3 week pictures and weight check

Okay, I promise that I'm not going to always post weekly pictures of my baby, but this week, they were really funny so I had to post them all.

He was hungry, so he really didn't want to cooperate

LOL, I felt really bad when he did this
He finally just put his hand over his face so I stopped :)
And just because they are cute:

We went to the dr today to check his weight. I was nervous that they weren't going to be happy and that they were going to tell me I was going to have to start pumping, which I'm not ready to do just yet. Well I didn't need to worry at all because he weighs 8lbs 12oz! Haha, he gained over a full pound in one week :) The dr was very happy and I was happy that she was happy!

He did have to get some medicine for acid reflux :( I feel bad for him because we can tell that something has been hurting him / making him uncomfortable, and it made a lot of sense when she suggested that's what it might be. My dad and I both have had lots of issues with it in the past.

And now I have to run because someone's hungry!

Cooper's first 2 weeks

Cooper had his 2 week appointment last week; here's what we learned:

21 inches long (65%) - up .5 inches from birth

7 lbs. 10 oz. (22%) - down 5 oz. from birth

35 cm head circumference (17%) - up .7 cm from birth

They were a little worried about his weight gain, so we're going back for a weight check this week. Honestly the doctor totally freaked me out about this. She also told me that "now is not the time to be eating healthy". Umm, clearly, she does not know me. I told her that I didn't really have an appetite on most days, and she went on and on about how I need to get more sleep so that I have a better appetite. I'm not sure that she has ever had a baby, because anyone who has would know what a joke that was. She made me feel really bad that he hadn't gained enough weight. (we had gone to the dr when he was 4 days old and he was 7lb 5oz so he had gained 5 oz in 9 days) Anyway, of course I ended up crying right there in the office because I felt like this was all my fault. Thankfully it was after the dr had left the room. Hopefully we get good news at his appt this week. He's been eating like crazy so we'll see.

Some randoms about Cooper:

• This boy does NOT want his arms to be swaddled! If you notice, in most pictures, his hands are by his face. He loves his hands! He had them like that in the womb also, which made it really difficult to see his face in his 4D ultrasound.
• He cries for one of two reasons: He's hungry or he's gassy. Um, he's hungry a LOT, and he is gassy a LOT, so that doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't cry a lot! But at least we know what he wants.
• He is a mover for sure! I say that he is doing his exercises :) I need to video it sometime, it's pretty funny/adorable. I think I told you while I was pregnant how often he moved, like 24/7. Well, he moves just as much now as he ever did in the womb. Lee made a comment about how it was no wonder I complained about how much he moved if his current movement was any indication of how much he moved while on the inside.
• He loves his swing.
• He also loves for you to bounce him up and down, or for you to put him up on your shoulder and stand up so he can look around
• He is a pretty good sleeper, in my opinion. I often have to wake him up during the night to eat. In the first few days, I sometimes couldn't even wake him up to do that.
• He makes some really funny faces when he sleeps. My favorite is when he purses his lips like he's kissing
• He gets the hiccups all the time. I feel so bad for him because there's nothing I can really do to help him. They don't really seem to bother him.
• He does NOT like pacifiers! He's very dramatic about it and acts like he's gagging.

And now for a million pictures:

Doing his exercises

Daddy with all of the babies :) Haha

First shopping trip!

Lee's first Fathers Day
A few from his newborn session :)

Cooper is here!! (Part Two)

Okay, so we decided to go to the hospital. I took a shower and Lee got some things together and loaded into the car. All the while this was so surreal to me, I just couldn't believe it was happening :) We got to the hospital around 3:30. I made Lee leave all of our things in the car, because I wasn't sure that they weren't going to send us home. I told them that I thought I was in labor but not sure. So they hooked me up to watch my contractions. They checked me and I was dilated to a 3 and about 80% effaced. The week before at the dr, I had been a 2 and 75%, so I wasn't really surprised, but glad to know that some progress had been made at least! So they let me lay there for an hour, and of course, my contractions got farther apart and weren't lasting nearly as long. I was really frustrated. At this point, I had been in labor of some sort for somewhere around 9 hours and I felt like it had gone NO WHERE. And the nurse or whatever, while perfectly nice, wasn't exactly reassuring and didn't at any point try and make me feel better or say that people come in all the time thinking they are in labor. Which, clearly I was in labor, but you know what I mean. I kept second guessing myself.

So she came back to the room at about 4:30 and basically said that I needed to go and walk around for an hour and come back. If there was any change in dilation, then they would admit me, and if not, then they would tell me that I was in "early labor" and send me home. Walking for an hour sounded absolutely horrendous to me at that moment, but that's what they told me so we got up and went outside. It was actually really nice outside at 4:30am and there was a breeze that made me feel better. We walked circles around the parking lot for an hour. Haha, we didn't make many laps, even though it was a really small lot, not even a lot really, more of a drop-off area. Between my super swollen feet and having to stop every so often to breathe through a contraction, I think we circled it about 4 times, lol. The good news is that we had to stop pretty often for the contractions so I thought that this was definitely getting things going. We went back up and I was at a 4, woohoo! So they took me to a L&D room and got me admitted. I think that was around 6am. Now this part made me mad. The nurse got us settled and she said that they were going to just let me hang out in the room and see what happens. What? I wanted to say " I can tell you what's going to happen, I'm going to have a baby in this room and TODAY!!" Why would you tell someone that? Like she thought I was pretending. Whatever. By 7am they had a shift change and I had another nurse for the rest of the time. Not that she was fabulous herself but at least she didn't treat me like I didn't know what was going on with my own body.

At about 7:30, my OB came into the room. By this time my contractions were pretty regular and getting really intense. The pain in my back was the worst part. Not that the uterine contractions weren't bad, because they were, but the back pain, it was really bad. Come to find out, I had indeed been having "back labor". It is supposed to be a constant pain, which I never knew. We later found out that Cooper was not facing my back like I thought, he was actually on his side which is what caused the back labor. Anyway, my water hadn't broken by this point so he wanted to break my water, which I was really scared about for some reason. I had heard a long time ago that it hurt really bad to have it broken, but since then I've heard that it really didn't hurt. He assured me that 1) it wouldn't hurt (how does he freaking know anyway? he's a MAN!! That's what I was thinking) and 2) it would help speed things along. So he did that, which, no didn't hurt in itself, but he also checked me out for progress and THAT hurt like hell. I was at a 5 and 100%. (yay) So, then he asked if I wanted an epidural. Hmmm. I had planned to have this baby naturally, i.e. no drugs whatsoever, but I wasn't sure that I could relax enough if things kept going like they were. I couldn't imagine the contractions getting any more painful. I was about to climb up the wall as it was. We discussed my concerns, at length, and I still wasn't sure that it was the right decision, so I said that I wanted to wait a while and see.

Well, he wasn't kidding around about the fact that breaking my water would help move things along. Over the next 45 minutes - 1 hour, things were happening hard and fast and I couldn't even catch my breath. So I told the nurse that I'd get the epidural. At this point my only concern was that it would slow things down but she said that it was unlikely given how far along I was (I think I was at a 6 by this time, I don't really remember much during that time). I was also terrified of the needle, but there wasn't much anyone could do about that. I think I finally got the epidural around 9. It wasn't that bad. The worst part was having to be so still during the contractions.

Oh my gosh. It was pretty amazing. I have not once regretted getting the epidural, even though I really thought I would. I did, though, feel a little guilty when Lee would tell me what a great job I was doing. Because I felt like I wasn't doing anything. Literally, I was so relaxed that I took a nap for about 2 hours. After that 2 hours, I was at a 9. I couldn't believe it. So they started getting the room ready for the delivery! I think this was around 11. A little after noon, the nurse FINALLY came back to check me, and I was complete so I started pushing. I had no idea that you pushed with the nurse until you got the baby crowning. I thought that was weird. They make you wait for the doctor to get there with this head coming out?! Whatever. I think I pushed a total of maybe 6 contractions. It wasn't very many, but I wasn't prepared for how exhausting the pushing would be; it was SO much work. The next 3 days my arms were sore from how hard I was pulling myself on my legs. The we waited for the doctor to get there (so weird!) I was glad that I still felt the urge to push even with the epidural, that helped a lot, but made it difficult during the waiting, because I could also feel the baby's head. Once the doctor got there, I pushed two times I think and he was here! I will never forget hearing that little cry for the first time!

Here are some pics from the day, even though I look like crap in them :)

Right before I started pushing

Lee swore up and down the whole pregnancy that he wasn't going to want to cut the cord. I think it kind of grossed him out. I wasn't offended, I really didn't care either way. Even in the delivery room we told the nurses that he didn't want to do it. But, once Cooper was out and it came time to cut the cord, Lee was all about it :) It's cute. Also cute was the fact that our Dr. tried to get Lee to pose with him for the picture. They took two posed pictures before he did the actual cut :) I think Lee was too excited because he wasn't posing for any of the pics.

Getting weighed and measured. As soon as Lee held his hand, he stopped crying :)

I couldn't believe he was finally here!

Proud daddy

Of course we had to get an OU shot within Cooper's first 24 hours!

Ready to go home! Look how tiny he was in his carseat! He is already bigger than this :(

So sweet :) We did put things around his head do it wasn't flopping around in the car!

We were surprised with this stork when we pulled up to the house!

Cooper is here!! (Part One)

Born Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 1:09pm

7lbs, 15 oz

20.5 inches long

Tons of dark hair and absolutely perfect :)

I'm probably going to tell this story in more than one post. It's not really long, but I'm long winded and, obviously, don't have enough time in one sitting to write it all down.

The Saturday before Cooper was born, I started having some really bad back pain. I also started having what felt like cramps and thought (hoped!) that maybe I was going into labor. But I laid down for a little while and the cramping went away. The back pain did not. It was constant and lasted the rest of my pregnant days. It was weird and would start in my lower back and go all the way down my legs and into my feet. But I had experienced back pain of all sorts throughout pregnancy so I wasn't really sure what it was.

When I left work on Monday, the back pain was extremely bad. I wouldn't say excruciating, but I could barely walk around. After dinner, I took a nap and started feeling like I did on Saturday, with the cramping again. I thought that maybe I was having contractions but I didn't know so I just didn't even say anything to Lee. All day long I had been annoying him about going to this self serve frozen yogurt place, so after my nap, he was like "well are we going or not?!" He had no idea and I don't know why I didn't say something about how I was feeling. Anyway, we went to the fro yo place (Cherry Berry and so good, btw!) and I definitely started having regular contractions. I still didn't tell Lee until we got home, haha. But I still wasn't sure it this was IT so I had no idea what to do! So we sat around and pretended to watch tv and just didn't know what to do. Finally around 10 I decided that if this was the real thing than I wanted to go to sleep while I still could, so we went to bed.

Around 11:45 I woke up with intense regular contractions. I tried to go back to sleep, but after an hour went by, I realized I couldn't sleep anymore and got up and started timing them. They were about 4 minutes apart and lasting for about a minute. At that point I freaked out a little because they just seemed to have progressed a lot in just the couple hours I slept. (Before they were totally irregular, sometimes 8 minutes, sometimes 40 minutes, and the pain wasn't bad at all, I'd say a 3) I was supposed to go to the hospital when contractions were 5 minutes apart, but I still didn't know if we should go or not! haha. Around 2 I went in and woke up Lee to see if he thought we should go. Finally we decided that we would just go and see what they said. I, for some reason, was sure they would send us home.

Awkward

So.  I have a job interview.  Tomorrow.  I am completely UNqualified for this position.  It is 100% commission-based.  It requires working nights AND weekends.  And I’m actually not completely sure what the position entails. 

 

So am I crazy that I kind of REALLY want the job? 

 

Realistically, I will not get the job.  But what does it hurt to go on the interview?  Nothing.  And if I for some reason DO get offered the job, I’m not even sure I can take it because it’s completely based on commission.  But STILL.  And I’m pretty sure that they have several other candidates.  Whatever.

 

So tomorrow morning, I’m going to walk into this guys office with my resume that is 100% UNrelated to this field.

 

Oh and I am 9 months pregnant.  I left that little detail out when I spoke with them.  Is it wishful thinking to hope that they just don’t notice?  Ha!

 

If I don’t get laughed out of the office in the first 5 minutes, I think we’ll call it a success.