babies fart

A lot. Who knew?

He actually seems to have most of the general bodily functions pretty well dialed - peeing, pooping, farting, burping, and throwing up are all well within his grasp. Sadly, cleaning up after himself is not.

My mom and dad are here for two weeks and it's been just great! My mom is cleaning the house - getting to all the stuff that Nate and I would never ever have done like cleaning the woodwork and actually pulling the knobs off of the stove to clean behind them. My dad has been doing projects that we also have not gotten to - on the agenda are shelves for my bathroom, taking the ski rack off of the Jeep and he and Nate have already weather-stripped the windows. It's warmer in here already. Plus they're putting in a ton of baby time, which is just great as well.

Speaking of great, Nate took Milo on his own all night last night while I slept. I went to lay down in Milo's room around 9 and didn't wake up again until 7 AM. It was amazing. I was so confused when I woke up - I couldn't figure out why it was light out or why the baby wasn't crying for his breakfast.

Milo and I got a lot done yesterday - pediatrician's appt and we stopped by my friend Johanna's house to visit her and her new baby, Desi. Too cute! Maybe she'll email me the pic of Milo and Desi so I can post it here...hint hint nudge nudge. :) The ped appt went great, he is up to 8 lbs 9 1/2 oz - 21.5 oz in 18 days so he's still excelling in the eating dept. He is about 20 3/4" tall, so he's grown about an inch and three quarters since he was born.

We also stopped by my office and picked up his ski pass and visited with people at work for a while. I think I'm going to go in on Thursday for a while to help out with some stuff and possibly even pick up some work to bring home. I don't know though, I don't want to get ahead of myself. If nothing else I'll take a few runs while I'm out there, that should be hilarious. Fat, weak, out of shape, bad knees...sounds like a GREAT combo for snowboarding.

I've posted some new pictures to the website and soon will be making a 'best of December' slideshow for those of you that don't want to look at hundreds of pictures of someone else's baby.

slings and things

I have a love/hate relationship with our sling.

For those of you that don't know, a sling is like a tiny hammock that the parent can wear around one shoulder (in the same fashion as a shoulder bag) and put your baby into the wide, hammock-y part. This part then cocoons around the baby, holding him all safe and secure and right next to you. It enables you to hold him (or, in modern terms 'wear' him. baby-wearing is all the rage these days.) and have both of your hands free and still be sharing warmth etc. with your baby.

Love - Milo falls asleep pretty much immediately upon being put into it. He really seems to like it in there and it's nice to have him so close and still be able to use both hands.

Hate - it is impossible to get him out without waking him up again, sentencing the wearer to hours of back strain (who knew 7 1/2 lbs could weigh so much?) until Milo wants to eat. Or until you decide it's worth risking his wrath to give your back a rest.

Also hate - I'm afraid he's going to suffocate in there. He likes to sleep on his side and there is definitely some stomach squishiness for him to push his face into.

In other news, it's been a crazy couple of days out at the Village - www.tetonat.com . It almost makes me want to take up x-country skiing. Almost.

There are some new pictures up in the Dec08 folder of Milo's website and I hope to get some xmas pics up soon as well. Thank you so much to everyone who sent him cards and gifts, thank you for thinking of us!

And since I know you've all been dying to find out, here is the picture I decided on for his ski pass:

two week appt

Yesterday we had Milo’s two week pediatrician’s appointment and everything went very well. He’s put on 7 ounces in six days, so he’s ahead of the ounce/day recommendation. I’m not sure if that makes him an overachiever or us....either way, he’s up to 7 lbs 4 oz and gaining every day. His head got bigger as well and he’s 1/2 an inch longer, up to 20”. He has another appointment in two weeks when we’ll talk about vaccinations and re-weigh & measure him, but Dr Pockat says he is doing great and is all systems go.

A few of the other women in our birth class are starting to deliver - my friend Noel delivered the day before yesterday and my friend Johanna is in labor right now. All three of us were induced, how weird is that? Noel’s not-so-little boy (10 lbs 8 oz!!! And Noel is tiny!!!) because she was over her due date and Johanna and I both because of pre-eclampsia worries. Noel ended up with a c-section after her labor stalled and Johanna is probably in Pitocin-induced pain as I type this.

Nate’s cousin Kilie is here for a few days, which is awesome. I don’t think we’ll do much besides lounge about and watch movies, but it’s nice to have another grownup here for a while. Hmm....if I’m this starved for conversation after one week what is it going to be like in week seven? I imagine I’ll get used to it. Plus we’ll have lots of company starting in a few weeks, so that will probably help as well.

My big task for the day is to pick out a picture to put on his ski pass. It’s a very important decision, don’t you know.

big day

Earlier this week, in the space of 5 minutes, Milo:

shot poop across the changing table and hit his laundry basket at least three feet away;

peed all over himself;

lost his cord stump.

big day.

pediatrician's appt

We had two pediatrican’s appointments last week, one on Wed and one on Friday to check on his weight gain. On Wednesday he weighed in at 6 lb 11 oz but by Friday he was up to 6 lb 13 oz, hooray! We have been continuing to supplement his feeding with pumped breastmilk on the advice of the lactation consultant at the hospital and that seems to be working, which is great. We can’t have our peanut losing weight!

We’ve been home for a week now and are sort of starting to get the hang of things. Sort of. He’s eating every 2-4 hours but we still usually have to wake him up and remind him that he’s hungry. Right now it works out fine to get up every couple of hours at night as I can just go right back to sleep and stay in bed until noon (with food breaks for Milo of course) if I want to. Going back to work will be a completely different story though.

We have our two week appointment next week on Thursday, fingers crossed for additional weight gain!

And as an aside...I got a belt on today. Granted it’s on my maternity pants and I still have quite the tummy, but still! Whooooooo!

details

Our little bird was born on 12/3 at 5:43 pm at St John's Hospital here in Jackson.

I wrote out all of the details already in an email to my friend Kris, so I’m going to indulge in a little cut ‘n’ paste action.

so let's see....I went in to the dr on Monday afternoon because my hands had felt super weird and swollen all day and I'd had a lingering nagging headache since the night before. When I got there my BP was something like 150/109, another sign of possible pre-eclampsia. they drew some blood and had me pee in a cup and then hooked me up to the maternal/fetal monitor just to make sure that milo was doing ok in there and to check and see if i was having any contractions. dr george ordered me to bed rest and sent us home.

Tuesday i spent all day in bed watching movies (rough work!!) and checking my BP every couple of hours. it was pretty consistently around 155/100 all day so I called the dr office around 3 to get their advice. i talked to one of the other doctors on the staff and she thought it was probably time to think about going to the hospital this week. She conferred with dr george who then called me and recommended we come in that night to start induction. so we did!

I called nate to come and get me and then sort of wandered around the house, trying to wrap my head around the whole baby thing. we grabbed some quick dinner on our way and then checked in at st. john's around 8 pm or so. They checked my cervix again (still at 2 cm and hardly effaced at all) and then gave me the ripener to let things progress overnight with some medical assistance. at 5:30 am they came back, took the ripener dealie out and re-checked me...still 2 cm, but about 50% effaced and apparently much softer all around. They started running in pitocin at 6:30 am. I'd been having really wimpy contractions all night but probably just as a side effect of the ripener.

Dr. Anthony came in to check me around 10 or 11 am, STILL 2 cm and not even enough room for her to break my water. grr. around noon or 12:30 the contractions were lasting about a minute and were only a minute apart and really really strong - strong enough where I couldn’t stand to have Dr. Anthony examine me.

I totally started to panic around 1 in the afternoon. The contractions were so fast that I wasn't really getting any chance to catch my breath or try to focus on anything to calm down. I thought about getting in the whirlpool and even had them start to fill it for me but then couldn't stand the thought of standing up or walking down the hall to get in it. I think my exact words were something along the lines of 'f&$% the tub, i don't want the tub, give me the shot' and poor nate was doing so good and trying to be soothing and suggest other things that could help and all i could think of was 'give me the drugs no I do NOT want to try a different position or the tub...DRUG ME RIGHT NOW!!!!'

I asked for the epidural probably around 1:15 or 1:20 and he was in my room and ready to go by 1:30. it was definitely a weird procedure...the initial numbing agent is all hot and itchy and then you can feel them in the space trying to find the right spot for the tube....not painful but for sure uncomfortable.

anyway, by 1:45 I couldn't feel a thing and was soooo much happier. Nate thinks they may have given me a bit too much - my legs were completely asleep until about 4 hours after the delivery and I couldn't even feel an urge to push when it was time. Whatever though, it was totally worth it and I will do it again if I need to.

Nate and I both slept until about 4:30 when the nurse came in to check me again and I was 10 cm and fully effaced. She said later that she was really surprised - the whole staff on call that day was convinced I wouldn't deliver until either late that night or even the next day since it took me 7 hrs of pitocin to progress from 2 to 4 cms. They called dr george who was on his way back from pinedale (about an hour away, they see patients down there once a week or so) and was very surprised to hear that i was ready to go. :) heh, I fooled them!!! Milo was at +2 station so it was probably good to wait a bit to push until he was a little further into my pelvis. plus since I had no urge to push it was not a big deal to wait at all.

dr george got there around 5:10 and I started pushing maybe around 5:15 or 5:20....thank goodness even without being able to feel anything I was able to push correctly. Apparently some women have trouble with that...seemed pretty obvious to me but then again breastfeeding doesn't seem like it should be that hard either.

after about 4 or 5 rounds of pushing the nurse said 'wait wait stop! I should really get your dr to deliver this baby' - he had stepped out a sec to do some paperwork and get into his scrubs, expecting the pushing to take 2-3 hours since I was a first timer and completely numb from the waist down to boot. He came running in and threw his gown and gloves and everything on with Milo's head partway out...one more little push and I was done. Dr george put him on my chest and they rubbed him down and he was just perfect and amazing in every way.

So overall I'm very pleased with how it all went - I think it's funny that I was going so slowly for the first 6-7 hrs and then all of a sudden my body decided 'hey, let's do this thing!' and shot him out. Now of course everyone is saying how easy the next one should be. Yeah...i'll get right on that.

He never really cried until he was one or two days old - dr pockat (the pediatrician) was a little worried that he may have some sort of respitory distress but his oxygen levels were awesome so it looks like his gruntiness was just him talking at us. His bilirubin levels were high on day 2 which is why we ended up staying two extra nights.

We were discharged Sunday afternoon and have been home since then getting used to each other. The feeding thing is starting to come together a little bit...or at least we’re starting to get a bit of a routine together. Norm is confused but has been really good about the new little attention hog in his life, which is a relief. He’s never really been around little kids so I was a bit worried as to how he’d react. Of course Milo doesn’t really do a whole lot at this point, but still.

milo charles gray

He's here!

And he has his own website!

check it out!