Jude-3 Months

Well, it has definitely been too long since I made a post. Almost 2 months! I am a little disappointed in myself because I wanted to have a post every 2 weeks since Jude makes changes so quickly. It looks like parenting and teaching and being wife is a lot of work. Who would have thought?? :)
So I am going to stick with hopefully one post a week. I always want to be able to look back and read these posts and recall the great memories we are making as a family.

Let's go all the way back to his two month appointment on March 1st. Our little guy didn't seem so little any longer! He was 10 pounds 15 ounces and 22 inches long. A month has now passed since that appointment and I feel like he has doubled in size. He is however still our long and skinny little man! He received his two month shots and took them like a champ! He screamed just for a minute and then had a smile right back on his face! I do believe he took it better than mommy because I had to have daddy come with us on the appointment (I was a little too nervous to watch him get the shots alone). I was definitely relieved that he did not have any side effects that evening. I cannot wait until his four month appointment April 26th so we can compare and see all of his changes again! We have to give praise to God for giving us such a healthy little boy!

Since my last post I have also gone back to work :(
March 18th was my first day back, and let me just say that I thought I was never going to be able to work again after that day! I tried my best to hold back tears, but man did they flow the night before, while I was feeding him the morning of, and my first few minutes back in the classroom. Jeff was sweet enough to take him to the babysitter with me the first day. Dropping him off there hasn't been has bad as I thought and in fact it just becomes routine. Where I still find the most struggle is early in the morning before we leave. When I was staying home this was our time to have a morning feeding and then snuggle together and sleep for another hour or so. Knowing that I can no longer do this just breaks my heart! I keep telling myself that summer will be here soon and I will have all that time to snuggle with him again! Luckily I have a job that constantly keeps me on  my toes. My fourth graders do not give me an extra minute to worry about my little boy! I do honestly enjoy my time out of the house. I think all moms need that time away. However, I do feel that working part-time would be the best of both worlds! If only it worked that way for teachers! My final comment on going back to work is that I was very blessed to have family members, friends, and colleagues who kept an eye on me and showed me how much they cared as I was making this transition. Another reason to give praise to God for all the people he has blessed me with in my life!

We just has out first Easter with Jude! We were all over the place  visiting with family, and it is quick to realize that he will definitely be spoiled with all holidays. One little boy shouldn't need so many Easter baskets! :)
It was just a blast dressing him up, showing him off, and trying to get cute pictures with all his presents. I know next year will be a bit easier and he can interact more with his Easter presents! While we were sitting in church Sunday morning there was one thought that just kept continuously coming to mind and that I just had to thank God for over and over again. Jeff and I could not be more blessed to be chosen to be Jude's parents. It has been a remarkable journey so far and we are truly just beginning. I only hope to be everything that Jude needs in a mother!

Changes:

Wow! Where to begin!
**Jude is definitely wearing 3 month clothes now. However, pants are an issue! His  little bellly just cannot hold them up!

**All size 1 diapers fit perfectly now! Good thing too because his poops are getting worse!

**His smiles are larger and happen frequently! He his starting to coo and "talk" a lot and will even get a little giggle every now and again.

**He definitely follows Jeff and I with his eyes a lot more. In fact he uses it to his advantage! When he's in his swing and wants out he knows to just stare us down no matter where we are!

**He loves his hands and fingers as they are constantly in his mouth! He is beginning to cut teeth so his drool is nonstop!

**I also noticed last week that he has finally noticed his feet and will just stare at them! He eventually will try to reach for them too but isn't too good at it since he doesn't have the balance quite yet!

**He is kicking and squirming even more than before. So much so that he has to be strapped in to everything! I can't even keep him on the boppy now as he will just roll himself off of it!

**He has just now begun to reach for his toys when they are hanging in front of his face. He even brought a few of the lighter weight ones to his mouth!

**Jude can hold his head up for much longer now and it is quite steady when he is in a sitting position. He can life it up when he is on his belly but he just doesn't like it!

**Jude is now sleeing on his back! What a miracle! It has taken a lot of work but putting him down at night in his crib is not so bad! He sleeps by himself in his own bedroom and his own crib! He will often make it 4-6 hours at a time. This is quite helpful with mommy going back to work.

**His naps are much shorter now. We are lucky to ever make it longer than 45 minutes unless we are in the car! He will now go to sleep much quicker in mommy arms and take his pacifier.

**Jude enjoys his bath time now. He gets super quiet when we bring him into the bathroom with the water running. We even get a few smiles every now and again!

**Jude also loves just being in his diaper now! I think it has a lot to do with him getting so warm so easily. His skin tends to break out any time he gets over heated.

**We have now had an issue with cradle cap. It is awful and we are struggling to get it to go away. It doesn't help the matter when he just wants to itch his head the whole time. So wearing hats daily now is a must!

Jude's dislikes:
I still do not like my car seat!
I cannot stand to be left alone in a room even when I can see my mommy and daddy still!
I am still not a fan of naps sometimes.
I do not like being swaddled but it is a must so far.
I do not like walks but I am gonig to have to learn to since mommy loves them!


Jude's likes:
I like to be snuggled and held all the time!
I like my swing!
I enjoy watching the t.v., lights, the fan, and pretty much anything that moves and makes noise!
I love to talk and smile!
I love my mommy and daddy as I can recognize them now!

Jude-6 Weeks

Jude is already 6 weeks old! Definitely hard to believe! He changes so much each week that I am doing my best to take pictures so we do not forget. I need to get better at finding the time to also record the changes that we are noticing.
Changes:
Jude has been trying to hold his head up since the beginning, but just this past weekend Jeff was holding him and he was honestly holding it up on is own for a little bit. He is also now willing to sit against his boppy pillow on his own and just look around. He spends much more time during the day wide awake just taking in his surroundings. We can also put him on his play mat and he will observe and squeal at his toys. As far as sleeping goes we have made some progress! We spent pretty much the first 4 weeks up with him almost every hour. He would only sleep if you were holding him and we knew this was something we wanted to break. This started to get pretty difficult for mommy. No amount of "trying" to nap during the day would make up for the sleep either. Thanks to some advice from a friend, we began laying Jude down in his bassinet on his side with a blanket rolled up behind him. I keep a heating pad underneath the bassinet in order to keep it warm and I let him sleep with my shirt. With these changes he finally started staying asleep in his bassinet for a few hours. This past week I have started giving him a bottle at his 12 o'clock feeding and then nursing him afterwards. I am wanting to make sure he is nice and full before going to sleep. On average he will asleep 2-3 hours at a time in his bassinet and about 4 hours on daddy's chest. We are getting there!

I am now starting to try and lay him down in his crib during his nap times. He usually will only sleep for 30 minutes max in there, but it's a start! Jude finally doesn't scream and throw fits when we change him and bathe him. Of course, he still has his moments! Bath time seems to work better if we keep a warm washcloth on his belly. I love changing time now because it gives him a chance to look up at me and he is now smiling! He is especially in a good mood in the mornings and will just smile and "talk" to me for quite some time. I honestly cried the first time he looked up at me and smiled (5 weeks) and had to call Jeff right away! I also think Jude likes the women because he tends to flirt and smile with them more!

There are even changes with nursing now. Not only is it easier but Jude is quickening his time for how long he eats. Thank goodness for me! We are also just very proud of the fact that he can go from nursing to the bottle to the pacifier and with no confusion. I realize how lucky we are for this! On the downside I began noticing last week that Jude was spitting up A LOT after his feedings and would even make choking sounds. He seems to have reflux issues pretty bad so I have had to adjust and make some changes with feeding him. I try to feed him every 2 hours and do it with him straight up. I also do not lay him down for at least 10 minutes. Even when changing him I am trying to keep him on his side....not easy!

You can definitely tell that Jude is growing! He is so much longer that his clothes are kinda stretching on him. However, he is still a skinny guy so we still can't put him in clothes bigger than newborn size. At his doctor's appointment a few weeks ago he was 8 pounds 2 ounces and 21 1/4 inches long. We are also starting to have some diaper issues! I would say he ruins at least two outfits a day from diaper explosions! I tried a size 1 diaper last week thinking that maybe the newborn diapers were too small now. That was a big mistake! The size 1 diapers are way to big around his legs so you can only imagine what happened when he pooped after eating! So right now newborns it is.

On January 27th Jeff and I along with our families dedicated our lives to raising Jude in the church. It was such a wonderful blessing to share this promise with our loved ones. It was just another reminder of how loved Jude is and I cannot thank God enough for that blessing. Below is a picture of Jeff and I with Jude at the dedication. This was Jude's second outfit of the day. He ended up with a stomach bug that day and it continued into Sunday. Poor little guy!

I feel that Jeff and I are slowly getting the hang of this parenting gig! With each passing day I am more confident in my abilities as a mommy. Jude as taught me so much about what it is to be selfless. No matter how tried I am feeling that day I know that every moment is worth it because of him. I cannot wait to continue to see the changes Jude continues to make!







Jude's dislikes:
I do not like to be naked unless it is very warm!
I do not care too much for my baths!
I do not like the car seat unless we are moving!
I am not a fan of sleeping on my back!
I really do not like to be left alone!
I get overly tired a lot and making sleeping worse!
I am not a huge fan of my bottle yet!
I do not like dairy so mommy can't eat it!




Jude's likes:
I like to be snuggled all the time!
I like to sleep on my side!
I like my swing!
I am starting to like my toys and books!
I like to be talked to!
I like my pacifier most of the time!
I am beginning to like smiling!
I like music!

Jude is here!!

Our Christmas baby!!

Here is Jude's birth story:

We had spent the weekend before Christmas (22nd and 23rd) with my side of the family. I was feeling pretty good overall and pretty positive that I would be going to my doctor's appointment the 26th still pregnant. The night of the 23rd I spent it reading on the couch till about 11:00. As I went to stand up I could tell something was a bit off. I have always been told that your water breaking is not as it always appears on the movies. However, at this point it was just a trickle and I was not positive at all as to what it could be. You hear stories all the time of women going into the hospital and it end up being just a false alarm. I wanted to be sure of what was happening so I decided to just go to bed. Of course by this point I could not sleep at all as I was completely anxious and nervous as to what was happening. I got up to go to the bathroom several times that night and each time I could feel the trickle. Finally early that morning, I got Jeff up and told him what was going on. By that time I was a nervous wreck and confused! We went ahead and called the doctor to see what they suggested we do. They wanted us to come on in and get it all checked out, so we took our time getting ready that morning. We arrived at the hospital around 9 at which point they began running tests to see if my water had actually broke at all. Each test we took either showed to be inconclusive or negative. To be on the safe side they took us to an ultrasound to check on my amniotic fluid. The ultrasound showed there was plenty of fluid so therefore I was not leaking. By this point Jeff and I both believed that nothing was happening and we were headed home. We were even discussing what to have for lunch! They let us sit in the room a bit longer before discharging us at which point we both took a small nap. When I woke up I noticed once again that something wasn't right. I wake Jeff up and am pretty sure my water did officially break. He calls the nurse and at this point she is 100% positive my water did break! I was admitted into the hospital at 12:55 pm on Christmas Eve. Apparently my water might have been leaking all night but it didn't rupture till that morning. I guess I wasn't completely paranoid after all!

I was thrilled that Jude was actually on his way (Christmas Eve wasn't exactly a desirable time but we knew it would be a wonderful Christmas present). All family members were called and were headed on their way down. We knew we had some time as my contraction were minor and I could barely feel them. I relaxed by taking a shower in our room and watching tv. Jeff finally got his lunch with Quatro's Pizza (don't get my started on how difficult it was to not have any myself)! At this point not a lot was happening as I was only dilated at about 2 close to 3. They had decided they wanted to give me Pitocin to jump start my labor especially since my water had been broke since the night before. Before that was administered we got quite a scare as Jude's heart rate began to drop. I am not sure if I had ever been so scared in my life! His heart rate jumped back up but we couldn't figure out what had triggered it so we waited a bit on the Pitocin to give him some time to relax. We started out small on the dosage just to make sure he could handle it. Luckily he did great with it. As labor continued Jude's heart rate would occassionally drop down and we discovered it had to do with how I was positioned. I could not lay on my left side at all. For some reason he did not like it! I could sometimes lay on my back, but he loved my right side! So unfortunatley, I was stuck laying on my right side for most of the labor. I shouldn't have been too surprised as this was the side he preferred through my whole pregnancy as well! The Pitocin wasn't helping a ton as I was only dilating to a 4 and my contractions weren't getting that much worse. We upped it a bit more and eventually the contractions started to get worse but I still wasn't dilating. At this point Dr. Schneider recommended that I get the epidural as she believed it helped a lot of women relax and progress the labor. Jeff and I had been back and forth on our feelings about the epidural. To be copmletely honest I was not comfortable with getting it so trying to decide on whether to get it or not began to stress me out and the tears began to run! In the end Jeff and I decided that the epidural would be the best thing if it would help with getting Jude here quicker.By the time we made this decision my contraction were definitely a lot worse! My parents, sister, and Jeff were amazing through this whole process and I couldn't have done it without them.

Second time holding him!

Dr. Schneider was definitely right on how the epidural would help! I went from a 4 to a 7 in no time flat! Let me just say that the epidural compeltely knocked me out and I actually was able to sleep. The only problem through all this is that Jude was deciding to be a bit uncooperative. He wouldn't move his head to where it needed to be so my labor would not progress any further. Of course the option of moving me around in order ot help him move was out of the questions since he only liked my right side. The only other option was to up the Pitocin a little bit more. I would say that within the hour I began to feel a new pressure and that was the sign that Jude was ready. Dr. Schneider decided it was time to push and within 10 minutes Jude was here!

He arrived Christmas morning at 1:54 a.m. Yes, we did not want to have to give him a Christmas birthday, but in the end it will be the best Christmas we will ever have! Jude was 6 lbs and 12 oz and 20 inches long. A perfectly healthy baby!

Proud daddy!

Great-Grandma

Spending time with Grandpa!

Another happy Grandpa!

Meeting Grandma

First time with Mimi!

Aunt Lindsey!

 

Our first family shot together! Since it was Christmas Jude got to have his own stocking! 

It was definitely a bit different to spend Christmas in the hospital, but with Jude in our lives now it did not matter in the least. We were finally able to head home the 26th with all the snow that we received!

 

Ready to head home for the first time!

Jude's first snowfall!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy some of our family shots!!

Relaxing with daddy!

He loves his swing!

Just a few days old!

Working on our tummy time!

Ready to head out in the cold for the first time since coming home!

Love his face!

Getting so old already!