8 Weeks

My little boy is 8 weeks old! And we've had lots of fun! I just love being able to stay at home with Tyler during the day, and although I have moments where I'm ancy to get out of the house or do something else other than feed the baby all day, it is so fulfilling to raise my baby! We are just the best of friends... I never thought a baby could be my best friend, but seriously, he is giving Jordon and run for his money :-) And I can't believe what a nerd I've turned into. I think my voice may permanently change to a few octaves higher because of all the baby talk I do all day and I seriously think I may consider a job as a music editor on Sesame Street because recently I've come up with new hits such as "Bath Time for Baby" and the classic "The Poo-poo King."

And sometimes I miss the easy-ness of life before baby, like being able to eat dessert leisurely after dinner, but I don't think I could love Tyler anymore, and life would not be the same without him! The other night Jordon handed him over to me to feed, and at that moment I realized I had been missing him for the 5 hours we had been sleeping and was so excited to have him in my arms again!!

Speaking of sleeping, Tyler has actually been doing really well!! On the night before my birthday he slept SEVEN hours straights!! I actually had to wake up in the middle of the night to pump, and was sure he'd wake up right as I got in bed wanting to eat, but I was surprised when I woke up with the sun just starting to rise and he was just starting to stir. And the night of my birthday he slept 6 hours! Since then he is averaging about 5 hours, then he eats, then sleeps another 2-3 hours before it's time to wake up, so we are very happy parents! He's still not doing great on napping during the day (he only seems to want to nap for about 30 minutes max) but I'd rather him sleep well at night than during the day if I had to choose!

And he's also been behaving well enough for me to get back into an exercise routine (Thank goodness!!!). After I have lunch I feed him, we play for about ten minutes, then I put him in his swing in the basement and he watches me do about 10 minutes of my workout then falls asleep, usually long enough for me to finish the workout and shower. Good boy! He knows momma would go crazy if she didn't get to work out :-) I've been doing the Insanity workout, which I did last summer, and I already feel MUCH more in shape than ever. I even have my abs back! I'd like to be running more, especially because Jordon and Tyler got me new Sacony Kinvara 2s for my bday, but it is hard to find time since Jordon works 9am-6:30pm right now, and I can't take Tyler in the jogging stroller just yet, but I'm hoping soon Jordon will have more time to watch him and I'll be able to take Tyler in the stroller sometime. My parents got me a BOB running stroller, probably the best stroller you can get, so I am SO excited to use it!!

So life is going great! I love mommyhood.

And as I mentioned last time, Jordon and I are still in the midst of the Medela photo contest!! If you haven't voted, click the link and vote! And if you HAVE voted, please pass the link along to your friends/family/co-workers/etc!! I'm 14 votes behind first place so I need some votes!!!

http://www.medelabreastfeedingus.com/keep-the-connection-photo-detail/1585

6 Weeks!

It's been two weeks since my last update and boy has a lot happened! First of all, I've given up ice cream.... and milk, and cheese, and dairy completely. We knew Tyler was sensitive to dairy awhile back because he was so fussy after feedings, and giving up dairy seemed to do the trick, but I still ate some cheese and products with small amounts of dairy in them (like pancakes, some cereals and granola bars, etc). Well after one weekend where I had pizza 3 times, and a few too many "just a sip"s of a milkshake Jordon got, Tyler started to be very fussy and had (TMI) green poop. Well, after completely cutting all dairy out, it seems that Tyler is much happier, and his poop is now a normal color haha. But it leaves me with very few food choices! You wouldn't believe how many foods have dairy in them!! I'm pretty much living off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pasta these days.

Also, Tyler has hit some major milestones!! He's now smiling in response to us and he is "coo"ing! It is the most precious thing! Sometimes I'll ask him to tell me a story, and he'll give a "coo" and a "ga" and it makes my heart melt. And lastly, he is still growing like a weed. He's starting to fit into some of his 0-3 month clothing! As sad as it is for me to start packing away some of his newborn onsies, I'm excited to have a larger wardrobe to choose from when dressing him.

On a semi-related note, I've entered a photo contest on the Medela webpage to win a VERY nice double pump (which would come in handy when I eventually go back to work!) and some other breastfeeding accessories. I'd really appreciate it if you all could vote for my photo! You just need to click this link: http://www.medelabreastfeedingus.com/keep-the-connection-photo-detail/1585 , then enter your email address, and they will send you a confirmation email with a link to click to confirm your vote. You can vote once per email address, so have your friends/family/significant others/etc vote with their emails please!! Thank you in advance!!

1 month!

Our precious bundle of joy is officially one month old! And boy has time absolutely flown by! We moved down to our new house in Ferrum on the 14th and have been adjusting to life here ever since. We've had a lot of unpacking to do, and still do have a ton to do, but I made it my first priority to put the nursery all together! Since I wasn't able to do this during the final weeks of my pregnancy, I was more than anxious to unleash my nesting instincts now. Of course, it is much, much harder to spend time nesting when you have a little one to take care of.

It has really surprised me just how difficult and time-consuming it is to take care of a baby! Don't get me wrong, because I've absolutely loved every minute of it, but it is definitely hard work! Jordon heads to work at 9 in the morning, and the next thing I know he's coming home at 3 and I feel like I haven't done anything except feed the baby all day. At least I never get bored while I'm home!

Tyler has been growing and growing like a weed! We weighed him the other day (well, we weighed Jordon on the scale, then weighed Jordon holding Tyler, and then subtracted... very precise, I know) and he was 9 lb 6 oz. My little boy is just growing! He still won't fit into any clothes other than newborns, which I both enjoy (because I don't want him to grow up too fast!), but is frustrating because we have SO many cute little outfits for him that are 0-3 month sized. Right now it's just onsies and pajamas for him! He's also developing so quickly. He's been able to hold his head up and turn it from side to side when he's on his tummy for a couple weeks now, and I swear any day now he's going to roll over! He tries SO hard to flip over when we lay him down, I would be surprised if he isn't rolling around by next month. And he focuses a lot more on our faces when we play with him... he even gives a couple babbles every now and then, but I can't wait till he starts revving up that baby talk... I just love it!

I finally got back into running this week! I had to start out really easy since I have gone for a run longer than 3 miles in 10 months haha... and I hadn't run at all for at least the last 3 months so I have much getting back into shape to do! I've been doing 15-20 minute runs with some walking at the end and they've been going well. My lungs were definitely burning, but I'm not sure if it was from me being out of shape, or from the 3 bras I had to wear in order to contain my new mommy-sized chest haha. Despite that, it felt good to break a sweat from working out rather than from waddling around with 7 lbs of baby in me.

So overall we're enjoying our new life with out little baby in it. We've been very blessed to have a beautiful new home to live in, and a lot of new, generous friends bringing us meals almost every night. We've enjoyed taking Tyler for walks around the campus in the evenings, and I thinkw e are really going to like our new life here!

2 Weeks!

My sweet little boy turned 2 weeks old on Thursday! Time is just flying by and he is just growing and growing like a weed. I have definitely come to the realization that parenthood is HARD, but I am still loving every day of it.

Breastfeeding has got to be the hardest part of this crazy adventure. Since I am the only one who can feed Tyler, I have to be awake on demand for his feedings. Sometimes I think Jordon uses this to his advantage, especially when Tyler is wailing at 3am and Jordon brings him over to my side of the bed saying "... I think he's hungry." Haha, just kidding. But I do have to feed that little guy every 2-3 hours, so it gets VERY exhausting. Thankfully, he's getting a little better at sleeping at night, so he will normally go 4 hours between feedings and sleep pretty well. And I know I'm helping him grow big and strong so it's totally worth it!

We took Tyler to the pediatrician for his 2 week check up on Thursday. Much to our and the doctor's surprise, he weighed 7 lb 10 oz... he gained 1 lb 3 oz in 9 days! I must have magic breastmilk or something. Everything else was looking perfect as well... the doctor was very impressed with how much Tyler moved! He was just squirming about on the table, not crying, just content as can be. And the doctor kept saying how cute Tyler was... but obviously that didn't surprise me :-)

As for me, I am feeling pretty much recovered from my pregnancy. At 10 days postpartum I had gotten down to my pre-pregnancy weight, and today I was actually 2 lb less than that! Thank you breastfeeding. The only thing physically bugging me these days (other than being tired of course) is my back hurting... I think I was so used to having all the extra weight in the front, my body doesn't know what to do now that it's gone. Hopefully that will adjust itself here soon!

This whole pregnancy, birth, and parenthood journey has been quite the adventure, but definitely something I'm excited to do again. People ask me all the time if, after having gone through all of this, I still want to have 4 kids and I tell them, absolutely, maybe more :-) As hard as everything was, it has been the most rewarding experience and I am all for round two!.. in a year or so of course ;-)

40 Weeks/1 Week

So yesterday my offical "due date" came and went and I was SO thrilled that I had already had my baby boy for a week! This week had flown by, and it makes me nervous for how quickly the rest of my little one's life is going to go by!

Jordon, Tyler and I arrived home from the hospital on Sunday night, and were lucky enough to have plenty of friends and family bringing meals and other fun gifts by all week. Jordon and I have been busy trying to take care of our newest addition, as well as entertain plenty of visitors who want to see our little man!

Everyone keeps asking us if we're getting any sleep, and honestly we really aren't, but I could not care less about it because I have this awesome incentive to stay up. There is nothing like rocking Tyler all night long and having him look up at me with those baby blue eyes :-) Jordon and I have been trying to rotate shifts of staying up, but it is pretty hard to do since I'm breastfeeding and have to be an on-demand restaurant for our little boy haha. The other night I actually fell asleep while feeding him, and woke up about 25 minutes later and he was still going at it and looking at me like "Yeah, I saw that Mom." He just cracks me up. We're also enjoying dressing him up in cute little outfits, however we realized that we were not quite as prepared as we thought we'd be in the clothing department. I was just convinced we'd have a big boy, so I didn't buy ANY newborn clothes. Thankfully, we had gotten some newborn onesies as gifts, and Luke and Jenna had given us a bunch of newborn clothes that little Lucas had either worn once or never fit into (because he actually was a big boy at birth!), so we've been able to get by. But compared to the amount of 0-3 month and 3-6 month clothing we have, we barely have anything for out little one!

We took Tyler to the doctor on Tuesday for his newborn check-up, which went well. We LOVE the pediatrician we are using (we stuck with the same one who saw him in the hospital). Tyler was looking perfectly healthy, but did loose a lot of weight. He was 7lb 5 oz at birth, and had dropped to 6lb 14oz at discharge. Newborns typically loose 6 to 10oz from their birth weight, so it wasn't a big deal. However, when they weighed him at his appointment he weighed 6 lb 3 oz, which the doctor said was more weight loss than he'd like to see, however it wasn't abnormal for a first-time breastfeeding mom to have a baby loose a little more because of how hard it is to get the hang of feeding them! Thankfully, since then, Tyler has been eating SO much better, so we expect he will have definitely gained some weight when we go to see the pediatrician again next week.

So our first week in parenthood has definitely been a learning experience, and exhausting, but Jordon and I are loving every minute of it. The best part of my day is holding Tyler and I'm so happy I get to do it so often :-)

Happy Birthday Jordon Tyler Jr!

So after 39 weeks and 1 day, the moment I had been waiting for finally arrived, and I am so pleased to be able to share our wonderful birth story with you all!

On the 21st, I started to have some mild contractions around 10pm, but they were very similar to the false labor I'd had in the past, so I pretty much ignored them. Around 11:30pm, Jordon and I went to bed, but I was having a hard time sleeping, so I decided to time the contractions, which were pretty consistently 5.5-6.5 minutes apart. I couldn't sleep so I went downstairs to watch TV, and the contractions didn't get any closer together or more intense, but actually got more irregular, so at that point I pretty much convinced myself I wasn't going into real labor. I finally fell asleep around 3:30am, but kept waking up every 15 minutes or so, and finally decided to try to go back up to bed around 4:15am. After another hour of not sleeping, I decided to get out of bed. The contractions I had in the past always went away with sleep, but since I couldn't sleep, I was having a hard time figuring out if these were real or false labor (especially because I didn't want to get my hopes up!).

Around 5:30am, I decided to go for a walk and thought if I was in real labor, the walk would progress the labor and make the contractions worse, and if it was false labor, maybe it would just subside. Well they eased up a lot while I was walking, but were still there after the walk, so around 9am I called the OB office and asked what they thought... Since I had an appointment already scheduled for 1:40 that afternoon, they told me I could come in early and get check for any progress, but they thought waiting until 1:40 would be fine; I decided to wait.

On our way to the appointment, Jordon noticed my contractions were coming pretty regularly at 5-6 minutes apart, but I still wasn't in too much pain, so I wasn't convinced I was in labor. We had brought our hospital bag with us just in case, but I thought we were just jinxing ourselves ;-) Well low and behold, at my appointment, the midwife checked me and was shocked because I was just shy of 7cm dialated, 80% effaced, and IN LABOR.

We made our way over to the hospital and checked in at about 3pm. They monitored me and baby for about 15 minutes, everything looked good, so they let me disconnect and do whatever. Jordon and I did laps around the labor and delivery floor because my contractions were barley noticeable if I was moving but were getting a little more painful when I was just sitting in bed. My midwife told us the nurses didn't believe I was already 7cm along because I was too happy haha.

By 6:30pm, my water still hadn't broken on its own and when she checked me I was still only 7cm, but now 90% effaced. She decided to break my water, and monitor me for another 15 minutes. By the time the 15 minutes was up my contractions were already much more painful and intense. I wanted to walk the floor some more to help speed up my progression, but by the time I got disconnected from the monitor and walked out of my room, I was in so much pain. I had to stop walking whenever I had a contraction and Jordon told me (after the fact) that I would dig my forehead into his shoulder haha. So we only ended up walking for about 20 minutes before heading back into the room.

I decided to labor some in the jacuzzi tubs they have in each room, which was a great decision. It definitely didn't take away any of the pain from the contractions, but definitely made it a lot easier to cope with the pain. I stayed in for about an hour and a half then got out. I got hooked back up to monitors to check on baby, and my pain was just awful, but the baby's heart rate was steady and looked great the entire time.

My midwife came in and had me switch to a position laying on my side to labor. My contractions were about 2-3 minutes apart now, and very intense. Jordon was an awesome coach, by my side the whole time, which helped a ton. Our midwife stayed in the room from the point on as well and rubbed my legs and hips. Finally my contractions were absolutely unbearable, to the point that I would just writhe in pain at the peak of them and wanted to push so bad, so the midwife checked me and I was just shy of 10cm. She let me push once, which finished dialating me, so we could start the real pushing.

I had originally planned to push while standing or squatting, so I could use gravity to my advantage, but #1 I was in way to much pain to stand up and #2 my midwife suggested I push while laying on my side and I was in too much pain not to agree with her. I pushed for a little over an hour, and finally his head and shoulders came out. At that point, my midwife had me reach down and pull out my own baby! He came straight up to my chest where he stayed for the next 15 minutes and Jordon cut the cord. Then they weighed him (7lb 5 oz) and checked his vitals, then gave him back to me. Apparently I was saying the craziest things (I guess because of all those hormones/endorphins?) like "Oh my gosh, that hurt so bad!" and "I can't believe he's ours to keep!" I can barely remember those moments after the birth, other than the intense joy of finally having my baby! Jordon and I were able to keep him with us for over an hour before they took him to the nursery to be checked out, and after that we had him stay in our room during our entire stay other than during his circumcision and the pediatrician rounds.

Jordon and I were just so impressed with the entire experience. We were thrilled that I was able to do it without any pain meds as planned, but it would not have been possible had I been confined to one position in bed with constant monitoring like a lot of hospitals still make you do. Also, our midwife (who was the one we had hoped would be on call when we delivered!) was just amazing, giving me a lot of suggestions for dealing with pain. She didn't even mention the word "epidural" my entire labor, and stayed with me for the entire last 3 hours of my labor. I just cannot get over how perfectly things went for us! I guess after going through such a hard pregnancy, Tyler decided I deserved a (relatively) easy labor! Right after the birth I told Jordon I was glad I did a natural birth but was definitely having c-sections with the rest of our kids! haha. It was so incredibly painful, but now, being further out from the experience, I definitely would and definitely WILL do it again. You just have so much more control and awareness over your body and it makes the whole process easier and more rewarding.


We stayed in the hospital for a little under 48 hours, and were so excited to bring Tyler home on Sunday. I definitely have not gotten much sleep, but it is worth it. The night he was born, I just held him and looked at him for 2 hours because I was just so excited to finally have him in my arms! The pediatrician at the hospital said he looked checked out great, and despite all the scares we had with him during my pregnancy, is perfectly healthy. Jordon and I could not be more thankful for that. We're slowly adjusting to life with a little one, and are spending most of our time paying attention to him. It's wild how much you're priorities change when you have a baby! This morning I had been up since 7am, and it wasn't until 10am that I realized I hadn't even eaten breakfast when that is normally the very first thing I do in the morning. But again, he is totally worth it and I wouldn't change a thing!

39 Weeks

SO I wrote this blog yesterday, and was waiting to "publish" it until I had Jordon take a belly picture for the week... well the background to the picture is RMH... I'm in labor! So ignore all the ranting about not going into labor yet:


Bah... I never thought I'd had to write a blog titled "39 weeks" but I guess the further along I am, the closer I must be to seeing Tyler. After all the false labor I had between 35 and 37 weeks and the progress I made so early on, I was SURE I would have gone into labor by now, but I guess my son is just content as can be inside momma, and I've learned my lesson about expectations for my next pregnancy!

So I've been pretty darn miserable this week. I literally cannot think about anything else during the day other than "When the heck am I going to go into labor?" or "I'm never going into labor!" It doesn't help that I stay home all day long while my darling husband is off at work! Yesterday, he took the afternoon off and drove to Winchester with me just to look around and window shop because I had a mental breakdown at lunch and HAD to get out of the house (Yes, even in the 98 degree weather!). I've been trying to distract myself with things around the house like packing for our big move, but we don't have many boxes to pack much right now, plus it is hard packing when you're not positive when you're actually moving! As an obsessive-compulsive planner and organizer, Tyler is killing me! Do you know how painful it was to write "baby?" on the 28th in my planner? haha. I would have much rather written "baby!"

I also went on a mad cleaning streak throughout my entire house on Tuesday and Wednesday. I had literally had it up to my nose with sitting on the couch and it was way too hot to go walking outside, so I popped my ipod earphones in and started cleaning like a mad woman. It all started out because there were some odds and ends in the living room that didn't belong there (as usual haha), so I started just putting "stuff" way. Then I noticed how dirty the floors were so I vacuumed every room in the house. Then I noticed how dusty it was so I dusted everything... and so on and so on until my house was spotless. I even got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the kitchen floor (it's the only way to clean linoleum in my opinion!). Anyways, if THAT didn't put me into labor, I don't know what will!

I've started to become convinced that I will never go into labor. I've tried labor cookies, spicy foods, walking (a ton!), sitting on a yoga ball, red raspberry leaf tea, etc (pretty much anything but castor oil... yuck!). Still nothing. And other than my burst of "nesting" this week, I don't think I have any of the signs of impending labor, even though I've been trying to over analyze those all week as well. The internet is dangerous haha.

I did, however, set up Tyler's pack and play! I figured it has a changing table attachment, and since we aren't setting up the crib/changing table until we move into our house in Ferrum, we'll need something to change him on! Plus, I thought it may entice him to come on out, but again, no luck! I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be for this little guy to come out, so please be sending labor thoughts my way!