Emily and Kolby

These Days

What's going on around here these days? Not much outside of watching this little guy grow and change.

A few weeks ago I started retiring his newborn size footed pj's (so sad!) and then a week later his 0-3 month ones started seeming too snug as well. He is growing like a weed. I don't want him to ever grow up, but he doesn't seem to be listening.

Although I have to say that I am loving the stage he has evolved into lately. He gets really playful sometimes and if we lay him on his back he kicks and punches and coos and smiles like crazy. It melts my heart every time. He is really fun to interact with. And that smile is so stinking cute I could die. Right now he doesn't find us any more smile worthy than the fan or the Ian Kinsler baseball card on the wall above his changing table, but we are working on it.

His favorite thing is still to be held and snuggled and I can't possibly think of a better use of my time.

Speaking of time, I'm two-thirds of the way through my maternity leave and when I think about the day I have to go back to work it sucks the wind out of me. But I'll be home with Beckett all but a couple days a week and that makes me so happy. Plus I'm already looking forward to the summer when Kolby is off and we'll have so much time as a whole family. We really rocked it that first month.

Beckett and I are getting into a pretty good routine that involves very little sleep, hilarious baths, precious play time, very audible diaper fills, lots of snuggling, and a whole lot less fussing than before. I'm breastfeeding him and it is the most wonderful thing ever. Sure it takes up about 9 hours of each day, but it's time with him that I really cherish.

When Kolby gets home I always think that'll be my chance to "do things"---namely cleaning up the huge mess I've made throughout the day---but inevitably Kolby lays Beckett on his lap and Beckett goes nuts for him and all I can do is join them on the couch and take in all of it. It's just so sweet. Our house may look like a bomb went off and I literally get nothing done ever, but all I can think about is the last line of that cliche poem: babies don't keep.

We spend hours a day just staring at him and continuously saying to each other, "he's just so cute." I mean seriously:

We also spend more time than we should blowing through The West Wing on Netflix. We're both declaring it the best show ever made. When the weather warms up we'll go on evening walks and probably have more productive things to do, but right now, the three of us camping out in the living room watching tv together is just about perfect.

Our little guy has decided he just doesn't need much sleep. For quite awhile he was sleeping really well at night but was pretty fussy, or at least high maintenance, during the day. Now we have gotten into a good rhythm during the day but he only sleeps for a couple of 2-2.5 hour stretches at night. Including a few power naps during the day, the two of us are functioning on about six hours of sleep a day. Spirits are surprisingly high on both accounts, but when I read that infants typically average 16 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period I can't help but wonder how on earth he can be 10 hours short. He's just so bright eyed and alert all the time, I guess he just doesn't want to miss anything! I can't tell you how many times a day I figure he has to be so tired, so I swaddle him and rock/pat him only to be met with this face:

Sleep is overrated.

Well that's about all that's going on around here these days. Beckett turns two months old a week from today, if you can believe it. I sure can't!

Newborn Pictures

It's been awhile since these were taken, but I want to share a few anyway. Here are Beckett's newborn pictures, which were taken on his one week birthday. In some ways he's changed a lot but in other ways he looks exactly the same to me!

More pictures can be found here.

One Month Old

I’ll never be able to put into words what these first few weeks have been like. Nevertheless, I feel like it's time for an update. Without the energy to provide artful paragraphs, here's a rundown of all things Beckett:

What we did together this month:

-Listened to lots of Christmas music (mostly Mariah Carey, obviously)

-Laughed at Beckett's adorable facial expressions

-Stared at the Christmas tree with all the lights and ornaments

-Met lots of family and friends (Beckett is still working on matching names with faces)

-Napped

-Found ourselves covered in Beckett's various bodily fluids (sometimes all three of us at once)

-Had staring contests

-Spent a week at the ranch

-Kolby and Beckett hung out in their living room "man cave" between the hours of 12-6 a.m. several nights

-Watched The West Wing as a family while I fed Beckett

-Had a successful family errand to a mattress store and a less successful one to Target

-Went to church twice

-Spent uninterrupted time as a family, with the exception of 2.5 days that Kolby worked

Here are some of Beckett's favorite things in his first month of life:

-Motion

-Laying on his changing pad

-When we hold him and bounce on the exercise ball

-Baths

-Walks with his dad, in the carrier

-Looking at contrast (dark picture frames on a light wall, ceiling fans, people with dark glasses frames or dark facial hair, etc.)

-Sleeping on his stomach on our chests

-Being swaddled

-Riding in the car, as long as it’s moving

-Mom and Dad's voices

-Eating

-Peeing on us

Here are some of my favorite things about Beckett:

-His milk breath

-All of his facial expressions, especially when he makes his mouth into a tiny “O”

-How he sticks out his chest insanely far when he stretches

-His absolutely divine newborn hair

-The profile of his sweet face

-His inadvertent grins

-How when I burp him over my shoulder, he always gets in the sweetest poses with his hands up under his (double) chin

-His tiny long fingers
-How he sleeps with his mouth wide open

-His impossibly smooth baby skin

-How when I hold him over my shoulder when he's hungry, he turns his head to mine and starts sucking on my face. It’s like he's a little starfish. He's gotten a really good latch onto my cheeks, chin, and nose.

It really is hard to believe this little man has been a part of our lives for a month already. At the same time, he fits right into our happy little life together. The days blur together because I find myself lost staring at his sweet little face. Becoming parents is the greatest thing that's ever happened to Kolby and me--and this is only the beginning. We can't wait to see what's in store next month and beyond!

A Month in Pictures

It turns out that having a newborn is quite time consuming :). Particularly when your precious newborn doesn't care to sleep at all during the day, instead preferring to be held 100% of the time, and further preferring to continuously alternate between the over-the-shoulder pat, the cradled-in-forearms jiggle, and the hold-me-any-way-you-want-but-you-must-be-bouncing-on-the-big-exercise-ball.

I have no complaints about any of this---we hoped for a snuggler---I simply mean to explain why blogging is not yet on my radar screen!

If you can believe it, I haven't even been able get out my nice camera and capture decent pictures of this little guy, who is undoubtedly the most handsome baby of all time. I plan to remedy that this week.

For now I at least want to put up some pictures from my phone. Enjoy!

That Time I Had a 9 Pound Baby: Beckett's Birth Story

Beckett's birthday was absolutely perfect. It was different than we expected, but it was completely perfect!

I want to document his birth story before I start to forget any of the details. It was such a special day for us.

I had been having some signs of labor for a couple of weeks, particularly several bouts of contractions and false labor, so we knew I would go into labor soon. But then again, "soon" didn't mean much to us because of course I would go into labor "soon"... I was past my due date and we knew he couldn't stay in there forever! We were just biding our time hoping every night that it would be the night. We were doing everything we could to bring on labor. We walked 2-3 miles every evening. Most nights ended with a dance party in our living room to Vanilla Ice's Ninja Rap. We were so ready to meet our son!

I woke up on Saturday morning (Dec. 8) around 2 a.m. with fairly strong contractions. I didn't make much of it because this had happened three times before. I did what I had previously done and what they tell you to do... try to ignore it, then take a bath to see if it makes the contractions stop. The contractions didn't stop and started getting a little stronger, so I woke Kolby up at 4 a.m. to tell him what was going on and that I was going to take another bath.

The next couple of hours are a bit of a blur, but we started timing the contractions and by 6 a.m. they were very, very painful and coming about every 2-3 minutes. We loaded up and headed to the hospital.

I had three contractions in the very short walk from the car to the L&D check-in desk. I was that crazy lady in slippers crouched on the floor, gripping the side rail and groaning as people walked by and stared :). But we made it to our room and got settled in with our midwife and sweet nurse.

To back up a little, Kolby and I prepared for a natural childbirth. To say we planned on one is too strong; we knew better than to plan much of anything. Our objective was simply a safe delivery. But our hope was to labor naturally as long as possible, if not the whole time, although we were open to getting some help if needed.

Well, two words stood between us and the birth experience we had planned for. Back labor. I knew nothing about it, but a quick Google search just now defines it as, "Intense lower back pain that some laboring women feel during contractions. A few women even feel it between contractions." At some point early on at the hospital, all of the pain moved to my lower back and it never let up. I couldn't even tell when I was having a contraction because the back pain was much more intense than the pain from the contractions, and it was essentially constant. I've never felt anything like it.

I was able to handle the pain thanks to a lot of help from Kolby, my mom, our midwife, and our nurse. They helped me stay focused with my breathing and also massaged my legs and arms to help keep my body relaxed so that the baby could keep making his way south. But after over four hours of relentless pain I can't even describe, I had essentially made zero progress. Our midwife thought the problem might be that the involuntary muscle tightness in my lower back was keeping the baby from descending. She suggested an epidural, which would allow that tension to release. Knowing she is very pro natural childbirth, we knew she wouldn't recommend this step lightly. We took her advice and I got an epidural at 10:30 a.m.

Oh.my.word.

That epidural was the most amazing thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.

I instantly became myself again. It hit me that we would meet our son that day and I just started crying. I got to experience all of the joy and excitement that I had been way too zoned out to realize before. And even better, I made more progress in the next 30 minutes than I had made in the first 8+ hours of labor.

My labor progressed pretty normally from there. The only notable thing was that when my water broke there was meconium in the amniotic fluid, which is just a formal way of saying that the baby had pooped in utero. This isn't too uncommon, especially in babies past their due date, and just meant that there would be a NICU team present at birth that would whisk him away to another part of the room to clear all the fluid from his airways to keep the meconium from getting into his lungs. I was disappointed that the baby wouldn’t be placed directly on my chest like we had hoped, but we had kept open minds about how everything would go and were just thankful that everyone was still healthy thus far.

Our midwife telling us it was time to start pushing was definitely the most surreal part of the whole experience. I can’t describe it. It was time, we were ready, and the moment we’d waited so so long for was about to happen. We were about to meet our son!

Let me pause for a second to say that we were expecting a 7.5 pound baby, maybe 8. We didn't have any sonograms in the second half of our pregnancy so we really had no idea about his size, but my belly had always measured exactly on track and suggested a very average-size baby. In hindsight, there were a few signs that he was big. In the last several weeks my belly was extraordinarily hard all around; the baby was balled up and filling every square inch of space I had. Also, he moved lower into my pelvis pretty early on but was somehow still able to kick me in the ribs :). Expecting a 7.5 pound baby was one of the biggest blessings of our birth experience. If we knew he was as big as he was, I think I would have had a lot of fear about his birth. I also think it would have made for a much more high-stress environment from our midwife and nurse.

Thankfully, the delivery was fairly smooth. I think there was a moment when our midwife realized he was big (or at least had a huge noggin); things got a little tense and she gave me really firm directions about how I needed to work harder to get him out. At one point I heard the nurse whisper to her that “we may need to go in and get him” and that’s when I found a whole new level of effort. Beckett was born just a few minutes later.

I didn’t really get a good glimpse of him before the NICU team took him, and then the next couple of hours were a bit of a blur to me. Things post delivery didn’t go great for me (I’ll spare the details) and I quickly felt really lifeless and totally out of it. I remember Kolby talking really loud to Beckett as the NICU team was working on him, and then I remember someone announcing that he weighed a whopping nine pounds. Some time later they finally brought Beckett over to me and laid him on my chest. (Note how small the hospital hat is on that 95+ percentile head!)

Kolby was there and we had the sweetest time as a new family. We had a playlist of hymns going during delivery but I hadn’t been able to hear them the whole time. As Kolby and I had our heads leaned together and were staring at our sweet little boy, Great is Thy Faithfulness came on and I could hear it as clear as can be. I don’t mind that I didn’t get to hold him right away or that I became too anemic to have hardly any memories of his birth—that moment was everything I was wanting and so much more. It was what I had dreamed about for years.

Here are a few more pictures from his birth day.

Our little fatty:

Proud dad (again notice the too-small hat, cracks me up!):

First picture as a new family:

Our sweet bundle of joy:

It was an amazing day that ended with us snuggling the most amazing little boy we have ever laid eyes on. We are blessed beyond measure to get to be his parents!

***

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!