This and That

Wow, things have been crazy around here! Jaymes has been a bit, um, needy, lately. I'm lucky to have showered and done my hair by the time Monte gets home from work. And sadly, every once in a while, he comes home to find me still in my pajamas, and probably not smelling too sweet. Lately I've been trying really hard to at least accomplish showering, doing my hair, and putting on a little makeup every day. Gosh darn it, it just makes me feel better about myself. :)

To be honest, I'm struggling a bit with the fact that Jaymes is not Isabella. Crazy, I know. :) What I mean is that Isabella was the PERFECT baby. When I say that she NEVER cried, I really mean, we never heard that child cry, EVER! Even when she was hungry, she would just smack her lips together. Jaymes cries - bummer. She started sleeping through the night, 12 hours straight, at 8 weeks, although this one Jaymes might be close to following in her footsteps. He does love his bed, like her, and has been sleeping in 6 hour stretches at night.

I'm also struggling a bit with the fact, that my house is not quite as clean or orderly as I like it.

I am making a point to exercise every day by going for a long walk every evening, I love it, and the baby weight is starting to come off. I lost a lot in the first two weeks, then hit a plateau. I'm really excited that I'm going to join our Wellness center in town. I joined after Isabella was born, for a few months, and now I think it will be great to start going again. It will be nice to get out of the house every evening while Monte stays with the kiddos, especially this winter, when we tend to not get out of the house as much.

As I said before, Jaymes has been quite fussy for the last week and a half. We thought that he had acid reflux, and the pediatrician gave him some reflux meds, but they didn't work. And oddly, his reflux has almost stopped just on its own . . . but he's still fussy. So I'm going dairy free for a couple of weeks to see if that helps. But, I may be on track to figuring it out, the kid is HUNGRY. He's hungry all. the. time (which is I why I don't get a whole lot done!). My way of thinking was that if he had eaten recently, he couldn't be hungry again so soon. So then he would cry and fuss. Yesterday I remembered something I had seen on TV a long time ago about babies different cries and what they mean, and I found this on youtube. I then realized almost every time he cried it was the hungry cry - poor baby is hungry (and also getting big)! You would think I would know what I'm doing since this is my second baby, but it's a whole different ballgame this time with a full term baby versus having a preemie before. Now that I know what the hungry cry sounds like, and he's been getting what he wants to eat, he's been much more content (and has been napping for almost 4 hours straight right now)!

I don't think he'll be petite like his sister, last week (at 6 weeks) he was 11 pounds already!

I love swaddle blankets! I think both swaddle blankets and one of these (it makes womb sounds) are a must for new parents!

I have more, but I better go make my family some supper!

My baby is baptized!

What an awesome day! And I feel a sense of relief in knowing that he is baptized now. My mom came out on Thursday (marking her 3rd extended stay with us since Jaymes was born - don't know what I would have done without her!) to help me get things ready for the reception we had at our house after the baptism. Jaymes was baptized on Sunday afternoon in a private ceremony, and Father S. did a great job of making it really special.

My handsome guy.

The cake. Even though I told them how to spell his name, and they had it written down correctly on the order, it was still spelled wrong. They did a pretty good job of sneaking the y in later, though. One of these days I'll get around to explaining why we spell his name that way. I'm sure it will be spelled wrong a lot throughout his life.

He was so good, he slept through the entire baptism, in fact, he slept through the entire day. :)

His blanket is the blanket my grandma (who has passed away) made for my baptism. Isabella used it, too.

Godparents are my brother and sister-in-law, who are expecting their fourth in two months.

I don't know what in the world Isabella is doing, but it's not exactly a good pose for church. She looks a bit like a Vegas showgirl . . .

A small portion from Monte's family came.

My whole family. Most of them came from 4 hours away, and stayed over at a hotel. It was a fun weekend, and Isabella even got to go swimming at the hotel with her cousins.

I'm finally getting used to the fact that we are a family of four now!

I love this one, it's like he's had enough with the pictures.

We had 21 people, and a small house, so since we have an attached double garage, we decided to have the meal out there. We kept the door open between the house and garage, and it gave us plenty of room for everyone. It worked perfectly!

It was an amazing day. For Isabella's baptism, Monte was terribly sick with his Crohn's Disease, and I had post partum depression so bad I couldn't hardly do anything. Everything is going SO much better this time!

All worn out

One Month Old Today . . .

and it's been a great month!! He is really filling out, I weighed him, and he's 9 pounds already! He's also graduated out of quite a few of his newborn clothes, and into 0-3. I wish I could keep him my tiny baby forever!

Jaymes and Jody

I think I have featured Isabella's baby, Jody, on here before. Since bringing Jaymes home, I don't think Jody has left his side for too long. Jody does EVERYTHING Jaymes does, including "eating" from Isabella's belly button while I'm nursing Jaymes. :)

And I thought I'd throw in a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Jaymes loves his baths every night, and Isabella loves helping with them.

Cling-On

What I've been wearing . . .

Jaymes' Birth Story

I woke up at 4:00 in the morning on August 12th with contractions. Since I had had contractions throughout the entire pregnancy, I didn't think much of it. The contractions weren't painful, so I just tried to go back to sleep. I realized they were coming pretty regularly, so I decided to time them, and they were 5 to 6 minutes apart. I still didn't think much of them, though, since that was pretty normal for me. I decided to get up anyway, and the contractions seemed to slow down, but when 8:00 came around I had an overwhelming feeling that I should call my doctor. I had an appt. set up for 3:30 that afternoon anyway, and I was just sure this was a false alarm, but I couldn't stop that overwhelming feeling that I should call my doctor. He told me to come in as soon as I could that morning. Monte's mom was planning on getting Isabella for a couple days anyway, so I called her and asked her to meet us at the clinic, which is only an hour away from where she lives. I went in for my appt. while Monte and Isabella waited in the parking lot for his mom to arrive. I told my doctor that I was sure this was a false alarm, and he said that he would bet I was at least a week away from delivery yet . . . then he checked me. His exact words were, "Oh my! You're having this baby today, call your husband, and head over to the hospital."

Monte's mom arrived just in time, and took off with Isabella. Monte and I arrived at the hospital around 10:00. The nurse showed us to our room, then told us that our nurse for the day was Sandy, and she would be there shortly. Sandy is a friend of Monte's family, she's awesome, and she was also my nurse when I was in labor with Isabella. I had been praying that she would be my nurse again, but she doesn't work very often, she's on call to only work on very busy days. Turns out it was a very busy day that day!



Once I got hooked up to the monitors I was surprised to see that my contractions were 2 to 4 minutes apart, because I still wasn't really feeling them. My doctor came at noon, and broke my water, then stuck around for a while because of how insanely fast I progressed with Isabella, he thought it could go the same way again. With Isabella, I got an epidural, but it didn't kick in until after she was born. My doctor told me this time, if I was going to get an epidural to do it now. I wasn't planning on it, but then I got scared, thinking back to the pain, and I totally chickened out and got it! It. was. amazing!! The contractions were just starting to get really painful when I got the epidural, I believe I kept saying over and over again, "This is the greatest thing ever invented!" Things continued to progress that afternoon pretty slowly, then around 5:00 my epidural completely quit working. Apparently it happens about 1 in 10 times. So for the last couple, most painful, hours of labor I didn't have anything. In the end, I'm glad because it gave me lots of chances to offer it up for specific people, circumstances, etc.



Once I got to 9 cm, I asked if my doctor was coming, and the nurses said (my nurse, Sandy, had gone home by then) they were going to wait a little while yet. I BEGGED them to call my doctor, because I just knew it was going to be soon. Sure enough, once I got to a 10, and had the overwhelming urge to push, my doctor was not there! That was awful, not being able to push when I HAD to so badly! The minute he walked through door I started pushing, and I believe I exclaimed, "Thank God you're here!!" And in three quick pushes sweet little Jaymes arrived at 7:00 sharp! They laid him on my chest for quite a while, and I was in shock because it was a totally different experience than having Isabella - so calm! As I type this I'm overwhelmed with emotion, thinking of how wonderful the experience was!



I tore very bad, into the muscle, it took the doctor what seemed like a VERY long time to sew me up, and for some reason his numbing injections didn't work on me, so I felt everything. That was probably the worst part of the whole experience for me. My recovery in that department has been very slow and very frustrating for me. I ended up going in to the Dr. this past Saturday because the pain was so bad I could hardly move. The P. A. I saw thought it might be infected, and said it just wasn't healing very good, and had a really long way to go. I then had another appt. with my doctor on Monday of this week, and he didn't think it was infected, but also said it wasn't healing very fast. He said the pain has been so bad because the tears were so deep that the nerves were just starting to "wake up" and form again around two weeks post partum. I'm hoping to get over this soon, because it is really slowing me down. Other than that, it really was a great experience, my entire time in the hospital was a really good experience, a million times better than Isabella's birth!