Max - 1 month old

I realized this morning that I should probably get our first round of monthly photos done ASAP. If I didn't do it at 8am when I was thinking about it it probably wouldn't have happened! Little man was happy as ever! I also decided that I'm NOT using the physical paper this time like I did with Carson. That was a total disaster past about 5 months. He figured out he could attack and eat it and it was all downhill from there. This time I'm just throwing the words on in post and running with it!

I took a few other photos while we were at it. I went back to look at the photos of Carson on the day he turned one month old and these two caught me as being SO similar! (And I got to laugh at my earlier camera skilllzzzzz....)

Max:

Carson:

 

We didn't do a full nursery this time because we wanted to keep our guest room. We basically have a second room inside our bedroom so we set up the crib, rocker and changing table in there. 

I wanted something a little different for his name on the wall. I designed these wall letters to match the bedding and other baskets etc. and I think they turned out pretty cute! The other elements you can't see are the same green color so it works well as the accent.

Max's Newborn Photos

I know it may sound a little crazy, but I wanted to wait until our birth announcements went out to post all of Max's photos. I have the majority of everything ready to post though. I'm going to try and make some sense of how to put stuff in groups, but there will probably be a lot of random photo posts in the days to come.

Tomorrow Max is officially 1 month old. I'm pretty sure that I blinked and July fell of the face of the planet. It has been such a fast and amazing month for us. I took these photos in the first week that Max was home. He was big-ish to start with, but he's already growing like crazy. I was really hoping to get some photos of him on his belly, but he was not having it. You'll see he loves his fists up by his face though. And really, can you deny those lips???

Here is our adorable little 80-year-old-looking newborn babe, Max.

Max's tiny fingers make Carson's hands look so big.

Max's Birth: Part 2

Slowly but surely I am getting through all the photos I've taken in the last 3 weeks. Our little (big) guy turned 3 weeks old yesterday...somehow. These days have just flown by. On one hand I feel like I should still be pregnant and on the other it is like Max has been in our lives forever. I feel so bad and guilty for questioning my potential love for him in the early pregnancy days. I just couldn't imagine having two kids since it felt like Carson was my one and only. Again, I think being an only child has a lot to do with that. But my heart has managed to more than double. Max is like a new extension of me. There are times I feel like we are literally magnetic and I can't bear to let him leave my arms. I could (and sometimes do) spend all of my days just staring at him. It's amazing how much he looks like Carson as a newborn. He's already fitting into some of Carson's 0-3 month outfits instead of newborn sizes. I can't wait to do photo comparisons!

Anyway, here are some photos of the rest of the hospital stay. We were very lucky that everything was good and we were healthy so we only had to stay one night. We were beyond ready to get out of that uncomfortable room as soon as we possibly could. With Carson I wanted all the time I could get to soak up information and help. This time I didn't really have anything new to learn so I just wanted to be with our family at home. We are very fortunate to have my mom here to watch Carson. She was able to take the days off while we were gone to stay with him. She brought him up to the hospital the morning that Max was born. We didn't know what he would think about him. But from the first minute he saw him until now he is totally in love too. Lets just say that Max has had his fair share of slimy toddler kisses in his short little life so far! I was still pretty numb from the epidural until early afternoon so I shot their first meeting from the bed. :)

 Our little froggy. He still has his legs pulled up like this, but is slowly now starting to stretch out.

You can also see his birthmark on his right knee. I've never found one on Carson so I wasn't expecting it. The nurse pointed it out to me right after he was born.

Carl wasn't too comfortable on the joke of a couch/bed and I was running on a ridiculously small amount of sleep for the week. We were both pretty pooped by day 2! Max was nice and sleepy on his daddy though.

Time to go home! I put Max in my favorite newborn outfit of Carson's. He outgrew it really fast and I regretted not buying it in a larger size. I love that I get to put Max in some of the clothes that I loved so much and didn't get enough time with!

Max's 2 week check-up

We had Max's 2 week appointment today. The nice part about being with Kaiser now is that they send a nurse to your house when you get home from the hospital so you don't have to take them out at 2-3 days old. He was born on Wednesday morning weighing 7lb 15oz. When we had his nurse visit on Friday he was down to 7lb 5oz. This is okay because it was 7% decrease and that's the highest number they want to see. I'm sure part it was that my milk didn't come in until about Sunday, even though he was still getting food at that point. So far, from what I can tell, he has been a great eater. He sleeps all day and I usually have to wake him up every 2.5-3 hours to try and get him to eat. I'll change his diaper and try to wake him up, but he often crashes after just a few minutes. He's sleeping great at night so I just do all I can to get him tanked up during the day.

Well, today he is 2 weeks and 1 day old. He got on the scale and weighed in at a whopping 8lb 10oz! This was awesome to see because it tells me he really is eating, even if it's in little sleepy spurts. He had gained a 1/2 inch in length and 1/4 inch on his head as well. Everything else way great and there were no obvious concerns.

Overall we cannot believe what an amazing baby and experience we are having with Max. We don't want to give Carson a complex, but these two boys are total night and day so far. Max is calm and he SLEEPS! The story of Carson's first year was that he never ever slept. It was torture and I felt like a zombie. I have a feeling this time it is part his nature and part my attitude and lack of anxiety. I admit I was a nervous wreck with Carson and his temperament just made it 100 times worse. I don't feel nervous with Max or scared if he starts to cry. I'm a seasoned vet at this point. :)  

He is still really curled up with his knees at his belly and his feet turned up. He loves his hands in fists right up by his face. I could tell this was his exact position in my belly and so we aren't surprised to see this is how he is outside too. The only time he really cries is if you make him wait to long to eat. Other than that he just kind of lets out a little yell. We laugh that he sounds like Count Dracula when he really cries. Carson just cried and cried for the first few months of his life straight, or at least it felt like it, no matter what we did. It is a welcome change to have a baby that we can snuggle with and he's totally content. His eyes are super dark blue right now. But he sleeps so much that when he's awake it's an event! He has the best puffy little lips just like Carson did, round little ears and an actual innie belly button. His cord stump fell off on Sunday. He barks like a small dog when he's falling asleep along with open eyes that rolls back in his head.

Next issue, I seriously have a problem in the photo department. I have taken A LOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTT of photos. I am going to be processing them for a while. I am close to being done with the second half of the hospital ones and then I have his real shoot, a family shoot and so many candids. It has been hard finding time to sit at the computer with both boys and still trying to do my real job!

I pulled this one this morning so I have something new to share. Enjoy our tiny babe.

Max's Birth...Part 1

So far I've gotten through the pictures from the actual birth and labor room done. I will post a part 2 with the rest of the hospital stay next. I really want to write out my labor experience as a record here though. There are so many things that I don't remember from having Carson and I never took time to write anything down either. This will probably be long, but it's just as much for me and my horrible memory as it is for anyone else who is interested. :)

Last Monday night I was 4 days overdue. Around 1am on Tuesday morning I woke up with what I thought were real contractions. They hurt like crazy and so I ended up on the couch timing them until after 5am. I must have fallen asleep for about 45 minutes and woke at 5:45 with my alarm. There were no more contractions for the rest of that day so it was just another false alarm. I slept about 30 minutes during Carson's nap time so I was very tired at this point. That night at dinner I was still feeling kind of funny. I told Carl something felt different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. He basically said "yeah right" and I didn't want to get my hopes up. We got Carson in bed and around 9pm while I was getting ready for bed I started getting contractions again. I was SO mad because I was already so tired and needed to sleep. These ones were the most painful so far. Again, I went straight down to the couch so I could at least watch TV while I was timing them and hopefully Carl could sleep if he had to go to work the next day. 

Around 1am my contractions were an average of 7 minutes apart. Everything I've been told by my doctor etc. says to call in at 5 minutes apart. However, I had to finish getting my bag together, we live 45 minutes from the hospital, I was already dilated to 4cm the week before and I was supposed to have 5 hours of IV antibiotics before he came into the world. I figured it wouldn't hurt to just call and see what they say. They immediately told me to get to the hospital. Apparently second+ time moms should actually watch for 8-10 minute intervals because we tend to progress much faster. I went up and started getting my stuff together. Carl didn't budge so I went over and poked him. He looked at me like I was lying! He was up in a daze. I went in to tell my mom and she about jumped out of her bed, both from sleep and excitement. 

We got to the triage unit at about 2:30. They checked me and I was almost at 6cm. We were quickly taken up to the laboring room. Apparently they had a huge rush of people after us and ran out of rooms so we had good timing. The IV was hooked up at 3:45am so I knew that meant they wouldn't want my water to break until at least 8:45. The nurse said if I wanted an epidural I could have it at any time. I was still going back and forth on this because with Carson it took away the contraction pain, but I felt everything during the active labor. While the nurse walked out I had a few contractions that I didn't even know what to do with. They were so painful and I couldn't figure out how to work through them. I quickly decided it was a big fat YES to the epidural. They called for it and it was done and working by 4:40am. This also meant that I had a few hours to sleep because I was now so relaxed and my water hadn't been broken. I was also still at 6cm so we were good to go.

Lights were out at 5:00am on the dot. Literally at 5:05am I was dozing off when I felt a pop. There goes my water! I called down for the nurses and they were just laughing. I still tried to sleep, but my legs were extremely numb and it was hard to be comfortable. At 6:00 my hip started to hurt really bad and I was too numb to move on my own. I called the nurse again to come help me move and make sure all the cords were okay. As she started to move me I realized I could feel something down there. She said it was probably nothing, but would check anyway. Sure enough, his head was right there and ready. I knew I wasn't totally crazy! haha  Talk about fast progression though!

Everyone started getting ready to go and I started pushing at about 6:20am. For some reason my contractions never ended up being closer than that 7ish minutes apart. In total I only pushed through just over 4 contractions, but it seemed to take forever since they were spaced far apart. I pushed for an hour and 15 minutes with Carson! On the fifth contraction they yelled to stop pushing and he was on his way out. I never cried at all. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face and was actually laughing. I guess that's the power of a good epidural! He had the funniest little cry and was actually crying before he was all the way out. We were beyond happy to meet little Max, even if it was 6 days late. He was born at 6:48am on June 29, 2011 weighing 7lb 15oz and 21 inches long.

I set the camera up to the settings I thought would work best and Carl quickly went between the camera and video camera for the first few minutes. For a rookie he did pretty good! I'm just happy to have photos of our first moments together. We got to stay in the room for about an hour before moving to the post-partum room. It was nice and quiet so the three of us could just sit and be together. Other than not being able to walk for at least 6-8 hours afterward, I couldn't believe how good I felt through everything. I'm sure part of it was that I was so much less anxious this time around, but I didn't walk away from Carson's birth with positive thoughts about the labor. All I wanted this time was to go into labor naturally. Everything worked out like it was supposed to. To say we are so in love with these two boys would be a gross understatement.

The first time I laid eyes on him.