Remembrances

So I created this blog really so I could keep track of everything we have and will go through during the "baby months" like sleep patterns, growth, milestones, etc. I would love it if other parents would comment on any of their experiences as well!

Axel was a c-section baby. My water broke at around 4:00 a.m. on April 25th. We went in to the hospital all excited, got admitted. Then waited.....and waited.....and waited. Nothing happened. My doctor told me that he was giving my body 24 hours to go in to labor, otherwise, it was going to be a c-section. "No way" I thought, not me. I'm not going to be "one of those girls". I thought having a c-section meant failure, and I wouldn't have it. I waited around 18 hours and my body never went into labor. So I agreed to a mild inducer. After around 9 hours of some contractions, the doctor checked, I was at less than 1 cm and my doctor was not happy that I still wouldn't have a c-section. Okay, hit me with the Pitocin, Doc. I was on Pitocin for about 9 more hours when the doctor checked again.....I was only at 1 cm! Gasp. How could my body not cooperate? I was supposed to have the all-natural birth, no pain meds, I was going to tough it out! Johan and my friend Natalie were in the room with me. Natalie is a doctor herself and I asked her what to do. She said I needed to go under the knife. Ugh. Failure. But once I heard baby cries at 7:16 on April 26th, I was like "why did I wait 36 hours for that??? I could have heard those cries so much sooner!"

Since he was three months old I've been using this app called Baby Care. It was great while his schedule was irregular because it would track when he slept and ate. We started Axel on a schedule at 6 weeks and he took to it really well. He would basically take a nap every 1 1/2 hours and would nurse every 2 hours. We had him going to bed at around 7:00 and he would sleep through the night waking up a couple of times to nurse. But when he started a painful trend of waking up at 5:00 every morning, I followed the baby book (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child), and put him to bed earlier. That really helped. However, ever since then, he has kept the 5:30 pm bedtime, which is SO early! But he has been sleeping around 13 hours ever since, so I'm not complaining.

Nursing in the beginning was extremely hard for me. It was painful, he wouldn't latch right, and he had reflux so he had to sleep on an incline. We both also had thrush from 2 weeks until four months. At 6 weeks Johan and I both got food poisoning and I practically lost all my milk. Then at around 6 months I got mastitis and almost lost my milk again. I can proudly say that we have survived it all, and at 7 months, I'm still nursing, and plan to until he's around a year old.

From the beginning, I told Johan that I would get up at night with Axel so that he could sleep, since he had to go to work. Even if Johan did get up to help out, I still woke up anyways so it's not like I was getting more rest. I figured it was better to have one well-rested parent than two semi-rested zombies.

During the first months, I recall getting up in the middle of the night to nurse, and hoping that he'd fall asleep in my arms. If he didn't, I had to rock him in our arms or do whatever it took to help him fall back asleep. In the first several weeks he wouldn't sleep unless he was laying on you! I couldn't put him down. We had him in the ergo or walking in the stroller constantly. I was always sweating because of his body heat and it was summer. Thankfully my mom was staying with us to help those first three weeks and she would take him after I nursed and he'd sleep on her chest. What a lifesaver!!!! We were so well rested!!! When she left we were terrified. Neither of us could sleep with him on our chest, nor did we want to even if we could. We decided we had to ease him into sleeping in his moses basket in his own room. He wouldn't let us put him down so at night I would put him in the Ergo infant insert (which is like a cocoon), and walk around for about 20 minutes. After he'd fallen asleep I would EVER SO SLOWLY take him out of it and lay him in his basket, still swaddled in the insert. I called it the Mission Impossible walk out of the nursery. If I stepped on the wrong part of the wood floor it might creak and wake him up, oh, what a frightful thought.

After a week or so of that, we slowly transitioned him into no insert, just swaddling blankets, and he soon got it. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not. The day he hit 12 weeks, we implemented the cry it out method. I knew he was ready because he would cry himself to sleep in the car (not by force, it just happened by accident one day). We desperately wanted him to be able to go to bed without us rocking him to sleep. The Healthy Sleep Habits book recommends cry it out in order to teach the baby to self soothe and develop good sleeping habits. It really worked! Twenty minutes that first night was really all it took, and after that we just stuck with our bedtime routine and he fell right asleep in his crib without having to be rocked to sleep. Below is proof that I did make him sleep in the Ergo infant insert. I'm not totally proud of it, but I kept an eye on him while he slept, in case anyone is thinking of calling cps on me.

Until he was about four months old, he wouldn't nap in his crib. So we would take a walk or go for a drive and do errands and let him sleep in his carseat or the ergo. When he was around four months old, we did cry it out with naps. It didn't always work. We had to go in and get him and sometimes nurse him to sleep. It was off and on success, but we kept at it. At 4 months he finally started taking the pacifier, which made a world of difference and by now (7 months), he loves sleeping and napping in his crib.

My Baby Care app has also helped me keep track of his weight, length, and head measurements from the doctor visits:

Birth: 7lbs 10 oz, 20.5" long
3 months: 13 lbs 8 oz / 26" long
3 1/2 months: 14 lbs 9 oz / 26" long
4 months: 17 lbs 1 oz
4 months 1 week: 17 lbs 13 oz / 26.5" long / 17.75" diameter head
6 months: 19 lbs 1 oz / 28.5" long / 18.5" diameter head
7 months: 21 lbs 4 oz

Yes, he is a big boy. The doctor laughed during his 6 month checkup and said that his head was in the 99th percentile. Since there is no such thing as the 100th percentile, he could quite possibly have the biggest head of any kid his age. The good thing is that his height and weight are around the 95th percentile, so at least he's not a little kid with a big head.

So we started solids at around 4 months. He has been a pretty great eater. I have been making his foods and following the book Super Baby Foods, which tells you how to make their foods out of the most nutritious ingredients for their age, and when they can eat what. So far he has eaten prunes, peas, asparagus, green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, banana, avocado, mango, and rice cereal and oatmeal. He's going to try tofu this week, poor kid. I made his own rice cereal by buying brown rice, blending it in the food processor, and then cooking it. So easy! Making his food has saved me a lot of money as well, bonus for the frugal Peruvian.

So that was a summary of the early months that have already passed. I'll probably add more memories in when I remember them. As I read through everything, it sounds like so much work! But the truth was that Johan and I thought he was so easy. I have to give credit to Johan, though. He is an amazing husband and Dad and does more than his share of the work. That makes my job feel so much easier to have help. We have definitely had tough days and nights, but for the most part we were like "heck, let's have more!" As Axel gets older, I realize that the sleeping part has gotten a lot easier as he has learned to sleep more soundly. But lately the tough part is keeping him stimulated. So some things get easier, and some things get harder. I realize this is not the case for every baby, since they are all so different. I'm still in denial that he might be walking in a couple of months. Maybe that will happen to be the same time that I decide to go back to work.