Hi Again

What a wonderful, terrible, beautiful 12 months.

I’m back after a long break and am so thrilled to see so many pregnancies and babies from all the bloggers out there!

I’m over the hump of trying to navigate single-motherhood, return to work, house-sale, move, divorce, name-changes, etc. Now I’m trying to settle into my life as it is each day rather than gearing up for the next big moving-on-milestone.
My son is almost 10 months old and gets better every day. I won’t go into too much detail about what transpired between 10 weeks and 10 months, but here are some highlights:

• He started as a terrible sleeper. For his first 4 months, he would only sleep latched on to me. I spent those nights ‘sleeping’ sitting up on a couch. At about the 4 month mark, when he could roll himself over on his stomach – it was a whole new world. Then came 5 and 6 hour stretches IN HIS CRIB at a time and now we are probably 50/50 with a full sleep through the night. The other 50% he usually wakes up once and needs to be rocked back to sleep – this is pretty manageable.

• Eating has been relatively easy compared to sleeping. He hasn’t really met a vegetable he doesn’t like. Fruit is OK as long as it’s heavily diluted in oatmeal or plain yogurt. We’ve moved on to some finger foods, which he kind of refuses to feed himself. In fact, he usually picks them or his sippy cup up and hands them to me so that I can feed him myself. Pretty funny.

• Still breastfeeding. This has been easy all along the way, the only bummer is how quickly the supply shrinks. He’s still getting about 10-12 ounces of breastmilk per day (1 nursing session and the rest in bottles) and about 12 ounces of formula.

• Day care – since my split, my mom has been coming out to San Diego for two weeks each month to help me take care of my guy. She and I have a great relationship and I know how lucky I am to have the help. Because of this, I am able to afford a babysitter the other two weeks of the month. I love my babysitter – I found her on a website called care dot com.

• He’s got two bottom teeth and his first top one just broke through.

• When he’s not crawling - he’s pulling himself up on anything he can.

• He is starting to play games with me like laughing and crawling away really fast so I’ll chase him.

I love being a mom. I knew I’d love it, I didn’t know how much. I know everyone says this and it sounds trite – but he is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.
I’m glad to be back.


Here's my guy:

Didn't see this one coming

My wife decided on Sunday that she doesn't want to be in this relationship anymore.

Our son is 10 weeks old.

Anyone still out there?

Sorry for going MIA. Between work and the 3rd trimester insanity, I couldn't find enough time to keep this blog up. I was reading blogs as often as I could, but just didn't have it in me to update.

In the off chance that anyone is still out there, I'm thrilled to announce the arrival of our son. He was born via c-section on June 23 weighing 7 lbs 2 ounces and measuring 19.75 inches. He is beautiful and we are falling more in love with him each day. The picture is our boy at two weeks.

The c-section was not in the birth plan, but had to be done because, apparently, I've got a platapoid pelvis. This made it difficult for him to enter the birth canal. It was a really difficult turn of events as I was really hoping for a natural birth. Our OB was really wonderful though the whole thing. He was just as into the natural birth as we were. When it became apparent that surgery was imminent, he gave us time to mourn the loss of the birth we wanted and was really gentle through the whole procedure. I was most terrified of getting the spinal. I've heard horror stories and I was really freaked out that something would go wrong or that I'd have terrible lasting effects, but it turned out to be very manageable. The hospital staff was top-notch.

The recovery from the c-section has been a piece of cake. I realize how lucky I am for this. I took vicadin and ibuprofin while I was in the hospital (4 days) and then stopped all meds about 3 days after discharge.

Breastfeeding is going really well too. We're finally at the point where I can start pumping, which is great because C can help out with the feeding.

On the down side, our little boy is a little sleep resistant and doesn't seem to like any of the beds we have for him. He doesn't sleep unless he's on my chest and this makes for a horrible night's sleep for me. It's amazing to me how quickly one can get used to 4-5 hours of sleep per night and getting 3 uninterrupted hours is like winning the lottery. Anyone have any tips on how to get a baby in a crib?

24 Weeks (almost)

Almost at 24 weeks – things are going well. Here’s a new interesting little symptom. When I sit for long periods of time, I get a burning pain just below my bra line on the right side. I started noticing it about 2 weeks ago. According to the goog.le, it’s pretty normal and most seem to chalk it up to round ligament pain. It’s weird and can be a bit distracting.

We’ve found a lawyer for the second parent adoption. I’m trying not to get too sideways about the absurdity of having to spend thousands of dollars so that my wife can adopt her own child, but that’s just the way it goes. The lawyer has estimated that the whole thing will cost about $3K, which is great since I was thinking it would be closer to $5K. We meet with him next week to get the paperwork started. I’m due to give birth in June and we are planning a vacation with friends in August. I really don’t want to leave the state, let alone step foot into a red state, without paperwork in hand. He thinks we should be able to be wrapped up by then.

Here’s something interesting. We’ve been doing research on cribs. Consum.er Re.ports ranks 2 cribs as having the highest rating for safety – one of them is an Ike.a crib and only costs $150! Now, it’s not going to win any design awards – it’s pretty plain and understated, but did I mention that it’s $150 AND that it converts to a toddler bed?! Sold.

Lately, I’ve found myself facebooking all sorts of people who I haven’t talked to in years. College friends who I haven’t thought about in 10 years – friends that I made after college who I’ve lost touch with. It’s weird, all of the sudden I’ve just had this burr up my butt out reaching out to people who I’ve grown apart from. I don’t know if the pregnancy is to blame or what. Anyone else out there finding themselves digging through the past?

We start birthing classes in about a week and a half. Right now we’re signed up with a Bradley method class – our OB is recommending Hypnobirthing. Any opinions?

21 Weeks

I’m a bad blogger.

Sorry Team.

Things here are good. We had a bit of a scare a few weeks ago, but we’re feeling really good now. During the first trimester, we never ended up getting a nucal scan. Instead, our OB measured the space in between the baby’s head and neck and said that everything looked fine and that there was no reason for the scan. At about week 18, I went in for the AFP blood test. It came back positive for Down’s. The AFP is not a diagnosis but is considered an indicator of probability. Our next step was to meet with a genetic counselor and perinatologist who would conduct an ultrasound and look for ‘soft markers’ which would either reduce or increase the risk. The ultrasound went fine and our risk was reduced. Not enough to render the AFP blood test negative for Down’s, but enough to make us feel a lot better. A definitive diagnosis could happen through an amnio – which neither one of us was all that into. We’ve heard that there is anywhere between a 1 and 200 to 1 in 1600 chance of miscarriage after an amnio – this just seemed like too big of a risk to us. The biggest factor is that if we did get confirmation that the baby has Down’s, we wouldn’t terminate. That just isn’t the decision we’d make right now.

Maybe this is naïve, but I really feel like everything is fine with this baby. I’ve read that upwards of 80% of the positive Down’s AFP tests turn out to be false positive. I just don’t think that this baby has Down’s. If he does, we’ll deal with it, but it just doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening.

We had another OB appointment on Friday, and got even more assurance that he doesn’t have Down’s. Apparently, babies with Down’s are born with a single wrinkle across their palms, because while in the womb, they don’t move their fingers independently. According to our OB, Down’s babies will use their hands similar to a primate, with all fingers perpendicular to the palm, thus causing the line. During our ultrasound, our little guy was displaying quite a bit of digital mastery as he not only picked his nose for us, but spent a good amount of time playing with his penis. Who knew it started so early for the brothers?!

My naseau subsided around week 17 and has been replaced by crazy heartburn. Other than that, my back tends to hurt a bit more and I’m a little more prone to tearing up. It all feels pretty manageable. As of today, we’re at week 21. I’m too shy to post belly pics, but tonight I’ll post a video from the ultrasound.

Thanks for sticking with me. I promise to be better about posts and comments.

70% Sure

Our Doc gave us a 70% chance of having a son! The boy was sitting cross legged, so it was hard to get a clear shot of the junk. We've got our 20 week appointment in a few weeks so maybe we'll get a better view then.

C is especially thrilled. Last week, we saw the movie 'Towelhead'. As the film progressed and as the 13 year old lead character delved deeper and deeper into sexual awakening, C started compiling a wish list which included, a boy, a gun and an alarm system.

I'm really happy, but I find myself a little sad that we're not having a girl. If we found out that she was a girl, I'd be feeling a little sad about the loss of a boy. I don't really understand it, but as happy as I am, it is bittersweet.

17 Weeks

I'm sorry for the lack of posts and especially for the lack of comments. Between the holidays and my lingering first-trimesteritis - I haven't been up to too much posting.

Tomorrow we'll be at exactly 17 weeks. While I think I might be in the second trimester in terms of symptoms - I'm having kind of a first trimester day complete with naseau and fatigue. As a result of the nice long weekend, I've taken to sleeping a little bit later than usual. This morning I slept until almost 9:00 which is pretty much unheard of. After getting out of bed and putting on my socks, I had run down the stairs to get myself to some food. I was gagging and dry-heaving as I was pouring myself some cereal - 9:00 am is just way too late to wait for food. I think I'll be happy to return to my early schedule tomorrow.

The holidays were nice for the most part. My parents and sister came out from Chicago. My mom and sister went bat-shit crazy with baby presents. I have asked them to take it easy when it comes to purchases, but they are completely ignoring me and buying just about everything that Bab.y Ei.nstein makes. I wish they weren't doing it, but this will be the first baby on my side of the family, so I shouldn't take the experience away from them. I'd list out all of the things that they bought, but the list is truly obscene.

The piles and piles of stuff that my family bought made us realize how much room this baby is going to take up and how pack-ratty we've become. The New Year's weekend has been spent doing deep spring cleaning and serious thinning out of all of our crap that we've held on to since buying this house. It felt really good to get rid of so much stuff and it's nice to know that we actually DO have storage! We were able to do the entire upstairs. Later this month, my mom is coming out again and we'll tackle the kitchen and the garage - the two biggest shit-stacks in this house.

I've decided that I'm going to take C's last name. We were thinking about hypenating, but after mulling it over for the past few months, I decided that I think things might just be easier for us if we've all got the same simple last name. I think there's a chance that we'll struggle in some way with the idea of 'traditional family' and having the same simple last name might make it just a little bit easier. We were at a wedding earlier this year and the bride's sister gave a toast during which she said that it didn't hit her that she was loosing her sister until she realized that they wouldn't have the same last name anymore. I never really thought about it up until that point. Last week, I went to the county clerk's office and picked up a copy of our marriage license, which thankfully we're still able to get, took it over to the Social Security Administration office and filled out some paperwork. I should have a new SS card in about a week and then I can change everything else. This was so much easier than I thought it would be.

Tuesday is our next OB appointment and we're hoping to find out whether we're having a boy or a girl. Yay!

Happy New Year to everyone!