Our Little Family

This Friday, our little boy will be one month old. It seems that time has passed by so quickly and slow at the same time. I’m finally getting used to certain things about our new life and other things not quite yet. I like to categorize things in my life so this is how I will write about the past month:

Labor & Birth: Not quite what I expected both good and bad. I was in very early labor for about a week, which was really annoying. Felt like my body was getting ready for birth but I didn’t know when. On Friday, December 11, 2009 at 2:30 a.m., I woke up was some back pain and pretty regular contractions. Not painful, but just strong and long and hitting the magical 3-5 minutes to go to the hospital. We got the dogs ready and ourselves too to go to the hospital. I finally called the hospital at 4:30 a.m. and they told me to come in and eventually got to the hospital at 5:00 a.m.

The nurse wasn’t too sure if I was going to be admitted because I wasn’t too far along but my contractions were strong and long even though I wasn’t in pain. They made me walk around; both of our moms visited us. Apparently, I was leaning on my right side too much and the baby’s heart rate dropped a little bit so they automatically admitted me. My doctor finally came and we talked about all our options with labor and birth and we decided to break my water at 10:30 a.m.

I was excited because things were going to move along now. Almost immediately I started having painful contractions, so to things even further along I decided to walk around. I think I made twice around Labor and Delivery floor before I couldn’t walk anymore. I jumped in a hot shower to see if it could relieve the pain and it did a little. I think I was in the shower for an hour. Contractions are weird they are not always in the same spot. I could handle the horrible back pain but I could not handle the lower abdominal contractions. I felt like I was going to faint, I couldn’t open my eyes and I was uncontrollably shaking after the lower abdominal contractions. After two hours of bad contractions, I was done with dealing with pain and I got the epidural, I’d rather save my energy for pushing my cute watermelon out.

I took naps, listened to music, talked with Jesse for the next 5 hours or so. I was finally ready to push at 5:45 p.m. I did a few trial pushes and the nurse was amazed because he was coming so quickly. Now I was told that it was still painful to push even with an epidural, so I was expecting to feel pain, but thank God I did not feel an ounce of pain during pushing. I pushed for about 30 minutes and little (big head) David was out. David was 8 lbs 4 oz, 20 inches long. My doctor was estimating David to be 6 or 7 lbs, ha!

Coming Home: Two days later we were release from the hospital and were glad to be coming home. Adapting to a little person who can’t talk, move or do anything other than pee, poop and cry is not difficult but just different. It’s was physically difficult for me the first and second week because of the pain and because I knew what I needed to do to take care of my baby and household but I couldn’t move. My afterbirth pains were more painful than actual birth.

I’m finally starting to be able to move around with hardly any pain so household chores are getting easier and taking care of David it easier too, since I don’t have to rely on Jesse helping me move.

Rocky and Apollo: They have adapted to David well. They were intrigued by the squeaky thing on the couch that they weren’t allowed to touch. Apollo had a hard time hearing the baby cry at night; he would whine and cry when he heard David crying but only at night. Weird dog. I’m finally starting my walks again with the baby and hopefully we can all go for a walk together in the meanwhile, Kevin, my brother who is home from college has been taking them out on walks. Soon I’ll be running with my baby and two doggies by my side.

Jesse and Melissa: Jesse turned 30 years old on the 20th of December!!! We were both awfully tired so we didn’t do anything on his birthday. We had pizza at his parent’s house the day before and went to church on his birthday and came home and probably tried to sleep. I enjoy being a mommy, I think it’s so funny how sometimes I’m the only one that can make David stop crying. I always wondered how moms do that since I could never do that with other people’s baby or my own nephews or little brothers. I guess you just have to be a mom. We had David’s baby dedication yesterday at church, which is more for Jesse and me, that we promise to raise David in the Lord’s way and teach him about God and his son Jesus Christ. It was really nice.

Well, that’s it for now. David gave me a few minutes to write this so this was a treat!!