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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!!

Mid-November, Already?!!

Moving: It's been a month and a half since we first moved into our new house and it seems like we are 95% moved in. Moving in seems to take longer than moving out!! We just need to put up a few decorations and rearrange a few more items and we should be done. It's been difficult since I can move around too much and I get easily tired being 8 months pregnant and all.

Dogs: Rocky and Apollo love their new place. They have an enormous backyard compared to their cement patio in our old town house. Lots of new smells and they (primarily Rocky) have learned how to dig...something I do NOT like, especially on a white dog. So now they have supervised visits to the back yard everyday, and they go for long walks around the neighborhood. Rocky has become an escape artist from the backyard too, so another reason why they have supervised backyard visits.

Jesse: Is having an great time at his new job. I don't ask for too much detail on what he does. Even though it's super exciting for him doing electrical engineering, I don't really understand it.

Jesse was diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea (not breathing while sleeping) a few weeks ago. His oxygen levels would drop down to dangerous levels so now (for the past 2 nights) he has been sleeping with a CPAP. A CPAP is pretty much a air mask that forces air down your throat so the oxygen level stays normal and your body can rest. So far so good, Jesse feels more rested than usual and I can sleep without worrying about him not gasping for air in the middle of the night. He kind of sounds like Darth Vader if he tries to talk with the mask on.

Melissa: As for me, I will be 36 weeks pregnant on Monday, technically I will have a full-term baby and I'm good to go at any time. My hip pain has improved, meaning less pain but pain none the less. The baby is still moving around like crazy even though the books and doctors say the baby is supposed to start slowing down since there isn't enough room anymore. My baby doesn't want to obey and keeps on making himself at home causing me more stretch marks that I've ever imagined.

His nursery is almost done and I've been cleaning/arranging the house everyday until I have it to my standards. My hospital bag is mostly packed just need a few more items and the baby bag is 99% done. I'm also excited that Jesse will be able to take 3 weeks off when we have baby David and it will overlap with Christmas so I'm awfully excited to have him home for that long. By the way we are naming our baby David Aaron. "David" because in the Bible King David is the son of Jesse and "Aaron" because he was the brother of Moses and also because those names are easy to say in English and in Spanish.

As for being pregnant, it sucks. There's nothing much more to say than that, but I'd do it a few more times. The one thing I miss the most is exercising, real exercising, running, weightlifting, hiking just being able to work up a sweat. Hopefully in a month or two I can start doing a few of those again.

Melissa

Update

Jesse and I have been slowly unpacking our boxes and I mean really slowly. Jesse's been working a lot and was preparing for his first sermon completely in Spanish which he did last Sunday. =) I can hardly move around so moving and unpacking boxes is very painful. I have major round ligament pain in my hip ligaments, apparently if you are pretty flexible while not being pregnant sometimes you become so flexible during pregnancy it's painful. That's me, of course. I've been feeling better with that pain the last two days, but I've been coming down with a cold. Whatever, 8 weeks to go.

We are half way through October and soon the year will be over. Man time flies by fast. Next thing you know it we will be going down to Mexico again for our annual mission trip, with our new little baby boy. He's already been once, in my belly. =)

Melissa

Moving...

We are finally done moving out of our old house. We finished yesterday...it was awfully tiring. Jesse couldn't take time off to move during the day so we asked our family and friends to help us move during the day. Thank you to all of you who helped, Kara, Nate, Adam, Mikey G., Danny, Franz, Daniel, and my family.

Now we have to move in and get ready for our baby boy!

Melissa

New Puppy

About 3 weeks ago, Jesse and I got a new puppy. Many think it was my idea but it was Jesse. We visited some friends in Seattle and saw how great their two dogs played with each other and Jesse thought it would be great for Rocky to have a little doggie brother. We wanted another Shih Tzu so we got an 8 week old male Shih Tzu. They are really cute together. His name is Apollo, yup it's Rocky and Apollo, or better "Rocky vs. Apollo". By the way we don't have a Rocky movie fascination.

Melissa

Moving

We are moving to an actual single story family house, in about two weeks. 3 bedrooms 2 baths and a HUGE backyard. The house is remodeled and recently landscaped so the house is nice. Rent is cheaper that what we are paying for our current townhouse, but we have to pay for water and trash. It will even out. Now we have to actually pack and move, which is always a hassle especially when one of us is 27 weeks pregnant.

If anyone wants our China hutch, we are selling it for $75.00.

Melissa