long, and it looks really good with the decor I picked out. All of Jacob's clothes (new things from the girls at work and Kaleb's hand-me-downs) are washed, folded, and organized into his dresser/changing table. I had saved the newborn and size 1 diapers that Kaleb grew out of before he could wear them, they are all set up in the diaper caddy thing that came with the room accessories. It feels great to have that room all set up and situated and to the "Just Add Baby" stage :)
Kaleb also had his room completely redone this weekend. He has a twin size bed now, it looks so big in there! And he looks so small! A friend asked if I was having a hard time with Kaleb not having a baby room anymore, with all the big boy stuff he has, and I think it would be a lot tougher if we weren't also creating a new nursery at the same time. There is nothing 'baby' about his room now, he has his big boy bed and new furniture, including a night stand with a lamp he can turn on and off himself. We also got a toy and book storage shelf thing so all his toys are rounded up and in his room now, super nice for our living room! We decorated his room with a transportation theme, including Thomas. He has Thomas the Tank sheets and I bought a wall decal kit so all his favorite engines are on the wall by his bed. The rest of the room has trucks, planes, construction equipment, and all other things that go. I am hoping to make him a little reading nook in there next to his book shelf, and still also have an entire blank wall to decorate. Currently I'm thinking a big map on the wall, colorful and educational and fun :)
It is so crazy that this is the last week of being a family of three. I can't wait for the next phase of our family to get kicked off. At the same time, I am soaking up every single moment of this week, and embracing my sentimental emotions over it being the end of an era.
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