Two Months

Hi, Coleson!

Two months old, little man.  This has been the shortest and longest eight weeks of my life.  Being on maternity leave is such precious time with you.  You still occasionally fall asleep on me, but it's less often.  Whenever you do, I always stop what I'm doing and watch you and then slightly recline to nap as well.  I don't think there is anything better in the world than a mother having her baby fall asleep on her.  You occasionally thrash and let out the sweetest little baby sigh when I squeeze you in tighter to console you. Soon, I know you'll be too stimulated by living for silly things like taking naps on mama and will need to go to your boring crib to sleep, so I am soaking this time in while I can.

Daddy and I breathed a sigh of relief when we read in Baby 411 that six to eight weeks is usually the height of fussiness.  You can go from "Yeah... I guess I could eat" to "WHY ARE YOU TWO CLOWNS STARVING ME!!" in less than two minutes.  You also have the occasional flailing-legs-screeching fit at 2 am after you've been changed, fed, rocked, and cuddled.  One time, Daddy crawled back in bed at 4am after one such freak-out.  When I asked how you were, he mumbled, "Finally asleep.  I had to put him in the car just to calm him down. I drove around town for an hour and then thought, 'Where would be open?' So we ended up at Krispy Kreme."

That is how your Daddy stress ate two jumbo chocolate iced, kreme filled doughnuts at 3:30 am.

It's neat to see Daddy being a father.  I heard him over the monitor reading Good Night Moon to you once.  

"'Good night noises everywhere.'  The End.  Hmmm... What did you think of that Coleson?  It seemed to be good on pictures, but light on plot development.  You agree?  Would you give it two pacis down?"

You'll laugh at him one day, promise!

There were so many firsts this month.

You finally learned the concept of peek a boo and smile widely... but only when mama does it to you, which is cute.  You grin when Daddy wiggles his fingers at you, and makes an ambulance noise, but not when I do it.  I think it's neat that the two of us each have our own thing going on with you for now.  We're going to start trying to outdo one another just to see who can entertain you the most.  Cirque de Soleil skits to come...

  You charmed the pants off an entire office Christmas party while they were all playing flip cup ( you brought your own bottle), and, of course, Kate and Mark who came for a visit.  They have an adorable boy who you will get to meet soon!

Daddy and I took you to meet Santa.  You snoozed the entire time, but woke up later when we took more photos:

You had your first Christmas, which included more toys than FAO Schwartz and lots of cuddles from everyone.  

Grampy's voice is one of your favorites.  He can always get a smile out of you.

Oh, and you tried to suck Mimi's cheek when you got hungry on Christmas Day.

 Speaking of hungry, you have quite the appetite and have gained at least two more pounds.  We go to the doctor's on the 30th and are excited to see how you've grown.

Everyone is looking out for your little habits.  Daddy and I were chuckling at family members who were already widely speculating about your personality.  "He's an extrovert!  Look how interested he is in other people!"

I don't know if we can apply Myers Briggs to you already, but I already found myself doing the same thing during tummy time when you fought to keep your head up and kept trying again and again and again.  "What tenacity! What courage!"

The truth is we have no idea of your personality yet, and that's okay.  We just love studying your expressions, taking in your habits,  watching you begin to grow up already.  It's heart-breaking, and precious, and wonderful.

We love you, Coleson.

Anne Geddes, Perverted Santa, and the Nightmare Before Christmas

Oh, hello!

It's been a while, I know.  But you've been busy making merry too, right?

With Coleson's first Christmas, I was determined to make it special, which meant doing all of traditions and adding several new ones... even if he slept through most of them.  My sister-in-law Em pointed out that he was too young for most toys and can't even hold his head up properly, so the best way to have fun with him around Christmas is to go "full-on Anne Geddes and shit."

Her point:  dress him up in a million fun Christmas outfits and take pictures:  

Santa Coleson:

Kissable Coleson:

And my favorite outfit... Dapper Coleson!

Is this not the cutest onesie ever??  It was the sweetest gift, and he looked so cute in it!  Comfy and dressy!

This was also the year of our first Christmas card.  Never have sent one out before,  but I decided since it was Coleson's first, I could indulge.  I wanted to make it funny and kinda creative so I chose an infographic template that broke down our year into random facts.

Without further ado, here's our Christmas/ New Year's Card this year:

I just loved it!  It was kind of graphic and cool while being a bit different than the usual Christmas card.

We used this picture from our venture out to visit Santa.  Yes, our little guy is wearing a Santa outfit, thank you very much.

The top part summarized our trip to wine country and Dan's crushing disappointment with the Redskins' performance this year:

The bottom part summarized the somewhat perverted Santa visit we had.  See under "Three Things About This Photo":

Dan and I did our usual tradition of visiting the fancy schmancy Jefferson Hotel to see their annual gingerbread creation.  This year's was a 400 pound gingerbread sleigh covered in thirty pounds of ribbon candy and over four hundred Jelly Bellies.

As you can see, Coleson was riveted.

We also did our annual Christmas light tour.  This year,we found a bizarre and oh-so-creative house that paid tribute to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Anybody seen that movie where the Halloween characters try to take over Christmas?  The owner must be an artist because he created larger than life sculptures of characters from Christmastown:

See the wreath on the door?  Attention to detail, I tell you.

He carved out over thirty Christmas and Nightmare Before Christmas jack-o-lanterns and lit them up:

Yes, Santa is being kept captive in the background:

     Of course, we finished by going to our favorite house: the one an elderly couple always decorates in memory of their son, who loved Christmas.  It is such a labor of love.

I'll skip over details of our family Christmas, but will say if you haven't played the adult version of Headbanz while drunk then you need to!

This was the year when Bethany got engaged (yay!  Already planning her shower and Bachelorette!!), so there were a lot of funny gifts to her.

Coleson must have been good because look at all the loot Santa brought!  

Hope your holiday was full of love and happy memories!

 

One Month

Soooo, I decided to rip off ideas from Pinterest (cough ** YHL and Shannanigans and a billion others) to do monthly photos.  Mine are just going to be a cute, seasonal outfit, a speech bubble saying, and a fun background.  I smell fodder for photo calendar gifts come next Christmas!

I figured I'll write down a few of Coleson's firsts and likes each month as a type of highlight reel.  These posts will be focused more on him and not me becoming a mom, so you won't see rants about exhaustion or breastfeeding (although I want to post about the more difficult moments separately.)

Anyway, here is his one month photo:

This one came out kind of like Lichtenstein art.  I think it's the dots.

Month One:

Dear Coleson,

I'm guessing these letters will be more for me, a snapshot of what you were like during each month of the first year.   After all, by the time you are actually able to read, you'll probably be more interested in building with your Legos and horse playing with Daddy than hearing about what you were like as a baby.  But that's okay.  I like the idea of writing to you.

Apparently, you like the finer things in life:  a fine bottle (of formula), playing the (Fisher Price mat) piano, and listening to classical music.  You are quite the music aficionado, gazing contentedly at me when I play Bach or Pachabel during the morning time.  Oh, and when you are losing it due to a gas episode, you always stop when we pump your legs whilst cranking Salt n' Pepa's "Push it".  You must understand our ironic love of 90's hip hop.

You had so many firsts this month.  I was so nervous for your first bath that I made it a first-class spa experience.  I dimmed the lights, wrapped you in a warm towel straight from the dryer, and then submerged you while still enveloped in the towel so your skin would stay toasty if you move around.  You screamed like I had just stuck you with needles when the lukewarm water hit.  But then you calmed down and fell asleep while mom and I cleaned out your baby rolls.  Have I mentioned you have the most cherubic folds on your legs??  The next bath time you were much better.  It's become one of your (and my) favorite things to do.

You had your first Halloween and Thanksgiving, both of which you slept through while wearing adorable seasonal outfits.  Your mama loves dressing you up and taking family photos!  We traced your hand on the tablecloth at Thanksgiving, so we can see how you grow.  This was also the day you gave us your first (non-gas) smile.

 

Other first included:

Your first walk

First meetings with many friends who came to bring us food and see you:

your first case of the Mondays:

And your first "No Shave Movember":

 I often read the book On the Night You Were Born.  Your Daddy and I both cried the first time I did.  It ends with, "For you are fearfully and wonderfully made. - Psalm 139"  I say that to you all the time.  "Fearfully and wonderfully made... kiss... kiss... ooh looks at those leg rolls!  wonderfully made, wonderfully made!"  I stare in your eyes and say it.

We love you, Coleson. 

- Your mama

Coleson's Birth

Disclaimer:  Feel free to skip this post if you are not wanting to read another baby post.  Or if you don't want to hear about my vag crowning. :)

I have thought about being a mother for what feels like a very long time, imagining rocking my baby and softly crooning the lullaby "All Aboard for Blanket Bay" like my mom used to sing.

But I never spent too much time envisioning the actual birth.

I know some women have a very defined idea of what they want their birthing experience to be like, but I tried not to think about it much.  It has always been a source of anxiety for me.  I think it started in college when I was forced to watch a video of women around the world giving birth for a Human Growth and Development class.  It traumatized me for years.  I still remember looking away as an African woman squatted to birth her baby, shrieking in a jungle, and a different mother in a tub turned as beet red as the surrounding water when her bundle of joy ripped out of her.

 Let's just say that I never was a fan of TLC's "A Baby Story" after that.

 I thought my fears would subside since I had Dan, my rock, to support me in the Labor Class we took during my eighth month, but he was as squeamish as I was.  The instructor showed a birth video and when the woman passed the placenta, Dan gasped and hissed, "What the f*ck is that??"  After watching the thirty minutes of a woman writhing in agony, I realized two things:  1)  I wanted a drug-fueled childbirth.  and 2)  Well, there's no second thing.  I just really, really wanted an epidural.  I could reason that women have been birthing babies since the beginning of time, but after a marathon Googling session of "episiotomies" and "forceps", I was still terrified as I'm sure countless other women are. While I could marvel at the mamas who choose the all-natural route, I knew that it wasn't for me.

About twenty days before my due date, though, my OB, Dr. Porsche, (who turned out to be a total nightmare, but that's another story) called me.  On a Friday night.   It seems she had just been looking over test results and just realized I officially had thrombocytopenia, a condition that causes low blood platelets.  Once she explained that this didn't affect the baby and I calmed down slightly, she continued with, ""If your blood platelets don't increase, you will not be able to have an epidural."  I started to feel an edge of panic creep in as she continued with jargon, jargon, jargon..."need to put you on steroids to help the blood platelets to increase."

A few weeks later, my platelets had happily gone up to 89,000. I requested to have an anesthesiologist consult to see if I could have an epidural.   The anesthesiologist was baldly honest with me.

"I have absolutely no problem giving you an epidural as long as your levels are above 70,000.  But there is one doctor who wouldn't at that level because he never does any epidural for under 100,000.  His name is Dr. Murphy.  He's on call several days next week.  If he's the anesthesiologist, I guarantee he will refuse to give you an epidural."

He concluded by looking at me and saying this word for word quote:  "Keep your legs crossed on Sunday.  He's on call then.  Hopefully you won't have 'Murphy's Law'."

So that freaked me the hell out.  Then, if that didn't already add to my growing fear, my doctor bullied me into scheduling an induction for 7 am the day after my due date just so we could avoid that bastard Murphy being on call and because she didn't know how long the steroids' effects would last.   She rolled her eyes at me and snapped,  "Blame the litigious nature of patients!" when I questioned the unprofessional conversation I had with the anesthesiologist, about why I could have an epidural if I happened to go into labor on one day but not another.   Inducing labor simply because of the anesthesiologists' schedules seemed wrong, but I went along with the plan, although I Googled way too many stories about horribly painful contractions because of Pitocin during induced labor.

The day before the scheduled induction, Dan and I did  absolutely everything we could to get labor naturally, from sex to the old wives tale eggplant recipe and spicy Chinese take-out to walking up and down hilly parks. No dice.  By 9:30 pm, though, we resolved ourselves to setting our alarms to get up at 5 am so we could be on time to the induction.  I was feeling crampy and anxious and finally drifted off to sleep several hours later.

Until my water broke at 1:00 a.m. 

To me, it was like a champagne bottle popping, all "noowwww it's time to party!"  From there, things moved very fast.  I was screaming in delight and calling out, "Let's have a baby!" and throwing my overnight bag over Dan's shoulder.  My mom didn't have time to put her contacts in, and we all jumped in the car.

By the time I was in my nightgown and connected to an IV, I was at six centimeters, 80% effaced, and time was measured by pain level.  

By 2:30 am (level 7), I was projectile vomiting and sprayed Dan's hand.

By 3:30 am (level 8), I was writhing and white-knuckled, gripping the sides of my bed.  Mom and Dan obliged me with total silence, rather than chanting "breathe!  breathe!"

 By 4:00 (level "ready for this shit to end"), I was practically putting a bulls-eye on my lower back for the epidural needle.

The nurse refused at first because she said the lab people were still counting the platelets.  I was so proud of Dan when he growled, "It's been three hours since her blood sample was sent down.  Whose cage do we need to rattle to get the epidural faster??"

Apparently, the squeaky wheel gets the blissful, pain-blocking medicine.  Minutes later, we found out my platelets were blessedly still holding, and the anesthesiologist put in the catheter and medicine.  I was at 9 centimeters and 100% effaced by the time my legs went all numb and floppy.

A happy girl once the epidural took effect, enjoying my lemon icy.

Posing for pictures while we waited the hour it took to dilate to 10 centimeters.

At 5:00 am, Rebecca, my nurse, had turned down the epidural, so I could start pushing.

It was like a sitcom birth episode for the next hour.
My mom held her breath with me, almost puked, and had to excuse herself to the bathroom.
A nurse who looked like a supermodel came in, and her one contribution was to simply croon, "You can do it, mama.  Go, mama..." over and over again.
Rebecca straddled me, and we played tug of war with a towel at one point.  

6:00 am- I was exhausted and trying to dig in.  The doctor finally entered and asked me if I wanted to watch the progress by having a giant mirror set up.  Dan and I both responded, "Nope, there are some things you can't unsee."  He had been staying above my head the entire time since we agreed that neither of us needed to have the visual of a stretched vag haunt us like the labor video had.

"Are you sure?" the doctor asked.  "It might encourage you."

"I guess I could try it," I responded while Dan was furiously shaking his head.

I gasped "Oh, gosh!" when the mirror was set up which made all the nurses laugh.  Dan and I couldn't look away.  I could see his dark hair, which I know is a completely gross visual to write about, but to me, it was so inspiring.  He would be here soon!  Our son would be here!

And that's how I, a complete wimp, ended up watching every second as I pushed for the next hour.  Dan was tearing up and kissing me.  Mom was strong and so excited.  Everyone was chanting.

At 6:55 am, the doctor said, "Give it all you've got", and then he was in the world so fast and they plopped him on me all warm and slippery and he took my breath away.

His cry was beautiful, even if it sounded like he was underwater.  The doctor let me continue to hold him while she worked on me.  Then, my mom and Dan had their turns.  We sang "Happy Birthday".  We all cried.

Our first family picture (or at least the first one that did not inadvertently have my vagina in it.  Mom was on the pictures- ha ha!)

 Second family picture, taken by the hospital photographer.  We all are exhausted (only one of us is adorable and without bags under his eyes) from this very exciting night!

While I won't sugarcoat the process of recovering from labor, I will say that I am incredibly grateful for this night.  So grateful for family.  So grateful for this little boy.

The moment that sums it up for me is when we were finally alone as a family the next day. Dan turned to me with tears in his eyes and whispered, "I'm so happy.  He's finally here.  He's FINALLY here."

Welcome to the world, sweet Coleson.