Diabolical Plan

Of all the words people have used to describe me, diabolical is not one that has come up. However last night, Mary found out about a diabolical plan than I have been working on for the last 3 1/2 months.
On July 1 when Mary went on bed rest I started putting Mia to bed every night. I still put her to bed most nights as currently Mary has Jude duty.
My bedtime routine for Mia is that I give her a bath, then get her dressed, then I read her a story while she drinks milk. After that I take her in the bathroom to brush her teeth. THEN I take Mia out of the bathroom and I have trained her to put one hand on my shoulder and her other hand in my hand, and we 2-step from the bathroom to her room, I spin her twice, I kiss her on the cheek then dip her into her crib. Sounds sweet, right?
Here is the diabolical part. When dancing, a guy usually leads with the left hand and put his right hand on the hip. With Mia, I have done the opposite. I lead with my right hand, so Mia holds my hand with her left hand, and puts her right hand on my shoulder. Essentially, I am 2 stepping with her backwards. Additionally, I tell her while we are dancing that any boy who doesn't know how to 2 step correctly is an idiot.
By the time Mia is old enough to go to dances, I will have completely trained her to 2 step backwards. Then every time some dopey kid tries to dance with her, she is going to think he is an idiot, and the only guy in the world who knows how to 2 step correctly is her Daddy.

Mickey Mouse Club House

Every afternoon after school Mia watches a program on TV called Micky Mouse Clubhouse. It is that TV show that makes the following blog so funny to me. Within the show a couple things happen in every episode.

1. In order to make the club house appear, Micky says "Mishka Mooska Mickey Mouse"
2. Whenever Mickey reaches a point where he doesn't know what to do, he says "Oh, toodles" and this little balloon thing comes down with a variety of different tools that Mickey can use to solve problems.

A couple days ago, Mia walked over to me while I was in the kitchen. She said "Dada, I wanna snack." I said "Mia, what is the magic word?" The magic word in my house growing up was Please. Mia, stopped, thought about it, looked at me and said "Mishka, Mooska, Mickey Mouse" then she said "can I have a snack?" How do you say no to that?

A few days later Mary was sitting on the couch feeding Jude. Mary has a pink cup with a straw she usually drinks water out of while feeding him. Mia frequently comes by and gets a sip of water from the cup while Mia is feeding him. Mia came by this time and grabbed the straw and pulled it out of the cup and threw it on the ground. She then asked Mary for water. Mary looked at her and said "Mia, you pulled the straw out, you can't drink water without a straw. What are you going to do now?" Mia stopped, looked at her, paused and said "Oh, toodles" hoping a little balloon would come down to give her a tool to help her.
Mary and I were laughing so hard I had to put the straw back in.

Jude 1 Month Old

Weight: 8 pounds 13 ounces. Jude's gained 3 pounds his first month!

Height: 19.5 inches. We're waiting for the height to kick in

We just moved from the newborn diapers to size 1. The new diapers are HUGE!

Jude is on such a great schedule. He eats every 2-3 hours during the day and every 3-4 hours during the night. When he's not eating, he's usually sleeping (after he gets his issues worked out). But towards the end of his first month, he's started to have more awake and alert playing time which has been so much fun. We finally get to see his eyes!

The issues I'm referring to with Jude is reflux. So frustrating. In the early days of life, we noticed that he was having trouble with latching and control the milk flow. A breast shield helped to resolve the milk flow issue. However, he was still having issues with burping and spitting up. It wasn't until this week that I was fairly certain he had reflux. He would want to eat, but then he'd arch his back and constantly push back from the breast while he was eating. It threw him AND me into a frenzy every time. It's frustrating and painful when you're trying to feed a child who wants to eat, but can't and your milk has already let down. The pediatrician prescribed some Axid for him and we're waiting to see how it works out.

Jude is my noisy baby. He's not really all that loud and fussy. But there's almost always a stream of sound coming from him. Whether it's a soft hum, a whimper, groaning, squeal or cry, he's hardly ever just quiet. It's funny at times. And reassuring at night. But when it's the sound of discomfort, it gets the milk going!

Credits:

• Quilt by Barbara Nedwick
• Personalized diaper cover by Courtney Rozada

Smurfs

I came to pick up Mia after school and was greeted with this yesterday:

Her teacher, knowing how much she loves to draw, had gotten her her very own journal to draw in at school. Yesterday, she was drawing with (you guessed it) a blue marker (WHY?? I do not know). But her teacher turned her attention for a few minutes. When she looked back at Mia, she was greeted with a Smurf.

She was astonished and asked her, "Mia! What have you done???" To which Mia's response was:

"I coloring!"

*** For those who are concerned, her mouth is not blue because she sucked on the marker. It is blue because she sucked on her fingers after she colored her hands. The markers are non-toxic. This picture was after much scrubbing by her teacher and a deep cleansing by mom before snack time. Her dress and legs did not fair much better...***

Mia: 22 Months, Jude: 3 Weeks

August 22, 2011: 2 Milestones for our 2 little ones.

Mia Update:

• Mia not only likes school now, she kind of runs the show in the 1 year old class room. She says, "story time" and the teacher sits down and reads with her and gradually the other kids follow suit. Before they head out of the room to go to lunch or the playground, the teacher will usually peak her head out of the classroom to check to see if it's their turn to head out. If it's not, she tells them, "one more minute, kids." Mia gets in front of all the other kids and also tells them, "One more minute!"
• She is still not potty trained, but consistently tells her teacher when she has pee-peed or poo-pood. Now the trick is for her to tell us when she has to go as opposed to when she's already gone!
• Mia has gotten a lot pickier about what she wants to eat. There is still plenty that she will eat, but she doesn't always eat everything on her plate any more. Some days she's a big meat eater and other days it's carbs. Some days it's vegetables. Right now she's really big into ham, cheese, mushrooms and noodles.
• Since forever Mia has loved to draw and doodle. But recently, she comes home from school, has a snack, asks for her Mickey Mouse show and proceeds to plop down on the floor with her drawing book and special markers and declare, "I do my HOMEwork!"
• Since she turned 20 months, Mia has been taking swim classes at Aqua Tots. She loves it there. We started her out on Wednesday evenings and quickly realized that she was too tired for an after school activity. When we moved her to the Saturday morning class, she's all about it. She just finished her last class for this season last Saturday. Here is a clip of her swimming around with Daddy!

• One of Mia's favorite activities these days (besides drawing) is playing pretend. She's pretty good at it. She's pretty established at playing kitchen and baby. She's just now starting on dress up... if you don't count her get-up's everyday as dress up =) Here she is as Tinker Bell

I'll wait to do the Jude update at his 1 Month entry. For now, I will leave you with his newborn photos done at 3 weeks old.

A Sleepy Jude Morning

He looked so precious sleeping away this morning, I just had to grab the camera and capture. No special occasion today.

1 Week Old

Can you really use the word "old" with someone so new?

One week ago today, we went to the hospital not know what to expect. And we were right.

Everything about Jude so far is different than Mia.

From the bedrest to the quick labor and delivery to the almost immediate discharge (we only spent one night in the hospital).

But there are more. Jude is already proving to be much more laid back than Mia. But while he fusses less and sleeps better, Mia nursed with much less issues.

At his 5 day check up he was down to 5 pounds 13 ounces and so we kept having to go back to the doctor every day for a weight check. The milk flow is too much for his immature system to handle. He has latching issues. And so on and so on...

He's a little small now, but we have no doubt he will catch up in due time.

(Note how absolutely loose his little newborn socks hang on his ankles!)

Sibling Love

Despite all her angst before his arrival, Mia just can't get enough of her Baby Jude.

Well.

To an extent.

She says things like, "I want to hode it!"

... and "I kiss Baby Jude."

But what she really means is, "Plop him in my lap while I watch my TV shows, please."

Birthday Movie

Jude's Birth Video lovingly created by Daddy

Monday August 1, 2011

37 weeks + 5 days.

Jude just couldn't wait any longer.

Since I was sick the day before and labor started in the early morning hours, the first I felt I might be in labor was about 5 o'clock on Monday morning. I was rolling around in bed and noticed stronger contractions. They were persistent and by 5:30, I started noticing they were also consistent. The difference between these contractions and pre-term labor contractions were that they were actually painful as opposed to just the feeling of pressure. Instead of just practicing my relaxation breathing techniques during each contraction, I found myself really trying to ride the waves.

Just before 6AM, I decided to crawl out of bed and get into the shower for 2 reasons. The first was to help determine if this was true labor contractions. If they were, the contractions would continue even if I changed my position and environment. In the shower, I noticed that contractions were coming every THREE minutes and lasting about 40 seconds. I stayed in the shower a bit longer because it was comfortable and because I feared if it was another long labor like Mia's, it would be a while before I got another shower!

After getting out of the shower and getting dressed, I ran another labor test while calling the doctor's after-hour number. I got a glass of water. Since I was sick yesterday, I thought there might be a chance I was having more than normal contractions due to dehydration. That didn't help, but the midwife did suggest eating something small to run another test. By now it was about 6:45. Nothing was slowing this down, but I was on the sofa having snacks and getting through each contraction. Shortly after, Mia appeared downstairs with Mark dressed and ready for school. I remember heaving myself off the sofa, going to the pantry and getting her a morning snack. She happily plopped herself down on the pallet I made on the floor eating her snack and watching Sesame Street. Mark loaded her up for school about 7:05 and promised he'd be back in just a few minutes (school is only 2 miles from the house).

I was waiting for 8AM so that we could go to the doctor's office and get confirmation I was in labor. Due to preterm labor contractions, I didn't want to go to the hospital prematurely. But by 7:40, I knew that this was no false labor. I had been experiencing 40 second contractions every 3 minutes for the last 2 1/2 hours. And now the contractions were getting so much stronger, my breathing was more of a groan through the contractions. It was time to go to the hospital. From talking to my midwife, I already knew that my primary doctor was on-call that morning. So I felt reassured as we left the house. Everything was going to be fine and I would be home shortly with our new addition!

We arrived at the hospital just after 8AM. Mark oddly suggested that he pull up to the front, drop me off and go park the car. I freaked. Are you nuts?! Park the car and grab a wheelchair to get me! I'm past the point of walking through these contractions. =) Pregnant woman.

As soon as the nurses set eyes on me, they knew that we were not messing around. Instead of waiting at the counter to check in, they immediately lead me to my L&D room and did admissions there. In between contractions. When they finally got around to checking me at8:30, I was already 5cm dilated. Shortly after, Dr. Sebestyn appeared, ready to rock.

I don't know how the times worked after that, but it was just a mere 90 minutes from when they first checked me to Jude's arrival. Mark said it was rocket fast. Looking back on it, I guess it was. But being in it, living each individual contraction, it felt like it would never end. At one point, I had to ask. Are we getting close? Because if we have a ways more to go, I'm not going to make it. As soon as I said that, I knew I was in transition. The hesitation stage.

Then I remember thinking, I know they're gonna tell me it's not time to push yet, but I HAVE to. They're going to have to figure something out to give me clearance soon because like it or not, I'm going to start pushing. I told Dr. S, I have to push. Really. I do. She told me I had to hold on just a little while longer, I looked to be about 9cm. But I couldn't. So she told me to go ahead and get a practice push in. I don't think it did much physically for the baby, but it made me feel SO much better. Another push or five and I heard a HUGE pop, felt a huge relief and then a lot of laughter. WHAT? Was the baby already here? I opened my eyes. No. What I saw was my little doctor drenched. As if someone has doused her in a giant Big Gulp. My water broke =) She was covered from head to waist. Nurses ran to wipe her glasses down and she was good to go. The laughter helped me more than I knew.

Another 5 pushes, lots of intense pain and burning and Jude was born.

Jude Anthony Xuan Neuabuer
Birthday: August 1, 2011 @ 9:55AM (1st 107 degree day of MANY in 2011 summer!)
Weight: 6 pounds 5 ounces

Length: 19 inches

Birth Place: St. David's North Austin Medical Center, Austin, TX

You were happily welcomed by your parents

Mia came to visit later in the afternoon and was so excited to see her Baby Jude!

Daddy thought way ahead and special ordered your first birthday cake from Ms. Natalie

Jude's Prelude

In my last entry, I mentioned that labor had to be getting close. I was right. And now I have a sure fire way to bring on labor. But I'm not sure anyone wants to replicate it on their own free will. Let me back up to the weekend leading up to Monday morning to begin Jude's birth story.

Since I reached 37 weeks and the doctors have cleared me for my regular routine, as much as possible, I decided I'd start taking back some of my responsibilities to give Mark a much needed break. So I woke up early on Saturday morning when I heard Mia stirring. I went up and got her some milk and played with her, same as normal. Then we came downstairs right about 7AM, just in time for Sesame Street. We snuggled in on the sofa and watched quietly. SO NICE. Mark woke up a little later around 7:30 and Mia was so excited to see him. She ran over with her arms outstretched and gave him a big hug. He picked her up, sat on the loveseat and said, "Lay your head on my chest and snuggle with me." But she fought him a bit. He insisted and as soon as her head hit his chest, it was like Old Faithful. She started vomiting like we haven't ever seen from he before. Four giant heaves. Mark was frozen in place just trying to contain everything as I ran for the paper towels in the kitchen. WHOA. Where did that come from??? As soon as she stopped, she was fine. Same as before. A little tired, but no other signs of illness. Freak incidence. We sent her to swim class (fine) and she came home and took a nice long nap.

After her nap, we packed it up for our weekly "bakery surprise" trip. We were headed back to Hyde Park and just as we were approaching our destination, I heard the dreaded heave-ho in the back seat. Oh no. Not again. Yes. Again. In her only outfit we had on hand, in her plush carseat in 100+ degree weather. Great. We will never get this smell out of the car and our child has no clothes. We quickly pull over, remove her and her clothing and I proceed to scrub with what wet wipes we stashed in our diaper bag. We run over to Walgreens in search of some temporary clothing and wet wipes. Wouldn't you know it. The only Walgreens in town without onesies. I tell Mark to head over to the Hancock center. There's a Sears over there and I know we can find inexpensive children's clothing. Score. An entire outfit (dress and bloomers) for $3.25 including tax. And we're back in business. Again, Mia shows no signs of being worn down with the exception of a lack of appetite. That's ok, I'm a little weary of feeding her too much anyways.

She is a little fatigued that evening and on Sunday morning, but other than that, she seems absolutely normal. But by lunchtime on Sunday, I'm starting to feel a little nauseous myself. Maybe it's just gassiness from the pregnancy. But it continues. And by 2pm, I'm running for the toilets. But nothing. I lay down for a nap, yuck. Wooziness. Yup, I'm going to be sick. Now, not only am I having contractions, but my stomach is doing flips from this 24 hour stomach bug which only brings on MORE contractions which only makes me MORE nauseous! OMG, will this cycle ever end??? I remember saying to Mark, I know something that's worse than having a stomach bug, going into labor while having this bug. Thank goodness we're NOT!

I sleep most of the day away trying to recuperate while Mark keeps an eye on Mia. Fortunately, she's still pretty groggy herself. By the time bedtime rolls around, about 10pm, I'm starting to feel a little stronger. I make my way to the kitchen and get some fresh fruit and dry cereal into my system.

Before closing my eyes, I pray that I make it through the night.

37 Weeks

In two words: FULL TERM.

YAY!

Bad news: Back to work. At least part time until baby comes.

Week: 37
Weight gained to-date: 35 lbs
Belly measurement: 40 inches
Estimated Baby size: 5 lbs 9 oz
Swelling: NONE!
Stretch Marks: NONE!

How Mommy's feeling: Lots of contractions. More powerful and longer than they were a few weeks ago. It probably has to do with the stress of work. And that I'm now 37 weeks! There's also a lot more pressure presenting itself in my tail bone. Signs of impending labor!

Happenings: Tommy and Stephanie are getting set up in CA this week. Tommy starts work on Monday Aug. 1. So excited for them, but we're so going to miss having them here... at our fingertips!

36 Weeks

Week: 36
Weight gained to-date: 35 lbs
Belly measurement: 40 inches
Estimated Baby size: 5 lbs 9 oz
Swelling: Not yet
Stretch Marks: None yet

How Mommy's feeling: On the first day of the 36th week, I literally woke up and realized that you had dropped overnight! Suddenly, there was more space between my breasts and my belly. My diaphragm felt like it had more space. But sitting for any period of time is a bit painful now. I have a good bit more back pain due to your low position and my bladder is even more squished! The important part is that you're still in there. We've had enough scares to be thankful for that!

Happenings: Daddy has installed a new incentive. Every week that you and I are able to keep you in utero, he will take us to a surprise bakery on Sunday! So far, we've been to Quack's and 1886 Cafe. Work with me, Jude... I want more surprise bakeries!