My growing boy!

It's been a while since my last post--forever in baby time! Eli is now 10 weeks old. It's amazing how much he changes in such a short time. His weight isn't even the most dramatic of changes, and that's saying something! At his two month appointment a week ago, he weighed in at 14.5 lbs, from a birth weight of 8.5. Wow! Even more dramatic than that, though, is the development of his personality. He's rarely quiet these days. He spends most of his time babbling and smiling at lights and tracking people's movements around the room. Derrin (oops, Daddy) has gotten him to copy noises--particularly, the word "yay". Of course, he won't do it when we try to show anyone or pull out a camera, but it does happen!

He seems to love lights for some reason. If the lights are on in a room, you can bet he's staring at them. Mom and I walked into Costco last week and his eyes almost bugged out of his head when he saw all the lights! He also enjoyed the pig face on my mom's Redskins pillow pet. We have to get him a Giants one so there's no bad influence on his team allegiance. Sierra plays with him all the time. He always grins when she giggles.

He's started wearing cloth diapers the last couple weeks, to save some money. That makes me officially "one of those" crazy babywearing, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, cloth diapering moms. Yep, I'm kind of a hippie.

Here's the dramatic change between birth and now:

Minutes after birth (10/18/11)

Christmas Day, almost 10 weeks old!

And here's a Christmas picture for good measure:

Hopefully I'll be better about posting from now on!

My Little Chunker!

Little man is now 3 1/2 weeks old, and growing like a weed! It's hard to tell from looking at him, but Mom and I each weighed him yesterday and he's coming in at 10.4 and 10.6 pounds on two different scales! He was wearing a onesie and a diaper... but still! 2 pounds since his birthday! Not too shabby, little dude. He's definitely a big old breastfed baby. It's reassuring to me that he's getting all the nutrition he needs and that I can tell for sure that my milk supply is enough for him.

And there's my chunky boy!

Smile Alert!

Hello, world! Mr. Eli has been smiling in his sleep since he was just a few days old, but he's starting to combine it with open eyes now. And last night... I got it on camera!

Milky content smile

 Grin baby grin!

Awww, he's so cute.

Eli: Two Weeks Old!

Eli is two weeks old today! It kinda seems like he's been around forever, but at the same time he's still so new to us.

He's had two pediatrician's appointments so far. At his first, he was down 7 ounces from his birth weight, and at the second he had gained back 5 of those ounces! I'm sure by this point (a week after the last appointment) he's back up and over his birth weight! He nurses like a champ so I'm sure he'll be a little chunker before long. He got his first shot at the last appointment and he's decided he's not a fan of needles (he is his mother's son). He turned into a tiny, wailing ball of rage and sadness!

He sleeps pretty well at night, although there are exceptions to that rule. He much prefers sleeping in someone's arms to sleeping in a bed or a swing--he's gonna be spoiled rotten by all this attention! He doesn't have to go back to the pediatrician until he's a month old, which I'm sure he would be thrilled by if he knew he should be.

Yesterday was his first Halloween--he didn't go trick-or-treating, but we did put on his little costume! I knit the hat, which is just barely small enough to sort of fit his little head.

Details, details!

Well, this little corner of the internet hasn't seen much activity in the last... oh, seven months. I really meant to write at least a post or two. As a matter of fact, there are several draft posts saved on my account that never got past the opening paragraph. I think I have a few good excuses for the neglect, though!

Knowing that I have family members that live at a distance but want next-door-neighbor details, I knew this blog had to come out of hiding and do its job. Without further ado, the story of Eli's birth.

On Monday, October 17th, I had an appointment with my midwife. I was 5 days overdue and Derrin and I were both getting pretty antsy to get Eli movin' on out and into the world. The midwife, Nannette, offered to check to see if I was making any progress. Surprise, surprise--two centimeters dilated, and Eli's head was super low in my pelvis. Nannette said we would probably have a baby in the next couple of days. She swept my membranes to help get things moving.

By the time we got home I was feeling crampy. Derrin went to work and Sierra and I went shopping. We picked up some herbs Nannette recommended and some crickets for the lizard so he wouldn't starve if we had the baby and couldn't go out and get them. We got home about 5:30, I showered, we ate dinner, and I took a walk around the block. By 7:30 I was having some very crampy contractions and I thought this could be the beginning of something for real. I debated texting Derrin at work and letting him know, but thought it wasn't serious enough for him to come home and I didn't want him all worried and excited and preoccupied at work.

I actually found myself displaying some very animalistic behavior. I was closed up in my room, I didn't want to talk to anyone or be around anyone. Mom asked me if I was okay a few times and I just brushed her off. Looking back on it I can see I was behaving like most animal mothers who seclude themselves and hide away till their baby is born. I just thought I was cranky. I started trying to time contractions, but found that they were pretty irregular. I'd have a few that were 2-3 minutes apart, then some that were 6 and 7 minutes apart. I convinced myself this wasn't regular enough to count yet.

Derrin got home about ten. I told him I'd been having "some uncomfy contractions"... and he was shocked when I had three within the first ten minutes I was home. I insisted I didn't need to call Nannette. I could still walk (sort of) and talk (kind of) through the contractions. Finally, he convinced me to call her. She told me to drink some hot tea, get some rest, and call her again if the contractions were consistently less than 5 minutes apart for 2 hours. We tried to go to bed, but there was no way I could sleep through the contractions at this point, which were way beyond uncomfortable. He started timing contractions. Two were 6 minutes long and a minute and a half long. Then three in a row that were a minute and a half apart, but only 30-40 seconds long. I was so frustrated I ended up in tears. I thought the inconsistency meant they weren't the real thing. Derrin finally stopped timing them so I would stop crying.

Derrin dozed off for a few minutes and woke to me moaning through the contractions pretty intensely. He asked if I should call Nannette and all I could say was "I don't know, I don't know." He suggested I get in the shower. What an amazing idea. It felt so good and the pain was so much milder under the hot water. But after a while I got all cramped up from sitting in the little tub, so I got out. The contractions hit twice as hard. Derrin told me to wait so he could walk down the stairs in front of me--I ignored him and took off as fast as I could. All I knew was the faster I got back to the bedroom the less likely I was to have a contraction on the stairs.

Once we got back to the room, I was hollering pretty good through the contractions. Derrin was becoming more and more insistent that I call Nannette, and I still really didn't want to, so I told him to wake my mom and ask her. He went and got her, and she walked into the room, heard my noises, and said, "Uh, yeah... call her now." He called her while Mom started rubbing my back through contractions. It was about 2 AM, and I was probably in transition or very close to it at that point. I was nauseous and I got sick right after Mom came in.

It was about 3 AM when the first birth assistant, Amy, showed up. I didn't know she was there until she had her hands on my back. I was still on my hands and knees, and she recognized how much tension I was building up in my arms and legs from bracing myself against the pain. She suggested I lay on my side. I didn't think I could move, but once I did, it helped so much. She started rubbing and pressing on my hips, which helped to open up my pelvis and felt so good. Everyone in the room heard me sigh in relief. I have no idea what I would have done without this amazing woman. She was so wonderful. During every contraction, she reminded me to keep my noises low instead of high-pitched, to breathe deep, and to relax. If I tensed a certain muscle she squeezed it and told me to relax it so that I could feel exactly where the tension was and relax it. She had Mom rubbing my feet because I kept tightening them up and kicking them with the pain.

Nannette arrived about ten minutes after Amy, and just in time! Right after she got there, my water broke, and she said I was fully dilated and could push anytime. They got me onto me knees with my head on Derrin's shoulder even though I kept saying I couldn't move, and that was all it took. It might have been as many as three more contractions, and whoosh! Out came Eli, head and body all in one push. Amy told me to reach down and take him. I couldn't find him for a second when I reached for him. Turns out that he had his hand up by his head, and the cord wrapped around him a couple times, pinning his arm to his head. Nannette had to take an extra moment to untangle him. Then they put him in my arms, and I leaned back against Derrin. Eli started crying after a minute. He never got very loud, just cried enough to let us know he was okay.

He was latched on and nursing within twenty minutes. When I got up to go to the bathroom Nannette did her exam on him, including his weight and length. He's a tall boy, although a couple of his 22 inches were his big alien head that has shrunk down since (he came in at 20.5 inches at the pediatrician on day 2).

Derrin was awesome. He got me through it all by himself for all but the last hour and a half. And he's learned that the next time we do this he shouldn't listen when I insist he doesn't need to call the midwife!

Hopefully I'll be good about posting updates with all the new Eli stuff--and Grayce, I hope this was enough detail for you!

Lesson: Growing Up (Ouch)

This is a lesson I can't say I've learned in its entirety. I'm pretty sure I've only scratched the surface. What I do know is that something changes in you when you walk out a door you've passed through your whole life, knowing you'll never walk back through it the same way again.

I knew leaving home was going to be hard, especially since I was moving so far away. A five-hour distance made inevitable changes happen that much faster. There have been a few times I thought it had sunk in fully. When I called to talk to Sierra and she came up with conversation topics for half an hour, instead of answering a few questions and then yelling "Gotta go!" as she ran away from the phone. When I was calling and commiserating with my mom over the money problems we were both having. When I realized that the majority of what I know about my siblings' lives now comes from their Facebook statuses. When I was stressed out and all I wanted was to hug Mom but she wasn't within arms' reach like she has been for twenty years. When my dad visited and instantly diagnosed what was wrong with my bathroom sink, and I realized how much I miss having him there to quietly solve all my problems.

But every time I think I know how it feels, something else hits me that reminds me growing up is not a moment, it's a lifetime. It never stops. Which means that the growing pains never fully stop, either. Sometimes we go through a growth spurt and the discomfort gets more intense. It's so overwhelming sometimes. Is it worth it? Of course it is. The blessings and rewards from the process far outweigh the struggle. From inside the haze of the pain, though, it's hard to see that.

I'd love to end this post with a grain of wisdom that gives me and anyone else in this situation the answers and the comfort they need. In this case, the wisdom is frustratingly elusive. Maybe that's part of growing up: you can't rush it. I'm still in the middle of the growth spurt, and I don't expect to have all the answers until I come up for air on the other side. For right now, the only conclusion I can draw is that everything happens for a reason (I knew my first blog post had a point) and God has plan somewhere inside the pain.