Tuesday, January 31, 2012

First run

Isaac and I went for our FIRST run together today!! I bought a running stroller yesterday and a car seat attachment. Since winter isn't really here I figured we'd enjoy this warm weather. It was 43 degrees today. We didn't run much, just a mile in our neighborhood, and I wasn't even able to run the whole thing. My lungs froze and I'm out of shape, but I gotta start somewhere!!

Isaac appeared to like it, he just looked around the whole time with an indifferent look on his face. That was the longest he'd been outside and he even got some sunshine on his face :-)

Monday, January 23, 2012

Ch-ch-ch chia pet

Isaac is growing hair!!!! He's getting a little peach fuzz a top his head. I was a little worried because he had NO signs of hair in a few spots on his head but it's looking to fill in.

Also he's been rolling over more this weekend, three or four times on Saturday and a few times yesterday.

Here's a video of Isaac playing in his crib on Saturday (7 weeks)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wlFZLFavzk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Recent changes

He roller over again today!!! He's on a roll, lol! I put him on his belly and went over to my sewing machine. When I looked over a few minutes later he was on his back!!

Also he's getting some peach fuzz on his head, maybe he will have hair some day :-P

His feedings have been more spaced out today, which is a first. Closer to 3 hours vs right around 1.5/2 hours.

We also went to bed earlier last night, which meant we were up earlier. :-/ but he's been taking lots of little naps today. Must be learning lots and needing that sleep to sort it out!

Lots of changes, too fast almost.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

6 week changes

Isaac is 6 weeks old today and boy what a difference!! It's like he changed overnight!!

So Friday night I had some girlfriends over and he was a well behaved boy, awake and alert but not too fussy. He ended up staying up late, wanted to go to sleep as the last few guests left, but I kept him up so I could feed him and we'd all go straight to bed... Well he ended up keeping us up until 1:30am.

Saturday morning he was his usual bright eyed self then took a nap about the same time, around noon/1ish. Then kept sleeping.... we actually woke him about 3:30 to get ready to leave for a church group event that evening. He was awake for a short period then ended up sleeping most of the night which kinda worried us as I didn't want him to be awake during the night, but we let him sleep.

We came home around 8, still sleeping. He actually poked himself in the eye as we were leaving the party and his eye started to get puffy and red when we got home. It seemed a little irritating for him to open it so he kept his eyes closed and slept some more. He slept all through the night (well except to get up and eat of course) which we were happy for.

red eye poked

Then this morning he was so wide awake and happy. (and his eye was back to normal, yipee! It was so hard seeing it red and teary last night) He usually has these happy, awake moments throughout the day but they are short, today I noticed these periods were longer and he was more interactive. Staying awake the whole time between a few feedings. And his feedings were going over the 2 hour mark instead of just making it past an hour and a half (which also meant sore boobs for me, but I can live with that, they'll adjust)

Today was also the first Sunday we made it to church with him. He slept in the car there, woke up during worship at 11. I knew he'd be hungry about 11:30 so I fed him in the little feeding corner they have in one of the cry rooms, once he got hungry. Then we sat back out in the Sanctuary the rest of the service and he just looked around the whole time. He was such a good boy!

Also this evening he got his first bottle!! I've been pumping some and have a little supply built up, but thought we should try a bottle so the transition when I go back to work part-time isn't as hard. We had just a few ounces thawed out, ended up being 2. I hadn't labeled the first few bags so I wasn't sure. He had no problem eating those two ounces from Kyle, then he just nursed with me right after since 2 ounces was clearly not going to satisfy him :-)

It is crazy how fast he is changing, but it's so amazing to watch him play more and look at us with smiles and cooing. He is so precious!!

Here's a few pics I caught with my phone today.

Friday, January 13, 2012

A day in the life of a 5 week old

Wake up about 9 or 10 or 11... Eat
-Lay in bed with mom for a while and get lots of farts and poops out
-Go downstairs, get a fresh diaper
-Then play on the jungle gym mat thingy
-Get fussy when I'm bored or need a diaper change
-Get carried around the house for a bit until I get fussy because I'm tired
-Take a 10 minute nap
-wake up and eat
-play for a bit somewhere on my own
-get fussy need diaper change or need to be held
-after a short period of being happy I'm fussy again cuz I'm tired
-take a few 5 minute naps
-time to eat again!
All this repeats with playtime getting shorter and shorter. Then going to bed about 9 or 10, but not real sleep until 11.

:-)

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Rolling over

You wouldn't believe this... but Isaac rolled over from his belly to his back today!!! He is 5 weeks old today and when I googled this it said babies don't do this until about 4-6 months!?!

He was laying on his belly in the basement and Kyle was playing with him. We have a block that makes a crinkly sound and he was very interested in this toy. So Kyle move it a little higher and crinkled it some more. This caused Isaac to move his head back to continue looking at the block and he rolled himself to his back!

At this time I was upstairs (I missed it :-( ) but Kyle picked him up and ran upstairs to share the news!!

Although it might have been a fluke thing and not really regular yet, it was still pretty exciting! I can't wait to see it myself!

Grandma Judy's Visit

Isaac had a visit from Grandma this weekend. He loved sleeping on her and listening to her sing silly songs.

Yesterday we even went for a walk! Yes, on January 7th in Minnesota, it was warn enough for a walk!! (about 40 or so)

We loaded Isaac in the K'Tan and I put a jacket over him and we went for a short walk on the stone arch bridge.


Then we went for our first out to eat experience. Because of the timing I needed to feed him right before we ate. So I fed him in the car, carried him inside (Olive Garden) and changed his diaper. We had the car seat with us but he was wide awake. He did great though and was very content in daddy's arms during lunch. It was a success!! He usually cries when I put him in his car seat until we get him moving, but as we left the restaurant he was smiling and cooing up a storm. I think he enjoyed his first out to eat experience :-)

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Smiling Isaac

Isaac has been a smiling baby from the start but yesterday he had just finished eating and was in my arms looking up, when we were smiling back and forth he have me a nice strand of real smiles!! It was adorable. Although I didn't capture that moment on camera I have a couple other smiley pictures to share :-)

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Completed Project 52

Here's to 2011!!
Happy New Year!

Project 52 {weeks 48-52}

Well I made it! 52 weeks of photos! I haven't been the best about posting them, but at least I've been snapping pictures :-) Here are the last five weeks:

Week 48
48 harpo dog park
The last few weeks of pregnancy (weeks 40-42) began to get long. Luckily (and oddly enough) the weather was still warm and I was able to take Harpo for a walk to the dog park. One last time before he became a big brother and before he became a little more neglected. Although Christmas day we returned to this dog park on a walk with the whole family - yes it was about 40 degrees on Christmas day here, bizarre!

Week 49
49 burping w daddy
This was in the hospital later the same morning after Isaac was born on Sunday, December 4th.

Week 50
50 Isaac red hat
My friend, Rhiannon, sent this darling hat to us as a shower gift for Isaac. Isn't he darling in it! And it'll make a fun newborn photo prop too!

Week 51
51 harpo watching isaac
Harpo has been an excellent big brother. He likes it most when Isaac gets down on his level. He stays pretty close to him.

Week 52
52 Isaac Christmas
Christmas isn't complete without a little baby love and tree light bokeh! Isaac is 3 weeks old here.

Isaac's Birth Story

I typed this up a while ago, but hadn't had a chance to proof read it. I finally got to it. It's rather long and I mainly just wanted to get it documented just to have, but you're welcome to read it :-)

December 2nd, 2011 - 41 weeks 6 days

8:00am Ultrasound appointment and Midwife check in with NST (Non-Stress Test) Monitoring - Had my 42 week check up. Ultrasound looked good, he had enough fluid in there, NST looked great he was a happy little baby in there. I did not want to schedule induction as I was confident he would come on his own. My midwife (Karen) agreed to let me ‘come in’ on Monday morning for induction if nothing were to happen over the weekend. She did check my cervix I was dilated 3cm (I was 1cm the week before) She did a little ‘stirring things up’ to help as she said “it doesn’t hurt when you’re knocking on the door” She said it would do one of three things 1-nothing 2-give me cramps 3-give me cramps that lead to labor. Okay great, so I could pretty much count on getting cramps, lol. But I also knew that it wouldn’t do anything if my body wasn’t already ready, I liked how Karen put it “sometimes our bodies just need a shove in the right direction”. This was about 10am when she did this.

Kyle and I left the appointment feeling kinda down. We went and had brunch at Panera before I dropped him at work. I had to work the night before so I was pretty tired and pretty worn down from the past two weeks of just waiting. When I went home I tried to nap, I ended up bawling a little and drifting off for about a 30 minute nap in or so, then it was time for me to go into work. It was my last day working as I already said I wanted to take Saturday and Sunday off. If I was going to still be waiting over the weekend I didn’t want to spend it working. Kyle had also said his last day off work was Friday as we knew we were closing in on the time that we’d need to do something ourselves if he didn’t come on his own.

Work was fairly busy, which was good. I was walking, trying to be up and about as much as possible hoping SOMETHING would start. I walked to subway a little before 7:00pm and got a cinnamon roll and a side of jalapeños. When I sat back in the provider area to eat, I noticed I started getting some cramps. I started tracking them on my contraction app at 7:14pm. Since I was up and about it was kinda hard for me to get every single one, but the ones I did get in a row were about 4 minutes apart. They started getting worse and my goal was to make it to 9:00pm then I would leave early. (I usually work until 11:30pm) We were starting to get more kids in the ED and I felt bad I was leaving but I knew it was the right thing for me to do. I asked Heidi to check my blood pressure before I left as I was starting to feel rather crappy, sweating and just plain icky feeling. She checked it and it was about 140 which I knew was high for me as I am usually 107-118.

I got home around 9:30pm and got in the bath tub hoping that would help me relax and feel better. As at this point I wasn’t sure what I was feeling was just the cramps from my cervical exam or the start of something real. Kyle then began timing things for me on an app he downloaded on his phone. I was having them from 20-40 seconds with about 2-8 minutes in between. We came downstairs, watched the latest episode of New Girl. I took a bath again, came back downstairs again and at 11:10pm I went to the bathroom. I noticed some blood but I couldn’t see anything because my belly was in the way so I called Kyle in. His face did not look pleasing. It was a big line of snotty looking blood coming out, which turns out was my mucus plug. We kinda started to freak out at this point thinking this really COULD be the real thing. We came back upstairs and called the hospital. They paged the midwife on call, whom called us back, this was Jenny. I talked with her and said we just weren’t sure, but that I wanted to call to get some advice. She knew I wanted to do as little intervention as possible and advised me to stay home. She did say I was welcome to come in and she could check me and we could come back home. She said that I would start to feel crummy between contractions as well, not just during. So with this we headed up to bed to try and get some rest for the night.

December 3rd , 2011 – 42 weeks

About 12:15am the crampy contractions changed to something different, and I knew this was probably the real deal. They felt more wide spread than the cramps. And sometime before 2:30am, we decided to just go on into the hospital. I was laying in bed and felt a pushy poopie kinda feeling but I was afraid to try and poop in fear it was something else. And I didn’t know how fast this would all progress and we both just felt more comfortable getting checked out and being in the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital at 2:30am. We left our bags in the car because we figured we were going to get sent home. We parked in the purple ramp because I had badge access. I forgot that the main entrance would be closed and Kyle had to run back to the car to get my badge so we could get in the building, while I continued to have pressure waves so I leaned up against the pole outside. It was pretty cold out as well. Once we got to the hospital they took me back to a triage room and put me on the non-stress monitor to see how baby was doing and to measure any contractions. And asked us lots of questions; which I wasn’t really in the mood to answer, but I just focused on relaxing and listening to my hypnobabies on my headphones. My midwife, Jenny, came in and did a cervical check and noted me as “a loose 5cm/6” saying “You’re staying! You’re going to have a baby today!” We were actually pretty surprised as we had every intention of getting turned away. But we were also excited because things were happening and we had been waiting SO long for this moment J

They took us to a labor and delivery room. It was rather spacious. I was considering a water birth so I think those rooms are a little bigger so they can get the tub in when needed. At this point we just labored in the room as time went past. I would go in the bathroom tub and labor, come out and lie in the bed, sit on the ball, lean on the bed. When I was near the bed I asked to be on the monitor just because I liked hearing the baby’s heart beat and I wanted to see the contractions, although I could feel them. When I was in the tub, my wonderful nurses came in every once in a while to listen to the baby’s heart beat with the Doppler.

Isaac_birth-011

I was lying on the bed when I looked up at the window and could see some light forming behind the pulled shade. I felt very discouraged as the sun was coming up and the baby was not here yet. Shift change was also at 7:00am and midwife Jenny was leaving and Jill was coming on. Nurse Sarah was leaving and Nurse Kristen was coming on. At this point they checked me again…. NO CHANGE. Not only was the rising sun discouraging but finding out in the past four and half hours of contractions there was no progress made. Okay, okay, I thought we’ll just keep going. So we labored some more, changing locations. I almost felt like my contractions slowed down in the tub, although my midwife said it could just be they don’t feel as strong in the tub. Kyle also said I had my closest contractions while in the tub. I would have them pretty close together, regular contractions, then get up to go in the other room for a new position and they seemed like they would stop for a bit…

Isaac_birth-008

Around 10:00am (don’t remember exactly) Midwife Jill checked me again. Still no change, I was still a 5cm/6cm. This was very VERY discouraging. At this point we talked about options and the decision was made to break my water in hopes to get the contractions starting closer together and get progress to start. I was kinda scared about this because one, I didn’t want him to be without fluid in there, that was his safe place, and two I was afraid this would suddenly bring on stronger contractions. Once my water was broke my contractions did get a little stronger but nothing like I was afraid of. Some fluid came out when my midwife broke my water, but not much. When I would sit on the birthing ball more fluid would come out… I was kinda worried about this as it was what he was living in at the time and I didn’t want him to be without his fluid inside me, but they could tell by the monitor that he still had plenty of fluid around him. So we labored some more hoping this would help push things along. I began to feel like I couldn’t do it anymore, and I was a little hopefully in that we were getting close. I had heard when you feel like you can’t go on anymore you are almost done! So I became very hopefully that he was going to be here soon.

Isaac_birth-021

A little before 1:00pm I was checked again. And there was no change. I was done! I couldn’t take it anymore. I thought maybe it was me that wasn’t letting things progress, maybe I wasn’t relaxing enough. So with this thought, I thought maybe I needed help relaxing and medication was going to be that. My midwife asked if I knew my options, which of course I didn’t because I had every intention on having an unmediated birth. So she explained three different options, all the while I’m continuing to have contractions and we’d take a break then she’s continue to explain. We settled on the most popular option: an epidural. Before they could place the epidural I needed to have about an hour of fluids in me. So they placed the IV and got the fluids going. At this point I could still go labor in the tub while I waited that next hour.

The hour was up about 1:50 and I made my way to the bed to have the epidural placed. It didn’t hurt at all, I just remember a LOT of tape being placed on my back. When the epi was placed I was bed bound and food was no longer an option, just clear liquids. Although up to this point I had puked up all the snacks I was trying to keep in my belly. The epidural made the contractions go away, but was also the beginning of boredom! They wanted to keep turning me as to help and kinda cork screw his head down a bit further and get him engaged. There was a little pocket at the top of the left side of my belly, where his feet still were that the epidural wasn’t reaching, since the epidural works with gravity they first moved me to lay on my left side, with my right leg up on a peanut shaped ball. About every hour or so they’d turn me and get my legs positioned a different way. But since that first position my left leg was very heavy and ‘pins & needle’ feeling – like when your foot goes to sleep. Both my legs felt like that. I was able to wiggle my toes and move my feet and legs a little bit, not much, it took a lot of concentration to get them to move. Also by this point it was snowing outside, FINALLY the snow had come – it’s odd that Minnesota hadn’t had any snow yet as it was already December. But sadly I was stuck inside not able to enjoy the snow (little did I know this would be the only snow until January that we’d get)

Isaac_birth-025

Around 4ish I was checked again in hopes that maybe the epidural helped my body relax and progress was made… but unfortunately there was still no progress. :’( Pitocin was our next option, which was started at 4:18. At this point, since I had already had the epidural that I did not plan to have, I didn’t really care about pitocin. (Again another thing I didn’t want to happen originally, but we needed to get this baby to come out!) And since I had the epidural the pitocin wasn’t as scary since I wouldn’t be feeling those strong contractions, well not until the end anyway. This also took some time as they started me out on a small dose and increased it every 30 minutes. I believe it was increased 3 or 4 times with the last time being decreased to find the amount that worked best for my body. All the while Isaac was just a happy little baby in there; his heart rate showed no change, the nurses just kept saying “he’s so happy in there!” This we already knew lol.

I was checked around 7:00 pm (24 hours after the start of this whole labor thing) and progress had been made WOO HOO! I was now about 8 cm dilated, FINALLY! They say it takes about a centimeter an hour to dilate so now we were just waiting.

About 10:15pm I was checked again and I had made it to 10 cm! Yes he’s coming!?! Not so fast, although I was fully dilated he was still up high and still happy as a clam. So they turned up the pitocin just a bit to get him to labor down and descend enough that I could push him out. At this point my midwife said “I take back what I said about the baby being born today. But he WILL be born on my shift (she was finished at 7am) and on December 4th” We sure as heck hoped so! Lol At this point I was able to go in and out of naps. Once they turned the pitocin up I was able to feel the pressure of the contractions, nothing like what they would feel like without the epidural, but enough that they’d wake me up from a snooze. Mean while Kyle did get rest during this time.

December 4th, 2011 – 42 weeks 1 day

About 2:30 am Nurse Sarah woke me up as it was time to push! I woke Kyle up; we were both a little groggy and had to figure out what was going on. I did a few practice pushes starting around 2:45 with the contractions, then about 3:00am the real deal started. Kyle helped hold my ‘heavy leg’ on the left while the nurse held my right and midwife Jill got into position and helped work his head out. After a few pushes we were talking in between contractions “oh maybe he’ll be born at 4:00 on the 4th” Jill replied “I don’t think we’ll make it to then” I asked “well maybe 4:44 then?” She answered “No, I mean I don’t think we’ll make it til 4, you’re pushing good, and he’ll be here before then”

I have to say my favorite part was the pushing. After laying in bed for so long not being able to play an active role in my labor and then getting to finally do something again I was so excited to push that baby out! Although I did think it was a lot of work and I don’t know how I would have been able to do it after 33 hours of engaged labor, so I was thankful for how things turned out and just happy that I was finally able to hold my baby boy in my arms J

Isaac_birth-069

Isaac Levi Simpson was born at 3:46am. Jill immediately placed him on my chest and I was ecstatic with joy! He was here! I had waited so long and patiently those last few weeks and I was so thankful he finally made it into my arms! We had the name Isaac picked out for some time, we were wanting a family name and a name from the bible. Kyle had 4 great grandparents with that name and it just kinda stuck out when we were going through family trees. We had decided on the middle name Levi in those last few weeks of our pregnancy, well we had it and a few others to decide on last minute. We had searched for names meaning ‘late’ or ‘procrastinator’ lol and Levi means ‘Attached’ or ‘Joined’ so we thought it was appropriate. J

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