Eight Weeks

I can’t believe how fast time flies. And how little else I get done in a day other than feeding and caring for my child. I rarely sit down at the computer these days with more than one hand free. I don’t shower regularly, and my house looks like a dust bunny colony.

But the boy, oh my. He’s a joy and one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever had. Being his mother is everything I hoped it would be and sometimes the most natural thing in the world. It is absolutely who I was meant to be and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Some nights when I pick him up to feed him in the dark, I can feel that his body is heavier than when I laid him down three or four hours before. It is then that I wish I could stop time and just love the little boy that he is. He is so his own person already – with distinct likes (being held in an upright position, being with mommy at all times, hanging out in the circle of my maternity boppy, clean pants at all times, sucking on his hands, snuggled up in the moby wrap) and dislikes (dirty diapers, bathing, his car seat, having clothes put over his head, waiting to eat, having his nose cleaned, spitting up and sometimes pooping). His smiles light up my world and his cries break me. He can hold his head up and look around at the world around him and it’s so fun to try to figure out what has caught his attention.

He is a breastfeeding champ and I’m thrilled we are still at it despite a few hiccups (I had a fever and the beginnings of mastitis). He mostly sleeps in his bassinet now that I know he will sleep almost anywhere if he can smell me. So every night we tuck my day’s t=shirt into his co-sleeper and out he goes. The trick from the leader of my mom’s group also works when I desperately need a shower!

He enjoys being out and about as long as he gets to eat whenever he wants and gets clean diapers whenever he needs them. This allows us to take him with us as we go about our life – trips to Target and out to eat. I even nursed him while shopping at Target – the boy was safely wrapped in the Moby, with boobs and all out of view of anyone who might catch a glimpse of us. I was so proud of myself that day!

Sunday we all needed a break for our house and the heat so we took a trip to the beach and put his tiny toes in the ocean for the first time. What a thrill for me – he didn’t cry and was just amused by it all. Afterwards he napped for almost an hour in the baby.bjorn as we walked along the coast. Bliss!

I just realized I still haven’t finished my birth story. I must get that down on “paper” before the details are lost to me forever. Soon. Until then, more pictures of our sweet boy.

So far so good

what are you looking at?
Originally uploaded by sarahewk

After a rough week last week (hubby's first week back at work), today things are so far, improved. I showered before hubby left for work (means getting up early but Charlie needed to eat anyway), had breakfast, did some paperwork and am now getting ready to leave the house for the first time alone with the baby. I have a grand plan of going to the post office. And maybe the bank. I'm so ambitious! LOL.

For now, as I run around the house getting ready, Charlie sleeps in a sling I made for us. He's cozy and I have hand free. Must take a picture to share. For now, here he is all dressed up for a stroller ride on Sunday.

Home (Almost) Alone

Today is hubby’s first day back at work and two hours in, nothing bad has happened. I woke up Charlie to change his diaper and feed him just after hubby left at 7 and he’s been sleeping since. I actually brushed my teeth, made the bed, got dressed and made breakfast. I had leftover strata and coffee out on our deck while Charlie napped in his bouncy seat. Makes me feel very fancy. Next up is folding all the laundry I did while I was up feeding him overnight.

The last few days have been so hectic! The chaos goes all the way back to Thursday. Hubby and I had chiropractic appointments at 11 am and it was a challenge to get us all dressed and out of the house but it was well worth it – I needed an adjustment so badly after spending 8 night sleeping in a hospital bed and then 10 days nursing.

After that we came home and napped. Hubby wasn’t feeling well and it was starting to freak me out. The night before Charlie was born, he felt funny and had a nurse check his BP. It was 150/110. It remained high throughout our stay in the hospital. On Thursday he added chest pain, nausea, and fatigue (well that one maybe doesn’t count) to his list of woes. I forced him to call his doctor and get in to see her ASAP. We went that evening and his pulse was 130. Bp was still high. The doc went over his situation and recommended mood stabilizers to help him deal with the anxiety of our new life but he already takes one to prevent his migraines. I pushed to treat the BP now and let the anxiety work itself out as we get settled in as a family. The doc agreed and that night hubby had his first restful night of sleep in 12 days. Since then, his whole body seems better – less tense and more rested. What a relief!

Friday we had a well baby visit and it went really well. After one visit to a non-HMO pedi we went back to what was familiar and are so glad we did. The HMO we use is huge and bureaucratic but they also have great systems in place. Their newborn clinic is all nurse practitioners and you can come in whenever you want to check on your baby. The nurses did a feed and weigh session and were totally proud of us when it showed that he was getting one ounce on each side in a ten minute feeding session. Woohoo!

Yesterday was unexpectedly good. I invited my family to come up for brunch at our house with my ILs and my mom and younger brother took us up on the offer. After a hectic Saturday, it had disaster written all over it. But I nipped it in the bud. At 7 am I fed the baby and convinced hubby to get out the stroller so I could walk to the grocery store for supplies for our favorite egg strata. He didn’t want us to go alone, so even though he was still half asleep, he came with us. It was a lovely 10 minute walk in the cool morning air to the store, and we loaded all the groceries in the basket of his stroller for the walk back. The best baby ever slept the whole time! I can’t wait to do it again!

Once we put the groceries away, we gave Charlie his second bath. He disliked it just as much as the first, but at least his hair got clean and he smelled good. I dressed him up and put him in his bouncy seat while I made my casserole. Once that was ready for the oven, I fed him before hopping in the shower. Our parents arrived and we sat down to a really lovely breakfast – fruit, pastries, the strata, coffee, Oj. All very yummy. A few hours later, my brother and his family showed up for the second shift bearing all the fixings for a yummy lunch. Our neice Maddie got to meet Charlie and she was just so good with him – she sat and held his hand for ten minutes while her daddy cradled him. And then she did this piggy went to market on his toes with my mom. All so lovely!

We ended up spending the whole day with our families, taking a million pictures and just loving on our boy.

After our company left, hubby and I took a nap before tackling the filthy house. He did dishes while I did laundry, swept and mopped the floors. The house looks better than it has in months!

I feel fantastic and am so excited that this is how our lives have turned out. I could get used to the bliss.

**Before I could post this, baby went a little nutty. He cried and nursed and cried some more for almost two hours before falling asleep. I got desperate and stripped us both down and did skin to skin and just let him suckle until he fell asleep. Oh sweet sleep.

I suppose the honeymoon had to end sometime, right?

One week old

sweet boy
Originally uploaded by sarahewk

I can't believe how fast that last seven days have gone. He is a dream come true. His umbilical cord stump fell off today and it seemed like a good time to take a few pictures of him on the blanket I knit while we waited for him to arrive. He is more beautiful than we ever imagined. Tomorrow he'll get his first bath.

Someday soon I'll write about the induction, the eventual cesarean and the recovery in the hospital. It's eight days we spent living in a time warp of the hospital to digest so it may take a while. And he's so fascinating, taking the time away from him to document it seems silly. But I don't ever want to forget what we went through to get him here and give him a good start.

Home

Today was our first full day home and it was wonderful. Charlie ate like a champ. He slept when he wasn't eating or peeing or pooping. Hubby went out this morning and brought me a yummy breakfast and coffee. My mom came to visit and watched me feed him and changed his diapers as soon as he stopped suckling long enough to breathe. Hubby went out and got us groceries and fresh fruit. I got to nap. We made dinner together while hubby held him in his sling.

The lion cub is more beautiful than I imagined. I feel like I've known him forever. He is my boy and I am his mother and despite a lot of other issues (jaundice requiring a night under lights in the nursery, high bp for me requiring more meds, and leg swelling so bad it makes it tough to walk), these days are among the happiest of my life.

The lion cub has arrived.

sweet boy
Originally uploaded by sarahewk

He's finally here! Charles Everett Alden Kingsley arrived at 9:22 am on Tuesday, July 1st via cesarean birth, weighing 8 lbs. and 3 oz. and measuring 20” long. We are absolutely thrilled and in love already.

Mama and baby are doing well despite an exhausting 3.5 day long attempted induction and should be going home on Saturday.

It was a long road to get here but he is absolutely worth it.

I will post the long, absolutely crazy birth story once we get home. For now, here he is. He has his father's nose and eyes, my chin and a full head of dark wavy hair.

Update and Questions

Today's appointment went well and we walked out really excited. The lion cub's fluid is good, he is moving well, his NST was good and my bp is holding steady. Our regular OB is back and we are thrilled to have him. We went over all the stuff that happened while he was gone and he was thankful that we held out until he returned. He decided that it was time to set a plan and a date! So unless we go into labor on our own this week, I will be induced early next week, at around 38.5 weeks. He checked my cervix and it is soft and about 1/2cm dilated which was great news to me. I was scared that he would check and it would have no changes and that would suck given the 36 hour contraction filled saga of last week. I wasn't expecting much and I know it doesn't mean much but I wanted some change to show for all the hard work. So in 7 days or less we'll meet our boy. Thank God.

Cecily tagged all of her readers to do this little exercise and it seemed fun and I need things to keep me occupied while we wait for this little boy to come. So here are the five most character-defining things that have happened to me in my life:

1. My parents divorce. I’m not sure when my parents marriage started failing, I just know that it did. I remember the years of fighting and manipulation and lying. I remember how often my dad found things to do outside our home so that he wouldn’t have to deal with my mother. I remember her doing things she knew would upset him, just because she could. I know that when he sat us down and told us he was moving out, I was relieved. The years after it were tough – money was even tighter and became part of their ongoing tug of war. It sucked. And like Cecily, I had some serious daddy issues when it came time to date. Thankfully I dealt with them early (by the time I was 21), and my relationship with my dad recovered. But those years completely shaped who I would become.
2. Developing a chronic illness while in high school. I got sick in the middle of my freshman year of high school and struggled for almost a year without a proper diagnosis. By December of my sophomore year I was so sick I missed two weeks of school. That finally got the attention of my family and my aunt clued my dad in to what it was (she had it too) and I was finally diagnosed and got the treatment I needed. It was a scary time. Ulcerative Colitis is no walk in the park. The thing that is still so surprising to me, even almost 20 years later, is how uninvolved my parents were in my care. I went to all my appointments alone. They never became involved in my care, even when I was a minor living at home. It was totally up to me to take care of my health and stay on top of my disease. When my brother developed the same disease just over a year ago, my whole family was involved and wanted to know what was going on and how he was doing on a daily basis. He certainly was sicker than I ever have been but by the time he got sick he was almost 30 and married with a child. The contrast reminds me how far my family has come since the years just after my parents divorced (when they were both so self involved).
3. Moving to DC to do an internship and staying for five years. After my sophomore year of college I took an internship 3,000 miles from home for the summer. I knew two people in DC – both of whom were my bosses – and I had no money and no real plans on where I would live. I was so naïve that I wasn’t even scared. That first job changed the whole course of my life, introducing me to people and places that would have been to far out of my world for me to even imagine. That first job led to all of the rest of the ones I’ve had in the 13 years since. After the internship, I got a volunteer gig on a campaign. My manager there got me my second job, and the boss from that job introduced me to my current boss. One little internship has kept me gainfully employed for a long time in a field I enjoy.
4. My husband. Meeting my husband, getting to know him, loving him, it has been a dream come true. He is everything I hoped to find in a mate and his love makes me a better person. I’m lucky that no one else saw him for the gem that he is before I did.
5. My desire to be a mother. I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I made choices in my life based on that desire. I took jobs that were less stressful so that when the time came I would have time to be at home with my kids. I moved back to CA so that when I had kids they would be near my family. When it was time for hubby and I to TTC, I worked at it from the very beginning. It was a long road, longer than I hoped or imagined, but there was never a day when I doubted that it was what I wanted and what I was meant to be.