Athene Numphe

Our Little Prince had his 6 weeks check-up on Monday. He weighed in at 10lbs 0.5 oz and almost 20″ long. He’s getting so big. The midwife who delivered him was the one who did our check-up. She commended on just how strong he is and how cute he is. She said that the noise he makes overnight are perfectly normal and healthy noises.

She also gave me a check-up. She said that my breast tissue is very healthy, that my abs only have a touch of separation, and that everything that should be together has come back together well. I had to give her a high-five for the last one since she was the one who stitched me up. I also got my blood drawn and tested. I am officially no longer anemic. Hurray! Which means that all of the exhaustion I’m feeling is normal new baby exhaustion. Hurray?

Last Saturday we had our official Centering reunion. While I’d seen some of the other babies already (either at a meet-up or over the internet), it was nice to see everyone again. I even made a cake while baby-wearing (my mom helped and Darius was on baby duty while we decorated it).

Darius and I got asked to come and talk to the August Centering group this week about our experiences at the Birthing Center with the L&D and about being new parents. I think it went pretty well. Our LP was asleep on Darius’s shoulder for most of it, which was really cute.

Pumping has been going well and Darius has even given the LP a few bottles. He’ll eat about 2oz and then about 30min or so later decide he’s hungry again, will refuse the bottle, and will do a long nursing session with me. But it’s a start, so that’s good.

Our Little Prince really likes to “talk” to us and things. His favorite “word” is “agoo.” When he talks, he talks to everything! He’s also starting to smile a lot. It’s so adorable. The other day he invented a game called “roll off of Daddy’s chest onto the edge of the couch.” He’s also getting amazingly good at holding his head up and kicking his legs like he wants to crawl. I have a feeling we’re going to be in big trouble sooner rather than later.

We’re also getting better at recognizing “I’m about to freak out” sounds from “I’m happy in my playpen” sounds and the “I need to nurse” vs. “I have a wet diaper” sounds. I’ve found out that when he’s overtired he’ll think he wants to nurse, start to scream, try to nurse again, and start to scream. When this happens, the best thing is to just stop trying to nurse him and walk him around until he falls asleep.

We’ve been developing a bedtime routine. Every other or third day it starts with a bath from both of us (which he LOVES). We then put him in a disposable diaper (because he hates being wet, so he sleeps longer in one) and put him in a pair of footie pajamas. I then nurse him and hopefully he falls asleep in my arms so I can transfer him to the bed. Sometimes he needs a bit of a walk and a side nurse to fall asleep. The other night he fell asleep in my arms in the “Magic Baby Hold.” Then we all fall asleep because Darius gets up super early for work and because I’m exhausted. Sometimes LP wakes up in the middle of the night and so one of us will do a diaper change and often take him out of his PJs. A lot of the time, he doesn’t quite wake up but sort of thrashes and if I nurse him he just falls back to sleep for a few hours, which I hear is the first step toward longer sleeping periods at night.

Had started putting LP in onesies every day, but he developed a heat rash (man is it hot in Texas!) so most of the time he’s just in his diaper covers. Sometimes I give him naked time on waterproof pads covered with cloth diapers. He seems to really like that time. We also got him some lightweight and/or sleeveless onesies and rompers (in size 0-3 as he is completely out of the newborn size now) for when we need to go out/because they are so cute.

In other news, my mother has been in town for a week and a half. It’s been fantastic having her here. She’s been a tremendous help, both in terms of housework and helping with the LP. It also means we’ve been getting out of the house more, which is tiring but good. I got to get a haircut and she even babysat LP for a few hours so Darius and I could go on a date to see the last Harry Potter movie (I cried a lot). I’m going to miss her so much when she is gone.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.

DJ slept a lot the first two days. He was still having trouble latching. He would try and then cry and then fall asleep. We just figured that he was still tired from the whole being born thing.

On Monday the postpartum midwife came by. As Darius had suspected earlier that day, DJ was jaundiced. It was all the way down to his navel. Also, when the midwife weighted him, he weighted only 6lbs 5oz. He’d lost 8% of his birth weight. This was not good. It upset me a lot. She said that I was doing everything right, but because he was small, latching can be a problem and he doesn’t have the reserves of energy to keep him going so he’ll just fuss himself to sleep. Also, she was worried about my milk not coming in, but as we got him to nurse, I noticed that it was starting to turn more milky.

So I decided that we were going to make this work. I used an iPhone app to keep track of his feeding and sleeping. We made sure that he was eating every 2-3 hours, with one longer period if he would take it over night. I used the nipple shield because he could latch onto that. I kept him nursing for as long as he would, which lead to some 45 minute nursing sessions. My milk came in on Tuesday, without pumping. My nipples were bruised, but I kept at it. We also opened the shades and spent some time in the sunlight. On Wednesday my breasts were so full that they hurt and I was worried about engorgement. On Wednesday we (and by we, I mean my mother and sister because I ran out of energy) gave DJ a bath, which he loved. Also, my father and stepmother came into town that day as well to meet their grandson.

The grandparents with their grandson

Somewhere in all of this, I started singing to DJ, “This little prince of mine, I’m gonna let him shine. This little prince of mine, I’m gonna let him shine. This little prince of mine, I’m gonna let him shine, let him shine, let him shine, let him shine.” I also started making up other verses with words that rhyme with shine and randomly calling him “my little prince.” In fact, I call him “little prince” or “my little prince” way more often than I call him anything else. I’ve been thinking about decorating the baby’s room in a “The Little Prince” theme, but I’m not 100% sure yet. So I’m going start calling him Little Prince (or possibly LP for short) on this blog as well.

On Thursday morning my breasts started leaking on their own and the feeling of engorgement died down. We kept at the nursing schedule. The postpartum midwife came by in the afternoon. I was really nervous. However, I didn’t have to be. My little prince weight 6lbs, 15oz! He was up a whole ounce from his birth weight! Also his jaundice was up to his shoulders, which was really good progress. We’d totally done it!

My Cross-eyed Little Prince

While all of this was going on, I got some bad news about myself. My iron levels were really really low. Not quite to the “you need a blood transfusion” level, but close. No wonder I was so tired all the time and my recovery was going really slowly. I started taking more iron and trying to eat more iron rich foods (no wonder I kept asking for roast beef sandwiches!). At the five day visit from the pp midwife, she took more blood and we found out the next day that my iron count had only improved a little bit. The midwives think, and I agree, that my anemia got worse toward the end of my pregnancy, I was tired all the time and sometimes I’d see shiny floaters, and we didn’t catch it. Probably because I didn’t bring up the whole seeing spots things. So that combined with the normal amount of blood loss during and after labor brought about the anemia. I’m trying not to be bummed out about this. I’m taking my iron pills with orange juice, to help absorption, drinking lots of water, and trying to eat iron rich foods. Every day I feel like I have just a little more energy than the day before.

My little prince and I

It was a really hard week, full of ups and downs. I know we could not have gotten through it without the help of our family. Mom and my sister were here from just hours after DJ’s birth until Friday noon. My dad and stepmom were here from Wednesday until Sunday morning. They were amazing – changing diapers, bouncing him to sleep after a feeding, giving him a bath, making food, bringing me food and water, running to the store for items that we needed, taking care of me as I was recovering, taking him when I was so discouraged about everything, and providing moral support. I owe so much of my success with DJ to their help.

Baby burrito. Nom Nom Nom

Darius was also amazing over the week. He totally started “daddy nesting”, cleaning up the house both inside and out, and working on fixing up his car to make sure it was more reliable for the baby (it started having problems in the middle of the week). He was the best & fastest diaperer when it came to the cloth diapers. And, he is the expert baby swaddler, aka baby burrito maker. I really love watching him interact with his son.

With the first week done, it was time to face the challenges of week 2, our first week alone.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.

I passed the 38 weeks mark last Friday. I feel like I’m almost at the hurry-up-and-wait stage of things.

Last week I taught my last class and had my last full day in the office. Starting yesterday I’m mostly working from home, unless I need to go in. This is really helpful for me and I’m super thankful that my job is flexible enough to let me do this.

Physically things are going okay. I’m still in a lot of pelvis pain, especially when I move wrong. There’s also this spot in my right shoulder blade that likes to hurt after a little while. I thought it was just being at work all day, but it did it yesterday too when I spent the day on the couch. I’ll just have to figure out the right position to be in or switch it around a bunch. I’m tired a lot these days too. And last week my right foot decided that it would be fun to swell up randomly. Yet another reason I’m glad to be working at home with my feet up.

Mentally I’m doing well most of the time. I’m still nervous about the whole birth/labor experience because it’s so outside of the realm of anything I’ve ever experienced before. But I think that I’m pretty ready to be a mommy, which is something that I had trouble saying just the other week.

Stree is doing well. He has periods where he squiggles and wiggles around a whole lot and periods where he just likes to stretch his foot or his butt into my ribs (so much fun, let me tell you). He really liked last week’s episode of Glee.

At my prenatal appointment on Friday, I was measuring 37 weeks instead of 38 but I’m not really concerned because I think all of those things are estimates anyway. The really exciting thing was that she did a quick ultrasound to double check the baby’s position. It was the first time I’d “seen” him since the ultrasound at 18 weeks (right before Christmas). He is 100% head down (hurray!) and has hair. You could see the little spikes coming off the back of his head. So amazing. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures and we couldn’t get a clear profile shot of his face because he was being shy and covering part of his face with his hand.

The to-do-before-the-baby-is-born list is coming along nicely. Over the weekend we rearranged the baby’s room. I got the last of the stuff that needed to be washed and put away washed and put away. I even put together the awesome Monkey Bouncer all by myself (with only one easily fixable mistake). The nursing pillows and baby carriers are mostly ready. The last of the things the baby needs are in the bag to go to the Birthing Center and the list for the last minute stuff is on top of the bag. And I installed the car seat base into my car all by myself yesterday. The only thing I really don’t know where it should go yet is the “Whale of a Tub”.

There are tons more pictures of baby things on the Pictures page. For some reason I’m obsessed with taking pictures of everything.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to get to celebrate Mother’s Day this year since I’m not-quite-but-almost a mother. But we did. Darius surprised me with a PajamaGram. It’s a pair of superhero style pajamas that say “Super Mom” and have a CAPE! Then he made me eggs for breakfast. We also went out to dinner to our favorite hibachi place with B and the place gave me a rose because I count as a mom. All of it made me really happy.

Originally published at my pregnancy blog. Please leave any comments there.