Sick baby. :(

Bean has caught his first cold. He was pretty cranky on Monday, then even crankier yesterday evening. Eventually it came to bedtime and I had a hard time getting him to sleep. After I finally thought I got him to sleep, he was crying over the monitor every half hour or so. I was already exhausted from the night before because we decided to put him in his crib to sleep for the first time that night and it felt very weird to me not having him in our room, so I couldn't go to sleep. When I finally did sleep, he wanted to wake up twice to eat. So I was already exhausted and then we had last night's disaster. Up every half hour or so until 4am! Nursing, rocking, swaddling, un-swaddling, pacifier - nothing worked! Finally Hubby thought he was congested and I then heard it too. We brought him down to the swing at 4:30am and he finally slept 2.5 hours. Needless to say, I ran on all of about 3 hours of sleep today with one short nap that was interrupted by phone calls. Bean sounds much worse tonight, so we now have saline nasal spray and Boogie Wipes on hand. I feel bad for my poor baby! :( He needs suctioning too, but the nurse said not to do it more than 3-4 times a day or we would cause nasal swelling. I really hope this clears up fast!
Any recommendations for a baby with a cold that worked for you?

Where's the sanitizer?

Well, Bean is 12 weeks old today, and we've hit the stage where everything goes into his mouth! Hands, our fingers, toys, whatever he can grab! His new thing is grabbing my hand and trying to put my fingers in his mouth during diaper changes on the changing table. Doesn't make diaper changes easy! We now have to clean his hands more along with other things that go in his mouth. We also started introducing teething rings because he has begun chewing on said hands, not just sucking on them, and he's such a drool machine now! Teething starting maybe?
Here's how we spent this morning's diaper change:

He's growing so fast!

Baby Laughs

Baby giggles and laughs is one of the best sounds ever.  You can’t help but at least smile, if not giggle right along with them.  As I said, Bean has started laughing now.  He doesn’t do it a whole lot yet, but when he does, it’s awesome!  So as promised, here’s his laughing video!   :)

 

Hope you enjoyed this and smiled just as much as I do every time I watch it or hear him laugh in person!

There's an app for that...

I love that blogger released the iPhone app! As I said, I don't get to sit down at a real computer much these days, but I am constantly using Hubby's iPhone for facebook and the Internet in general since it's handheld and I can type on it with one hand. Apparently this is a new app, just released the other day - it makes me happy! Now I might be able to blog a little more often!
Fortunately I can add photos from the phone with the app, but unfortunately not video, so you'll have to wait a little longer for that.
We're off to look at cars now. More on that later.

Bean Update!

Bean keeps me away from my computer and other things a lot more than I’d like, but I love him with all my heart and time with him is time well spent!   :)  But since I haven’t updated much about him on here recently, other than some pictures, I wanted to try to get an update in now.

He is 11 weeks today.  He will be 3 months old on the 23rd.  At his 2 month well visit, which was actually done at 2 months and 1 week, he weighed 10 lb. 7 oz. and measured 22 1/4 in.  He’s in the 25th percentile for length and weight and all his measurements are proportionate.

He is a colicky/fussy, high need baby.  We can only seem to get him to nap in his swing in the morning, and towards evening and night he won’t settle or fall asleep unless he is being held and rocked or moved somehow.  He needs movement.  It gets exhausting sometimes.

I am currently breastfeeding, whether he gets it straight from me or from a bottle.  Breastfeeding was quite a struggle for the first 4-6 weeks.  I wanted to quit everyday, but kept going, and got the help I needed from a lactation consultant and the La Leche League.  Now it’s going so well that he doesn’t want to take a bottle!  We’re working on that, since I’m not home Tuesday nights and Hubby and I would like some date nights every now and then.  He still eats every 2 hours, pretty much on the dot.  Once in a while we’ll get a 2.5 hour stretch from him and once in a blue moon a 3 hour stretch.  He will eat, then be awake for a while, then get fussy for sleep.  Naps still occur pretty much between every feeding, but only last 20-40 minutes, lately more on the 20 minute side.  He does sleep pretty well at night though, so if little napping during the day means sleep at night, I’ll take it!  His bedtime is still anywhere from 10-11, and then he’ll wake up once anywhere between 3-5:30, then back down again until 7:30-8:30.  We still swaddle him and he’s still sleeping in the napper attachment for the Pack N’ Play.  Not sure when we will try other sleeping arrangements yet.

He hates tummy time, but holds his head up on his own pretty well since he only really likes to be held up at your shoulder, which forces him to gain better control of those muscles.  He is not rolling at all yet – not sure when that will start happening.  We get sounds out of him, and he smiles responsively and has been doing so for a few weeks now.  New thing?  He laughs!  Tuesday was the first real laughs – he woke up at 4am for a feeding, and fell right back to sleep.  I was still holding him since we have to keep him upright for a little after feedings, and in his sleep he started laughing!  Hubby was awake to hear it too, then Tuesday evening, Hubby got him to do it when he was awake (video to come – not sure if I have to deal with that at the moment, my dinner is waiting for me, and Bean makes it hard to eat dinner while it’s still hot!).  His smiles and now his laughs make my whole day!

People ask if he’s a “good” baby.  Of course he’s a good baby – he may not be an easy one, but he’s a baby, they’re all good!  He’s still fussy and high needs, but we are coping with it a lot better, and hopefully he will start to outgrow that soon.  I’m just wondering when he will start to take longer/less naps and eat more in one feeding to hopefully start stretching feedings out!  But again, if more frequent feedings in the day mean more sleep at night, I’ll take it!

I am so in love with him, and even though he’s a fussier baby, I enjoy him so much and would do it all again – but not for another 4 years or so!   ;)

Busy, busy, busy

Sorry for my absence in blogging lately.  I’ve been quite busy being a new mommy and all, especially because I have a colicky/fussy/high needs baby to take care of, I just don’t get much spare time, and when I do I have been busy with other things – like trying to make my house look like a house and not a train wreck! 

But here is a quick update on Bean.  He has gained over 2 pounds since birth, he smiles a lot now (not just for passing gas either!), he does not like tummy time, and he seems to need to be constantly on the move.  The vacuum cleaner has been a great soothing machine, so either I’m going to have to buy a new vacuum by the end of the year, or I will have the cleanest floors on the whole block!  He sleeps pretty well at night, but I don’t want to jynx it, so I never expect a good night’s sleep, and just am happy when I get one.  It’s soon time to feed him now, so here are some pictures to finish off this post.  I will blog as often as I can, but lately it’s hard and I don’t get much time.  I do have things to post, it’s just being allowed to sit down at a computer and do it!

And my most favorite recent one, taken just yesterday:

I have even more, but some are still in cameras, and I must go check on Bean – he’s outside with the in-laws, but it’s about feeding time!  I can’t believe I have a 7 week old already!

Birth Story

I would say I’m sorry for my lack of blogging lately, but I really don’t feel I should need to apologize as a brand new mother of my first baby!  I finally had a few minutes here to create a post, so I’m taking advantage to share the birth story with you.

On Wednesday morning, June 22nd, at around 7ish, I thought my water broke.  I could have sworn my water broke.  I called the doctor and told them what I was experiencing, and was sent in to the hospital to get checked out.  The nurse tested the fluid and said it was positive for amniotic fluid (she tested from an external source, however).  Apparently washing with soap can cause a false positive.  The doctor checked me and said I was not leaking fluid, and I wasn’t very dilated or having contractions that I could feel.  He did order an US to check my fluid level, because if it was low he would have kept me there.  My fluid level was good, so I was sent home.

By noon that day I started to feel back pain that I realized was actually contractions, but they were coming very far apart and sporadically.  As the evening progressed, they started to come a little closer together and were unmistakable as contractions.  I was having all back labor.  At first it wasn’t so bad because I used to get bad backaches and knew this feeling, so I was able to handle them.  By 1:30am they started coming 5 minutes apart.  I waited the hour to call the doctor to see if they stayed at 5 minutes apart and steady, so at 2:30am I was calling the on-call doctor and being sent into L&D again.  I was checked and monitored, and I was sure enough having steady contractions, and I was just about 2 cm dilated, so I was admitted.  I was still handling the contractions well, but once they got my IV in (oh my God!  they tried 4 times, and bruised me badly!) they started Pitocin.  By around 6am I was dilated at 4-5 cm, and still handling contractions well.  After this, the times get a little fuzzy for me, but later in the morning I asked for Nubaine to take the edge of the contractions.  Since I hadn’t slept since 7am the day before, the doctor also ordered another drug for me which knocked me out.  I slept quite a bit and actually had trouble waking up.  Good stuff!  When I finally did wake up, the contractions were coming closer together and with the high dose of Pitocin I was on, I asked for the epidural.  I was 7 cm dilated when I finally got it at 12:45pm, after waiting almost 45 minutes from when I asked for it, and I was so scared it wasn’t going to work properly.  It finally kicked in and worked probably a little too well!  I couldn’t move my legs on my own for the life of me!  At some point I know they put an internal monitor on the baby for his heart rate, and they did give me an antibiotic since there was question of me leaking fluid, but I’m fuzzy on when that all happened.  The doctor also had to break my water – no mistake in what that felt like now!  By 3pm I was fully dilated and ready to push.  They did have to knock back the epidural a little so I could push better, but it worked out great.  I felt some of the contraction to know when to push, but I didn’t feel any pain down below.  So, push I did…for 3 hours.  He kept checking my progress, saying he’d let me go a little while longer, but baby Bean was somewhat stuck in there.  It didn’t come down to a c-section, thankfully, but I was exhausted, and I was feeling sick, so at one point we thought we might have to use a vacuum assist to get him out.  Luckily my last few pushes were good enough and pushed him right out quicker than they could even stop me to suction his mouth and nose!  Bean was born right on his due date at 6:13pm.  See the previous post for his stats.

I did have internal tearing and lots of internal bruising.  I apparently lost a decent amount of blood and had to be given 2 injections of medications for the blood loss.  I was also packed up and catheterized for a good 24 hours due to the bleeding, so unfortunately I could not get out of bed and missed out on Bean’s first bath and such in the hospital.  I am feeling much better these days, but still not 100%.  My tailbone was bruised and that still bothers me when I am up on my feet for too long or when I sit on certain chairs. 

So, I had a rough delivery, baby was born with a conehead from being stuck, but he’s worth it and I love him so much!   :)

Here he is!