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.

Max William Wooten: 06.29.2011

We are so happy to report that we welcomed our second son, Max William Wooten, into the world on Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 6:48am. He was 7lb 15oz and 21 inches long. I am working on getting all the photos from his birth and the hospital stay done as well as my labor and his birth story. We could not be more in love. So far he is beyond amazing and has outdone himself in the "good baby" department. 

Welcome Max...

Better late than never?

So I closed the last post saying that hopefully the next post would be an introduction. Here we are a week later and guess what this is not.....  Apparently either we'll have two little (late) peas in a pod, I just have an amazingly comfortable uterus or my body doesn't know how to finish out its job. I really never thought we'd be here at five days overdue again after Carson came 8 days late. From everything I have heard it is more common to go over your due date, but I just had a feeling all along that I wouldn't this time. Wishful thinking.

At the doctor's last Thursday I was 4cm dilated and 75% effaced. I wish I didn't know that information because it gave me some false hope. I didn't think you could be that far along for an extended period of time. Last night I finally had a few hours of what I thought was real activity with a lot of pain and then it all stopped. I'm not going to count on anything anymore. The other option is to go in and have them break my water. Luckily I've got enough progress that I wouldn't have to be induced with drugs and breaking my water would undoubtedly get things moving. I already did the whole "schedule your child's birth" thing with Carson though. I realllllllly don't want to do it this time. As crazy as it probably sounds I want to have the experience of waking Carl up and grabbing our bags to head out in a frenzy. You know, like most normal people do. But at this point I only have a couple days of fight left in me before I cave and we just go in.

We've been trying to keep busy, but it is so hard to think about anything else. Sunday was a gorgeous and hot day so it was perfect to go to the pool. My mom had a one piece that fit me and we all headed out. It felt so good at the time in the water, but I couldn't believe how sore I was that night and all of yesterday. I had to go to the store yesterday morning for more Tylenol because I was out and couldn't take it!

Carson has been on a picnic kick so we told him we'd have a pool picnic.

After a good nap we went for a drive to a new area close to us that we had never been to. We had dinner and just explored without getting too far from home. I asked Carl to take what I hoped would be my last belly picture when we got home. You can see that Carson insisted on doing scooter circles around me the whole time.

As for the little monster, in the last week he has had his ups and downs. He seems to be really excited about the baby coming, but has had some unusual crying episodes too. I'm sure it will be hard on him no matter what. 

I've been trying to get him to say his ABC's forever now and he would always just stare at me. Then all of a sudden one day not too long ago he said Q-Z out of no where. Next thing we know he is busting out the whole thing. He has repeated it day in and day out every since. He says it for anyone that will listen in person, on the phone and even to the grocery checkers.

He made a pine cone bird feeder at daycare a few months ago and had been asking me to make one here. I've never come across any pine cones though. Last week we randomly found two while we were out. He thought it was so much fun to make them and pick where to hang them in our front yard. He showed all his friends. :)

Other than that he has been so good yesterday and today. He must sense that I need to chill and has been playing without too much incident. He is watching Toy Story on my laptop next to me as we speak. He'll stop what he's doing and come over to kiss and pat my belly. He really can be sweet when he wants to. Yesterday he wanted to nap in our bed and I wasn't going to argue!

After being up from 1:30 to 5:00 this morning and up for the day at 6:00 I can't WAIT for nap time today!!!!

It's the final countdown!

I'm not really sure where this post will go or why it's even in existence.......... I guess I just have a bunch of random thoughts in my head at this point. I thought all along that I would have this baby before my due date since Carson was 8 days late. I assume our children will always keep us on our toes so why wouldn't this dude come super early? I guess I've got a nice comfortable little womb in there though. Today I'm 39w4d so pretty darn close to our due date. Last Wednesday night I was up with my first bout of real painful contractions, but they didn't last. I had a doctor's appt that next morning where I found out I did have some progress (1.5cm, 50% effaced), but nothing else has happened since. I had two semi-contractions while eating dinner last night and that's been it for 5 days. 

We are actually hoping that he comes close to a weekend, like this Thursday or Friday would be perfect! :)  Carl's vacation time doesn't start until July 1 because that's his work anniversary date so we're hoping the two personal days he can take when we have him fall around the weekend. Otherwise he's going to have a pretty tough time going right back to work after a mid-week hospital stay. I've told him that he is more than welcome to come home and sleep here since I think I can handle the nights alone. We are so lucky that Grandma Susan has a ton of vacation time and a flexible work environment so we don't have the added stress of what to do with Carson. She'll hopefully be able to take a few days off to help when he gets home and Carl's vacation time hasn't started yet. I'm honestly more worried about dealing with Carson in the first days than I am the baby!

It may sound a little dramatic to say that I'm afraid of what Carson will do at first, but he can be a real handful. On Friday we were upstairs when my boss called. I had to run downstairs to get on the computer so I let Carson stay up there. I didn't want my boss to hear the wrath of dragging him down the stairs and getting settled. It had been WAY too quiet for this short duration so I was dreading what I'd come up to. Turns out he went in and pulled out an entire bag of Grandma's makeup. It was all over her floor, crushed eyeshadow, black smudges in the carpet, everything. Then he proudly showed me his "purple cheeks!". I eventually found that what he had was a purple lipstain that he drew on his face. He thought it was so cool and that Daddy would be so proud of him. :)

 

He does and says so many funny things every single day. I absolutely love watching him learn and grow. He busted out the full alphabet this weekend out of nowhere and will say it to anyone that will listen. The other day he came in the office to find the light shining down through the glass of his desk. He was so excited that there was a rainbow in here and looked at me like a crazy person when I tried to explain it to him. He wanted me to take a picture of it on his feet so he could see it.

 

He's constantly riding his bike out in the backyard these days.....and if he gets off at least he keeps his helmet on. :)  Safety first!

He very lovingly helps Daddy rub my feet (aka sausage toes).

He's getting so much better with potty training. And when he's not, he's a diaper box robot.

He helps out Daddy and Daddy's pals with any and everything guy related. He got to take a ride in Justin's tool truck this weekend.

Basically he's just a hoot.

As far as baby stuff goes, I think we are just about all done and ready to go. The changing table finally showed up on Saturday and we found baskets for it yesterday. The crib is all put together, the clothes are put away in the drawers, the swing is all together, the carseat is cleaned and my bags are as packed as they can be at this point. 

My mom and I were at Babies R Us last weekend and found a side-cap of clearance shoes. They had this ONE pair of baby Pumas that were marked down from $29.99 to $3.80. I couldn't resist because they were beyond cute and then when I bought them they actually rang up at $1.85! Totally worth it for his own first pair. We have kind of turned into a Puma family so it seemed fitting. I also got Carson a new pair of Nike's for $6. I had her search out the last size 10 and when we got home they were way too big on him (which is weird since he's almost an 11 in everything else). I went back and bought the 9's too to wear now since they were so dang cheap! I sure love me some clearance items. Here are the Pumas:

 

As far as my gear goes I definitely have a favorite. I casually asked my friend Erin about her PPB diaper bag a while ago because I was eying this one online, but hadn't seen one in person. The bag was backordered everywhere so I figured I had time to decide if I wanted to buy it or not. Well, we have awesome friends because Erin & Nick, Megan & Justin and Luke all surprised us and got it for us as a gift. I was so shocked and they really shouldn't have. Not to say that I'm not thrilled! I've had it on my desk staring at me ever since. I decided I don't want to use it until the baby is here so it feel fresh and new for the experience. I am having a serious obsession with gray and yellow right now so this just hits the spot!

Hopefully the next post will be an introduction! Hey, a girl can dream, right?

38 weeks - Maternity Photos

I am more than lucky to have an amazing friend and fellow photographer that also just happens to be pregnant. Jamie is about 6 weeks behind me, but is having twins so her belly couldn't be cuter and perfectly round right now. We have been trying to plan a day to get together and do each others maternity photos for weeks now. You can imagine how easy it is to reschedule when you feel a bit unmotivated at this point. We were obviously losing time that we can't get back so we made the commitment to meet up on Wednesday night. Goody for us that this day it decided to be totally stormy. We got about three minutes of shooting Jamie in and one of me before it started raining on us. We waddled back to the car and tried to head further East to get ahead of the storm. It didn't rain any more, but was SO windy that it was nearly impossible to get a good shot of our faces. The wind made our hair a total mess and we could only stand in the one direction with it coming right at us. Not the best scenario...... But I am more than happy with what I ended up with. I hardly even have a record that I was pregnant with Carson so I am so grateful to have these photos now of this baby in my belly.

 

I also had my 38 week check up yesterday. I haven't had any activity or contractions to speak of so my doctor's appointments are pretty lame. They ask me if I have any questions, I say no, so they ask me questions that they already have answers to. It's a waste of time, but I guess it has to be done. The good news is that my blood pressure and all the other stuff looks really good this time. At the end with Carson they thought I was developing pre-eclampsia and had some concerns. This pregnancy has also measured exactly the same as with Carson. With both of them I have been the exact number of centimeters I should be up until week 36 when I measured 34cm. Then at 38 weeks I am measuring 35cm. Luckily that is normal and will hopefully mean this guy will be in the 7-8 pound range too which I am more than happy to handle! At my 36 week ultrasound he was head down. I hoped to get a good look at his face, but his arms were up in front of it and you could only see one eye and part of his forehead. Oh well! She did confirm that he is for sure a he though.

We are pretty much prepared at this point. I'm still waiting for our changing table to come in that we bought on April 15. It was only supposed to be back-ordered until the end of May and now they are saying it could be another couple of weeks. I really want to get his clothes put away and the room finished so it's the last piece of the puzzle that is driving me insane. We're ordering a new swing and a few little things this weekend (Amazon gives you an extra 10% off if you create a registry!) but it isn't crucial to have from day 1.

But for now I am trying to appreciate how good I still feel at this point of my last pregnancy. I'm getting a tad anxious about how having two will really all play out. I still don't want to wish it away and I'm attempting to get as much sleep as I can. Unfortunately Carson has been up by 6am every morning, even on weekends, which is no fun at all. He even fell out of his bed at 1:30am this morning because he was so restless and wouldn't stop moving around.