Baby Love

First of all, I have to say "thank you" to Dakota for inviting me to post on her blog. It's been great fun getting insight from her on daily baby life, whether through talk or reading her blog. It truly helps to confer when you become a parent, especially to help keep your sanity - with not just your husband, but family and friends, too.


My baby, J, is 6 months old now, and since his birth I have just been in utter baby love. I never knew such a love. He was a surprise in every way - unplanned pregnancy and we didn't know that we were having a boy either. I like surprises as my hubs would say. My pregnancy was bliss, but my labor not so much. It was long, but I got through most of it without pain medication, which is what I wanted. After about 17 hours of hard labor with no change and just an hour and a half of sleep in 34 hours, we decided that I would get an epidural. Once I received the light epidural, my hubs and I got 2 hours of what felt like really deep sleep! Even better, once I woke up I was ready to go!! Then came our reason for living. We brought J home a day later and I just wanted to kiss him all over. Seriously, I wanted to kiss him non-stop. Perhaps, the overwhelming amount of hormones rising and falling in my body pursued me to want to make out with my son? This never-ending experience has made me feel so fortunate and I will continue to each and every day for our sweet boy.


J has been a pretty happy and mellow baby for us - easy to nurse and smiling early on - but when it comes to sleep he let us know early on what he wanted and that was to be walked and held to sleep. At about 3 months he soothed himself to sleep a few times in his crib, and had also been sleeping up to 9 hours at night, which was fabulous of course. Then that bubble burst and he was waking up 2-4 times a night screaming out of hunger. It wasn't until his 4 month well visit that we found out he grew 3 inches in length in 7 weeks. That was a vaild enough reason for me!


As parents, my hubs and I knew that we wanted to keep doing the things that we loved pre-baby, so we did and are continuing to do so. When J was 3 months old we started to do some small travels, like overnights not too many hours a way. We even took him to his first concert when he was just under 4 months, which was fortunately an accoustic show, and he wore sound-out headphones. He was amazing throughout and just slept as I carried and swayed him in the Ergo - all amidst windy and rainy whether. He was such a sport for his mom and dad. And right after that we did our first camping trip as a family - pretty much where it all began as it was the place where hubs and I got engaged. It was extra special because the campground had just reopened after a big fire 2 years prior.


The second bubble burst a little while after his first big growth spurt. He was indulging in longer night sleeps, until the week of Thanksgiving. I drove J, my dog, and I (poor hubs had to work) to Southern CA to my parents for the night before driving to Arizona to see J's great grandmother for the week. Driving what normally is 3 1/2 hours ended up being 7 hours for nursing stops and J was just plain lonely in the back seat when our dog wasn't standing up to look at him. That night was the first of many more disrupted sleeps, and driving to Arizona the next day was an even longer haul. So, for the past 2 months J has been waking up several times a night to nurse and be held. I thought it was all from travel and that this was the forefront to getting stuck in a rut that could possibly last 10 years (believe me, I am kidding!), but at his last well visit he did have another growth spurt - his head! Yaaa, for his growing brain! I am not worried about his constant night waking, though, and just keep telling myself that I will one day get a full night's sleep. So what if I am half awake when we are having productive bonding and nurturing time! I will miss it someday because they really do grow fast. And I now understand why my dad always told me, "Don't grow up. Stay how you are now," when I was little. I truly want J to stay a baby and in my arms forever. Then again, I miss having more than a glass of wine, and getting up and go for selfish reasons. So perhaps he can stay a baby 6 days a week and then give me one day to not have any responsibilities. If only we could pick and choose in our lives. But he is forever my little boy and I don't want to miss one second of him either.

Parenting is not all sunshine and bliss...

and that's ok. I came accross a link to this on Offbeat Mama. These people have it right and say it in a way that is concise and sensical. This video will make you smile. Watch it.

Finding Out

Now and again I post something about what our little family has been through leading up to the present. In keeping with that, I wanted to share some thoughts I wrote down a little over a year ago.

If I had remembered that I had a journal titled "The Big Moment Book" I would have made an entry on July 19th, 2009. That was the day I decided to buy a pregnancy test. I didn't think I was pregnant, I just wanted to rule it out so that I could road-trip to South Dakota and drink with my aunts, uncles and cousins. Hubby had been teasing me about my being pregnant for weeks due to a late period and a sour tummy. I kept having these cramps, though, and was positive that my period would come soon. So on July 19th I bought a pregnancy test so that I could drink with a clear conscience.

That night we went to Chili's with my in-laws and I had a gloriously large Margarita. After dinner Hubby's parents went to my brother-in-law's house while he and I went home to finish packing. We were to set out on our 1500 mile road trip the next morning. Once I had completed packing, I went to take my test.

I suddenly felt nervous. The digital stick was supposed to flash 'positive' or 'negative' when the analysis completed. There was a strong part of me that wanted it to flash 'positive', but I hadn't prepared for what that would mean. This was not planned. So I peed on the stick, set it aside to analyze and busied myself with other things. I glanced over once and it was still flashing a results pending sign. When I looked again the display was no longer flashing. The stick had processed my urine and now presented its result. It didn't blink or fade, but had settled resolutely on its answer for me. I stared, shocked, at the bold 'positive' spanning the display. I was pregnant.

I opened the bathroom door and took in Hubby's figure, back turned to me, methodically packing a bag. He didn't even know I had purchased the test. I just started talking. In a shy, rushed, and mildly panicked tone, I said, "So, I bought a pregnancy test today and I just took it..." at this point he stopped packing and turned around to face me with the best deer in the headlights impression I've ever seen, "...and it says I'm pregnant." There was only a moment before he broke out in a huge smile and came to hug me. He was so happy, and I was so happy and relieved that he was happy.

We didn't think I could be that far along, but we wanted so badly to tell our parents. I called mine right away and we told Hubby's folks as soon as they returned. So apparently this is how we do things: we got engaged on a whim, married on a weeks notice, and conceived a child with no prior planning. Go us.

So that brings me to today (October 23rd, 2009). For the last couple of weeks I have been feeling flutters and nudges and my belly has become noticeable. I am now 20 weeks and 1 day along (further than we thought) and we had the immense pleasure of watching our son make chewing movements and roll lazily in my womb. Today was a big day, even bigger than when I first heard his little heart beat so fast on my first visit to the OB. There is no sound better, though, than the sound of his heart. I could listen to that all day. I love this little stranger, and I can't wait until the day I get to hold him in my arms.

Wow. Look how far we've come!