Sleeping Like a Baby?! From birth to 5 months.

Eli started off sleeping in our room in the bassinet portion of our pack-n-play, and I would breastfeed him in an office chair that we had moved into the bedroom. After a few weeks of this though it was clear that babies are loud sleepers and mommies are super-reactive to every little thing their babies do. Translated -- Eli was keeping Mom up all night long and she was going crazy. So, at about 4 or 5 weeks old Elijah was introduced into his own habitat – his room and his crib. He seemed to do pretty well, though he liked being snuggled between the side and a rolled up receiving blanket.

Shortly after the move, however, it appeared that Elijah had mild reflux. Mild enough that the doctors didn’t want to give any medicine, but severe enough that after feeding him he would fall asleep and then wake up about 30 minutes later screaming. You could hear things coming up, then him re-swallowing whatever it was, and then he would start crying. So the nights weren’t going so well. During the day he did fine as he usually slept on my chest as I dozed on the couch, all propped up and surrounded by pillows so there was no danger of him falling. After about 2 weeks of the screaming at night routine, we put Eli to sleep for the first time on his tummy – absolutely scared stiff because of SIDs. Now though, when the junk came up Eli would just let it run out of his mouth and not re-swallow much of it and he stopped screaming (except when he was hungry!). We debated and prayed a lot and decided to just let him continue to sleep on his tummy. He didn’t need any blankets or anything so we weren’t as concerned about SIDs. Now, every night before I put him to bed I just pause before laying him down and pray that God protect him through the night and watch over Elijah for me.

Starting around 8 weeks or so we started putting Eli down in his crib for naps “drowsy but awake” as the books called it. It took about two weeks for him to get the hang of it but then he did. When it’s naptime and bedtime now you can bring him up to his crib and read books or cuddle for just a few minutes and then when you put him down he just sucks his thumb and falls asleep on his own. The drowsy-but-awake routine really helped with that, in my opinion. We read a book (well, okay, I read LOTS of books) that really made sense to us, especially since we didn’t want to do the whole cry-it-out bit when Elijah was older. It was called “Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep and Wake Up Happy.” I would highly recommend it, as well as “Happy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.”

At this point, though napping well on his own, Elijah was still waking up 2 or 3 times a night to eat (he would eat at 9 or 10 pm, then usually would skip the 1 am feeding but sometimes not, and would be up at 3 am and then 5:30 or so and then 7:30 am to start the day), which is normal for breast-fed babies, but rather exhausting for breastfeeding mommies. Pretty soon after we started Elijah on formula he started sleeping longer at night though, and dropped the 1 am and 3 am feedings. Within two weeks he wasn’t waking at all, until about 7 am. Happy happy mommy and daddy!

Now he is quite the prodigious sleeper. He goes to bed around 7:30 and sleeps until 7. Lucky mom and dad! It helps that he found his thumb and likes to suck that to put himself back to sleep. The only time he’s changed his sleeping-the-night routine was when he was sick and congested (would wake up because he couldn’t breathe and suck his thumb at the same time) and the times he has fallen asleep for the night somewhere else and then we try and put him down in his crib for the night (doesn’t work, he keeps waking up over and over again all night long!). Most mornings we hear him waking up, get up and get dressed, etc. and by the time we’re done with that he’s in his crib jabbering away to himself. Such a content little boy!

Feeding Fun -- Birth to 5 Months.

Breastfeeding started off well, with Eli feeding right away after he was born. He got the hang of it pretty quickly and even with a cracked nipple (ouchy -- it sounds as painful as it was) we were doing really well. Eli hit a growth spurt around 3 weeks old and wanted to eat ALL the time, which almost drive me to insanity. Fortunately, at the end of that week my parents came to help and Elijah slept almost all night on a special pillow-top mattress – my dad. :) I got to sleep, yippee! Of course I leaked all over the place, but that was a small price to pay for precious hours of sleep.

For the next few weeks the breastfeeding was going well, but after about 6 weeks (right around when the hormones triggered by birth start to drop and your body, through supply-and-demand action, has to begin to produce enough hormone to stimulate milk production adequately) Elijah started getting less and less content after eating. We thought he was just having a hard time falling asleep or was just colicky, but looking back I think part of it was hunger (not all, but part at least).

Around 8 weeks I was getting more and more concerned though. I couldn’t pump hardly anything to store-up for when I went back to work, Elijah was wanting to eat all the time, did not stay content very long after finishing eating, and I was getting almost no sleep, since he was still waking up 2 or 3 times a night to eat. At his two month appointment he had dropped to the 10th percentile for weight, and while still healthy, was certainly growing at a slow rate. They weighed him and then had me feed him and reweighed him and all he had eaten (after 15 minutes) was half an ounce! I went on herbs all kinds of junk to try and boost my milk production, but it is just not practical to nurse a baby every 2 hours and just “throw” in 2 more pumping sessions during the day. Uhm, when exactly am I supposed to do that?! All of this turned me into a walking stress-ball and a very unhappy mom -- looking back I realize how close to the edge of losing it I really was.

Anyway, that was a long way of saying that we ended up supplementing with formula, beginning right around 11 weeks old, which made Elijah MUCH happier immediately! He guzzled down six ounces, then looked up at me and smiled. Turns out he’s a happy little baby! Pretty soon after starting on formula, even with nursing before supplementing and everything, he decided that he liked the bottle better than mommy, and he started not wanting to nurse. So we ended up feeding him pumped milk in a bottle and then formula.

Turns out I’m not cut out to be a dairy cow though (even with meds and herbs to help) and after a few weeks I was pumping about 5-6 times a day (taking about 3 hours or more a day to do this!) and only getting 4-6 ounces for the ENTIRE day. This really seemed ridiculous to us, since it was taking so many hours throughout the day. If I had been getting a lot it would have been a different story (but then, if I had been making enough milk then Eli wouldn’t have been getting formula anyway!). So, at around the 4 month mark the pumping stopped and Elijah had his last drop of breast milk. I still wish I could have breastfed him longer, but I also appreciate Jon being able to take the morning feedings easily when I’m off to work, and being able to leave him overnight with Grandma and have some nights off! One not so great thing about formula though – it’s expensive (eBay is wonderful, let me tell you) and the poopies stink on formula A LOT more than on breast milk. Oh well! I still get upset sometimes about not being able to continue, but it really was the best decision for our family. The most important thing is a happy, healthy baby, with a happy mommy, not a walking stress-ball mommy.

We're getting ready to start solid foods soon, so we'll keep you updated on how that goes, it should be fun!

Time to start blogging again!

Well, our sweet little Elijah is over 5 months old now, so we thought we should probably start updating the blog again with all the wonderful moments we're having (we’ll probably throw in the not so wonderful as well). :)

The first two months were sooooo difficult – no one tells you that! They make it sound like a baby is all sweetness and light. There is light, but also a lot of exhaustion and stress. I’m going to try and categorize our experiences over the first few months in a few posts, but suffice it to say I have a new respect for all moms and dads out there. And I finally believe the advice that it does get better – when I was in the moment I didn’t think it ever would but, having gotten past those first weeks of uncertainty and exhaustion and stress, I now know what people were talking about. It does get better, and now the rewarding moments outbalance the stressful ones! Praise God!

Anyway, we're back in the saddle again and ready to share the fun we're having with our little bean, Elijah Scott. :)

Babying my computer

So I've been back at work for a couple of weeks now. A few minutes ago, I tried firing up an older version of my product, but it came up with a bunch of error messages due to some misconfiguration that I need to get tracked down.

When I saw the error messages come up, my reaction was to think at the computer (in singsong baby-talk voice) "Awww... what's the matter?"

At least I didn't say it out loud... :-)

Birth Story from Mom's Perspective

Well, it’s been a couple weeks since Eli was born, and I’m starting to feel like my feet are underneath me again. So, I thought I’d share my view of our labor and delivery story.

It all started on Wednesday, May 25, after I got home. I had gone shopping for a few hours after work and was really exhausted. Jon was working later that night to try and get some projects done before the baby came (little did he know!). Anyway, I went to the bathroom and was leisurely enjoying a magazine in the potty when I felt a gush of very warm fluid. I immediately knew what it was and was terrified. First I went into denial – “That wasn’t my water breaking, I just really had to go to the bathroom some more and couldn’t control myself, yeah, that’s it.” When I stood up and walked into the kitchen though I knew it wasn’t a bladder control issue. I felt more and more liquid gushing out – I was afraid I was going to leak on the floor. I ran back into the bathroom and just sat there crying my head off until Jon got home (thankfully only 5 or 10 minutes later). I was really terrified and overwhelmed – this wasn’t the way this was supposed to happen! The baby was two weeks early, I knew it wasn’t just a trickle of fluid that I was having, and I had visions of everything we had worked so hard for in preparing for childbirth being wiped away. Plus, I had left my childbirth books at Jon’s mom’s house, so I didn’t have any of our notes and readings to reassure me. Once Jon came home and comforted me we called the doctor. My water had broken just before 8 pm, and the doctor said we should head into the hospital to get checked out to make sure everything was okay. Jon was thinking that we were going there and would probably come home, but I had a feeling that we were going to be there for the long haul and only coming home with a baby in our arms. Jon made me eat my dinner, but I didn’t have much appetite, I just kept crying. We packed our bags (we weren’t completely packed), called our moms, and then headed to the hospital.

We arrived around 10 pm and were brought into the triage area were I was hooked up to contraction and baby heart rate monitors and my fluid was checked. It was amniotic fluid that I was leaking, and there was also meconium in the fluid, indicating that the baby had had a bowel movement and was under some amount of stress. I was hooked up for about an hour, and started having irregular contractions. When they checked my cervix though I was only 2 centimeters dilated and my cervix was still very firm. The doctor gave us two options – put in a cervix softening agent or start pitocin. Well, I didn’t want either one of those! They knew our birth plan and desire to have as natural a birth as possible, and gave us another option of walking the halls for a few hours to see if my natural contractions would start up and take over. Then they would recheck me and see how much we had progressed. We opted for that option and were admitted into the hospital around midnight.

Around 1 am Jon’s mom arrived and we finally were situated in labor and delivery room number two. Jon and I took off walking the halls, checking back with the nurse to be monitored about every half hour. My contractions were getting stronger and more frequent, but were very irregular and erratic. Sometimes they would be about 2 minutes apart and then the next one would be 6 minutes later. They weren’t really settling into a rhythm that the doctors wanted to see, and the clock was ticking since my membranes had already ruptured. Jon and I were very very anxious at this point since it was sounding more and more like the plan was to get pitocin and we had visions of a whole cascade of things that we didn’t want – continuous monitoring, an epidural, etc. Mom wrote in her notes on the birth that when the nurse asked for a copy of our birth plan I replied, “Well, that’s all gone out the window already!” Both Jon and I were quite worked up about everything and it was such a blessing to have Jon’s mom there to pray with us and to give us another perspective of staying calm and doing what was best for our baby.

After walking the halls for about 2 hours and taking a shower there still wasn’t much progress with contractions, and we were re-checked by the doctor around 3:30 am. I was 3 centimeters and now 70% effaced. Meaning, my cervix was now too “ripe” to have the cervix gel, but my contractions were still not strong enough or regular enough to make significant progress. The doctor recommended that we start pitocin to get the labor started (I wasn’t technically considered “in labor” yet!). Mom’s notes record that the doctor told us that the risk of infection was significantly higher 18 hours after your membranes rupture (which would be about 2 pm for me), and I most likely had at least 7 more hours until full dilation with the pitocin, and then time for pushing as well, which would put me pretty close to the 2 pm time. Jon and Mom and I talked about it for a while and finally decided to go ahead with the pitocin and get our baby on the way out!

At 4:40 am I was finally hooked up to the pitocin, and was actually able to rest for about 2 hours, since the contractions weren’t that intense yet. Jon and his Mom were able to sleep a little, and though I couldn’t sleep (those darn contractions have a way of waking you up!) I was able to rest. Around 7 am the doctor came back in to visit and recommended that I get out of bed and in more upright positions to see if we could get the contractions, which were now quite regular, to be more productive.

Once I became vertical I started having a lot of pain in my back. I tried sitting on a birth ball for a while so I could lean over the edge of the bed and relieve the pressure on my back, but the baby’s heartbeat kept getting lost by the monitor. Our nurse, Shannon, kneeled next to me for at least half an hour trying to adjust the belts and find Eli’s heartbeat. That was the most annoying part of the whole labor – I was having to constantly worry about the stupid monitors instead of just being able to focus on relaxing through contractions. Finally Shannon told me that I couldn’t sit on the ball anymore since we weren’t getting enough stretches of Eli’s heartbeat being recorded. She settled me into a reclining chair, and though it wasn’t as comfortable as the ball, it was better than laying flat in bed!

Once in the chair I felt like the contractions started to pick up. By this time they were at least 2-3 minutes apart and lasting about a minute. I started having to actively work to relax through them and was not able to talk during them anymore. Jon’s mom (who had woken up at 7), now woke Jon up so he could help me. I was in the chair for about an hour and really felt like my back was hurting, so Shannon suggested that we get a telemetry unit on me and I go in the Jacuzzi shower and see if the jets on my back would feel good.

The shower was wonderful!!! I had to hold the unit that recorded Eli’s heartbeat at a weird angle so it would pick up the heart beat, but it was worth it! My back felt much better under the warm water. Once again though I felt the contractions get more intense and closer together. Jon was great at helping me through them though and keeping me focused. After about 45 minutes or so Shannon suggested that we get out of the shower and try lying on our side in the bed with my legs propped up to get my pelvis open a little more. By the time I got in bed and on my side I really felt like the contractions were intense and VERY close together. I felt nauseous and Mom noted that at 10 am I started throwing up. It was red from the red jello I was eating and Jon thought it was blood at first. I remember, after throwing up, telling Jon that I didn’t think I could do this much longer. Jon and Mom took this as a sign that I was in transition and were very supportive that we were close and our baby was almost here, which helped me stay focused.

At 10:10 am Dr. Merkel came to check on me and explain that they needed to place an internal contraction monitor. We had done a good job getting Eli’s heartbeat recorded (finally!), but now the contraction monitor wasn’t working right! So they couldn’t tell when his spikes and dips in heart rate were occurring during the contractions, and were not sure if they were normal or not. They also wanted to place a catheter inside me which would add fluid back into the womb since I was losing quite a bit of amniotic fluid. At this point I didn’t give a fig newton what they wanted to do, I just wanted to the baby out! And I wanted to know how far I was dilated.

When Dr. Merkel checked me and placed the internal monitor though, I was only at 6 centimeters!! So 6 hours on pitocin had resulted in only 3 more centimeters of dilation. I was really discouraged when I heard how little I was dilated, especially since the contractions were so close together and I was having a hard time staying on top of the pain. I felt that the baby was very low also and was feeling quite a bit of pressure. Shannon encouraged me to change to the other side to see if we could get the baby to move down some more, and Jon’s Mom went out to the waiting room to tell Jeremy, Jessica, and Grandma Sherry that it was going to be a while yet.

After flipping to the other side the contractions were still very intense. I have no concept of time, but I think it was about 10 or 15 minutes where Jon talked me through the contractions. They were coming so close to each other and often one right after the other. When I was lucky and there was a 20 second break between them, the pressure I felt in my pelvis was intense and I couldn’t relax. I threw up again and started saying that I couldn’t do it, it hurt too much. I was feeling more and more pressure, and remember the nurse asking me if the pain was bothering me or the pressure. I said the pressure and she said that it was going to get a lot worse. Not what I wanted to hear! Shortly after that I felt an overwhelming urge to push – it was the weirdest feeling because I couldn’t stop it! I told Jon that I had to push and he told the nurse, but Shannon told me not to push and instead pant or blow through the pushing urges. She left to check on her other patient and I kept trying to pant when I felt the urges to push. I couldn’t do it though and told Jon that I HAD to push! It felt so much better when I pushed! He called the nurse back in and she told me to pant again, but then decided to check me after seeing that I really could not just pant through the urges. I don’t think she believed me that I was ready to push since it had only been about 20 or 30 minutes since I was checked last and was only ay 6. But when she checked me I was at 10 centimeters and completely effaced, with the baby ready to be pushed out!

Unfortunately Dr. Merkel was in the OR, so Shannon told me not to push so we could wait for him. Yeah, right! I tried for a few contractions and it just was not working, so Shannon called in a resident just in case they were needed to deliver the baby. The resident said that I should go ahead and start pushing since first time moms usually took a while to push the babies out. Jon ran out and grabbed his mom from the waiting room (her notes say it was about 10:45 when he came out), and when he got back I started pushing. I was on my right side with Jon holding my leg up in the air, and with the next contraction I bore down and pushed. I had 2 or 3 pushes during that contraction and heard the resident say, “Oh my, I see the head.” The contractions were farther apart at this point so I was able to rest a little before the next one. When the next contraction came I pushed again and felt the burning and stretching that women talk about – Elijah was crowning. The hospital’s attending OB came into the room then, and on the next contraction I pushed twice – once and Eli’s head was out and then the next push for his body – and Elijah was born. And then I was able to see his tiny little body, all covered in goo. It was the most beautiful thing! Our doctor missed it all, and the staff doctor only saw the last few pushes it was so quick.

Elijah Scott Schneider was born Thursday, May 26th, at 10:54 am -- only 35 minutes after I was checked and was at 6 centimeters. Looking back, both Jon and I agree that I really was in transition when I was checked and was at 6. And we were both so happy that we were able to meet our goal of a pain medication free childbirth, even if we were disappointed that we needed pitocin to get labor going. The most important thing was that our son was born safe and healthy though. He weighed in at 6 pounds and 8 ounces, and was 20 and ¼ inch long. After suctioning him to make sure he did not swallow any meconium they brought Elijah back to me and put him on my chest. He looked at me with his big blue eyes and I was in love instantly. It was one of the happiest days of my life, and I’ll never forget the first moment I held my beautiful son!