Busy Busy Bees...

Phew!!! Having 2 kids is EXHAUSTING, but I'm loving every second of it.  We've all been getting into a pretty good routine since Steve has gone back to work.  I know that if I had tried to actually set a schedule that it probably would have blown up in my face, so I really lucked out when a schedule happened to emerge on its own.  Especially since it usually involves both kids napping at the same time in the afternoon, or at least having their naps overlap for a bit so I can have some down time to myself.

One thing that I'm looking forward to is that Steve is going to able to take 9 months off of work!!!  One of the benefits of me being a SAHM for the time being is that Steve then becomes entitled to all 37 weeks of parental leave, so he'll be home with us from the beginning of September until the middle of May!  I love that we'll have this time all together as a family.  We're planning on taking a trip to Washington, DC to visit friends this fall and also will probably take a longer vacation in AZ in the spring to truly take advantage of not having to have any vacation time approved!  Now I just have to get through the next 4.5 weeks on my own until Steve is home!

First off, here's the Quinn update!  Today marks Q's 23 month mark.  I can't believe that she's going to be 2 years old a month from now.  The planning has already started for her birthday party (it's going to have an Elmo theme).  The words that this kid is saying just blows my mind every day.  Her sentences are getting longer and she is consistently having an easier time communicating what she wants or needs.  This is going to be helpful when we start potty training her (that's a fall project).

Some of the new Q things:

• she recognizes almost all colours now, including gray, white and black.  She only mixes up blue and green, but when asked to "try again", she gets the colour correctly
• she recognizes probably half of the letters of the alphabet (capital letters) when she sees them written down.  Sometimes we can coax the letter out of her with a small cue.  She has an alphabet puzzle that has each piece is covered with a picture of a representative object.  So sometimes when she sees a letter written, for example a "P", she'll say "piano" because that is the picture on the puzzle piece.
• she recognizes the following shapes - triangle, square, rectangle, circle, star, heart
• she's working on recognizing numbers.  She can pretty consistently recognize 3, 5, and 7.
• counting to 10 is child's play for her now, and she can sometimes get to 13 before messing up or throwing in some letters
• she asks to "listen Elmo" in the car (I have an Elmo album from iTunes)
• she always gives Cole a kiss on the head goodnight and will say "love you Cole"...this just warms my heart every time!  She also says "s'OK Cole" to him when he fusses and she's my lookout when we're in the car - I'll ask her if Cole's sleeping when it's quiet and she lets me know :) Although sometimes I'm wondering if she's actually telling the truth or not (since she's not so reliable when we ask her if she'd pooped or not...but we can smell it)

Cole is doing great!  We've definitely had our share of breastfeeding stress though.  With Quinn, we had some issues with engorgement, syringe/finger feeding, and having to use a nipple shield before things really clicked and I successfully nursed her for a year.  This time, with Cole, I unfortunately got mastitis when he was 5 days old.  I tried to kick it without meds for 48 hours - tried "airing out", cabbage leaves, potato slices, ibuprofen, breast compressions, frequent nursing, etc.  When that didn't work, I began a course of antibiotics and things cleared up completely within the next 48 hours.  The really unfortunate side effect of having mastitis was that it really negatively affected my milk supply.  Cole stopped gaining as much as he should have been gaining, even though he was eating every 3 hours.  My milk just wasn't giving him enough fats.  So first I went to a breastfeeding drop-in to see a lactation consultant.  She noticed that Cole had a lip tie (this can sometimes affect breastfeeding), but that his latch wasn't too bad.  She gave me some pointers and I left the drop-in feeling confident.  That confidence lasted about an hour until we saw the doctor and she said that she was concerned with Cole's rate of weight gain.  She asked for us to come back to see her 4 days later to check his weight again.  

I spent the next 4 days trying to stay positive and feeding Cole every 3 hours, at least.  When we went back to the doctor, I wasn't confident that he had gained enough and unfortunately, that was the case.  Our doctor suggested that I supplement every feeding with formula to top him up after I nursed.  This was a huge blow to me because it made me feel like my body was letting me down, even though the doctor said that it was just temporary and that it was because of the mastitis affecting my milk supply.

Our doctor gave us a sample of ready to use formula (8 bottles) to go through.  When I first tried to top Cole up with formula, he acted like I was trying to feed him poison laced with knives or something...he just wouldn't take the bottle!  He'd only want to nurse...which is all well and good, but I was willing him to get fat!  One of my "June Mommies" (more on them in a later post) suggested that I pump and add some breast milk to the formula to see if he'd take it.  That seemed to do the trick!  So now on top of taking 40 minutes each feeding to nurse, I also had to pump about 10 minutes before hand to get some milk to add to the formula and then feed Cole the formula-milk mixture until he was full.  And even when that was all done, he'd usually want to nurse/suckle for a few minutes and then fall asleep.  So the feedings almost doubled in time!  And even then, sometimes he'd be full after just nursing, so I'd try to get him to stop nursing just so that I could feed him some formula.  And after all the formula prep (3 oz of formula + 1 oz breast milk), he'd only ever drink an ounce of it!  Frustrating!!!

I had been researching how to get babies to take more of the hindmilk vs foremilk and ultimately it all pointed to how the baby was latching.  I decided to contact the lactation consultant that I had seen at the drop-in, and who also had helped us during our time with Quinn, Beth MacMillan - www.bethmacmillanlbclc.com.  She came to the house on the 3rd day of supplementing to check everything out and help me with his latch.  I had been watching videos on YouTube of Dr. Jack Newman (he's THE breastfeeding guru) to try to help me out and actually was having more success with getting Cole to latch better.  When Beth got to the house, she weighed Cole pre-feed and said that then we'd get him to eat and weigh him after to get an idea of how much milk he was getting.  She was wanting to rule out Cole "tricking us" by looking like he was swallowing a lot, but maybe he really wasn't.  So ahead we went with the feeding, and she helped me with latch issues along the way...luckily there weren't that many!  After he was done eating, we popped him back on the scale and he had gained 100 g over the course of the feed (which is roughly equivalent to 3 oz ingested)...and that was exactly how much he should be getting based on his age at the time.  I was THRILLED!!! Not to mention that he was weighing in at 10 lbs 14 oz that day.  Beth said that I could stop supplementing since he was obviously getting enough milk and that I should see what the doctor said the next day.  She also said that I should continue pumping and not stop cold turkey to just make sure that my supply stayed up.

The next day, we went back to the doctor for another weigh-in and got the OK to completely stop supplementing.  Woohoo!!!  Let me just say that I'm not against formula feeding babies.  Breastfeeding isn't for everyone and it's definitely a learning curve that requires a lot of commitment.  As long as babies are fed and thriving, it doesn't matter the source!  I just knew that I wanted to try everything that I could to continue breastfeeding since I enjoyed it so much with Quinn.

OK, so after that novel of a story about breastfeeding issues with Cole, we are now in a great place!  Last week Cole weighed in at 11.4 lbs and is doing great!  I only pump once a day now (after his morning feed at breakfast time) and I'm able to get 4 oz in a very short period of time.  I'm getting a good freezer stock!  Cole also has started smiling, although Steve is much better at getting the smiles than I am. :P

I'm thinking about taking this blog in a different direction - I'm going to keep posting updates on the kids for sure, but I'm going to also post "opinion" posts and other info posts I think.  Just basic "Mom Stuff". :P  So bear with me while I transition to this new version!

Cuddling with my kidlets

"Mustache!!!" (it's a clementine segment)

Looking chubby in his Mamaroo

This girlie LOVES smoothies!

Wearing my new pajamas and doing some dancing

My men <3

Cole @ 1 month old

Super-Cole!!!

Cole's Birth Story

It's been 8 days now since we welcomed our newest addition to our family and this is the first chance that I've really had to sit down and write out CJ's birth story...so here goes!

Thursday, June 27, 2013
We head to the hospital around 3 pm to get things started for my induction.  First we have to have a NST to make sure that baby is happy.  This takes around 20 min.  Then Grace checked to see how dilated I was to make the induction decision - I was still only at 2 cm (and that was barely), so the induction method was going to be cervidil.

At 4:30 pm Grace inserts the cervidil and I have to be hooked up to the fetal monitor for the next hour to make sure that baby is handling things well.  At this point she heads out to talk to the OB on call since I'm having to have a medical induction.  When she comes back in, she said that the OB commented that he was afraid that I could potentially progress quickly since I had had such a short active labour with Quinn and that he wouldn't want me to go home and then give birth in the car on the way back to the hospital.  I just kind of laughed and said "I hope that he's right!".  Fast forward a few minutes and I'm started to have some contractions.  Grace goes out to talk to the OB again, comes back in our room and says "You're getting your wish.  The OB wants you admitted".  Whoa...OK...wasn't planning on this outcome, but I'll take it!  So we take the next little bit to let our families know the update and I'm quietly upset on the inside since I didn't really say bye to Q like I had wanted and now this was going to be my first night not sleeping under the same roof as her since she was born.

We are admitted and head to our room to get all set up.  I change into a comfy nightdress, Steve changes into comfortable clothes and sets up his bed, and we meet our nurse.  She has to come in every hour to listen to the baby, but at least I'm not hooked up to anything!  I'm starting to have more contractions at this point, so we decide to try to get as much rest as possible in prep for a long night.

Friday, June 28, 2013
...and long night it becomes!  Starting at around 2 am I start having contractions really close together.  We're talking every 2-3 minutes.  I'm toughing it out, but with not being able to really sleep, things are getting harder to endure.  By 4 am we asked a nurse to check for any progression...now I'm just a "good 2 cm".  WTF!  By this point I looked at Steve and said, "when Grace gets here this morning, we're going to discuss an epidural because I don't think that I can do it naturally".

Grace gets to see us at around 7:30 am and I tell her that as soon as I'm able to, that I'd like to have an epidural.  I originally had wanted a natural delivery and Grace is trying to facilitate my wishes for that as much as possible.  She calmly says that we should just check to see where I was dilation wise.  I was now at 4 cm so Grace could break my water.  Once she did that, I went to 5 cm and my contractions were stronger in intensity, but still every 2 minutes.  I tried to endure them for as long as I could, even tried the nitrous gas (which I hated), but I didn't progress past 4-5 cm.  At this point we called in the anesthesiologist for my epidural.  I also had to be hooked up to IV fluids and then oxytocin to try to help things along.

Once the lovely anesthesiologist put me into epidural bliss, both Steve and I got to have a good rest.  It was nice to know that even though the oxytocin was giving me super contractions, that I wasn't feeling them and could get my energy back up.  After a little while, Grace checked again and I still wasn't progressing that quickly.  She also found another pocket of water.  She decided that the baby wasn't in the right position to come down, so she adjusted my position on the bed (no easy feat when you can't really move your lower body).  Within a couple of minutes, I started feeling pressure and things really progressed from there!

At 4 pm I was ready to push and after only 18 minutes of pushing, Cole Jordan Oakey was brought into the world!  His cord was short, so he could only be placed on my belly and not my chest, but it was the best feeling.  Cole weighed 10 lbs 4 oz at birth!!! I never thought in a million years that there was a 10 lb baby in my belly!  He also measured 21" in length and is the newest light in our lives.

The only snafu was that Cole's blood sugar didn't test that great post-birth.  We had to stay overnight in the hospital and a nurse had to come and prick Cole's heel before every feeding to check his blood sugar.  The level had to be above 2.6 to be OK, and at one point Cole's level was 1.9.  So the nurse checked with Grace and the pediatrician on call to see what the plan of action was to be.  We were told to supplement each feeding with formula until the sugar levels were satisfactory.  We only had to supplement 2 feedings before everything was normal and we could be sent home!  (The alternative treatment would have been IV in the nursery, so luckily all that we had to do was the formula)

Just new!

Little baby butt

Quinn meeting her little brother while wearing her "Big Sister" shirt

Heading home from the hospital!