Get Outside

Ainsley is an inside girl.  She really doesn't care if she ever goes outside.  At least that's how she used to be.  When I used to work, her nanny had 2 little boys who loved to be outside so she would go out and pretty much just sit there.  I never really minded this much.  I'm mostly an inside girl myself.  I prefer to be in the kitchen or on the computer.  If I had time, I would love to curl up on the couch and read a book (but who in the world has time for that!)

When David was born and he was indeed a "he", I knew my life as an insider was probably over. 

I have taken him outside some but taking a kid who can't walk outside is really just messy.  We have been to the park and it took everything I had to let him play in the sandbox.  But I did.  And he got messy.  And had to ride home in just his diaper.  But I did it.  And I was pretty proud of myself.

This past weekend was gorgeous!  Ryan and I took both kids to a local park.  While Ryan was up on the top of the playground essentially forcing Ainsley down the big slide, I was following David around.  Now that he's walking with ease, he just had a blast walking around all the kids.  I put him on the top of the baby slide and gave him a little nudge.  He literally squealed.  So I put him up there again and before I could even nudge him, he had figured out how to get himself going. 

 

 All that to say, that my time is now going to be spent more outside than I probably would like.  But that's ok.  Because to see this kid happy is worth every bit of it. 

Listening to him laugh and squeal as the wind hits his face or when he sees something in the woods (like 15 deer running by or a wild turkey chilling out in our neighborhood).

 

Seeing him light up and point as the school bus drives by..

 

Or maybe just seeing the biggest smile ever.

And frankly it's good for me.  And it was actually fun.  I think my inside girl even enjoyed herself. 

Don't Say Things Like That

This past Friday David had an incident with a hanger.  I won't go into the details, but it was gross.  I thought for sure we were going to the ER.  But he was ok.  And then he took a face plant on our train table.  But he was fine.  I was on the phone with my mom later that day and said something along the lines of "I can't believe we have never been to the ER with my kids.  I'm sure David is going to make us go there quite a bit"

David has had a fever and a cough since Sunday afternoon.  The fever has gotten high.  But it is responding well to medicine.  I still took him to the doctor on Tuesday morning.  He said that he was wheezing some but not enough to do anything.  The doctor wanted us to let him know if things changed.

By the afternoon, David was wheezing more and just generally miserable.  You could see his stomach heaving as he was trying to get air.  And his fever was just persistent.  So I put him in the tub to see if it would make him get any better. 

 

It just made him shake and get cold but didn't take his fever down.  I put him to bed and he fell right to sleep.  I told Ryan I was a bit concerned about his breathing and I was just going to call the doctor to see what he said. 

 

One piece of back information is that my pediatrician is very low intervention.  He rarely prescribes anything.  He is a proponent of letting the body do what the body knows how to do.  This is actually one of the reasons we love him.

 

So when I called him last night and he said that we needed to take him to the ER, I was shocked.  But I also knew that we needed to go.  When he jumps, so do we.  We dropped Ainsley off at Grandma's house for the night and off we went. 

 

It was a fairly easy experience. They gave him a breathing treatment and did a chest X-ray. He lungs were clear.  It was viral and we just needed to wait it out.  We were home by midnight with an inhaler and instructions to keep up the Ibuprofen. 

 

Serves me right to say things like that. 

Fear or Free

It's amazing to me how Satan can use just about anything in our lives to completely wreck us.  And that is just what has happened to me this week.

I learned last Monday morning through a friend of mine that a famous mommy blog's youngest child died of SIDS.  I had never read her blog before.  I had never even heard of her before.  And yet her baby was a month older than David.  (And for your sake, I am not linking to that blog)

There were a few things about this that absolutely wrecked me emotionally for the week.

1.  I didn't know that a baby could die of SIDS past 6 months.
2.  The baby was essentially the same age as my baby and looked like my baby and was doing the things that my baby is doing
3.  I am leaving my baby overnight for the first time this week for not just one night, but 4.

I have spent the week gripped in fear.  I have checked on him at night.  I have been worried when his naps have stretched longer than usual.  I was actually looking through pictures on her blog from happier days just last night.  It has consumed my thoughts. 

Everyone keeps telling me to stop looking.  But I just couldn't.  I mean he looked like David.  And David could die.  Have I taken enough pictures?  Have I written enough about him?  Does he know just how much I love him?

FEAR    FEAR    FEAR

In church today, our pastor preached on the Fall of Man.  I've recently studied this in BSF.  I thought I wouldn't get much out of it but I was excited to just be in church for the first time in 3 weeks.  As he preached, I could feel the presence of God come.  I'm not sure if that sermon was for anyone else but me.  I needed to hear it.

Essentially, I was being conned by the greatest con artist there is.  And I let it happen.  I let him start the conversation with me.  I let him change what I knew was truth.  David isn't mine.  He is His.  And I can't let this fear grip me. 

As he closed the sermon and the closing song was being sung, I felt the weight of the world lift from my shoulders.  I was no longer standing in the shadow of fear.  I was standing in the shadow of the cross.  Tears streaming down my face. 

FREE    FREE    FREE

There was another post from this mommy blogger this afternoon.  I read it.  But I was not wrecked by it. 

Thank you Lord for your love and conviction.

Public Service Announcement

This afternoon was going well.  Ainsley was cute, albeit a little tired from her long day at school.  David was cute after a late afternoon nap.  We were having fun.

And just like that the switch flipped and both of them entered into cranky pants.  David was cranky and fussy.  It might have been a mixture of tiredness and hunger.  Ainsley threw an epic screaming fit over whether I wanted a red or pink topper on my pretend cake in the sandbox.  I swear the whole neighborhood heard her scream.

This was followed by me trying to get a dinner on the table in time for my husband to come home late from work.  We sat down at dinner, to which my husband informed me was cold.  Ainsley was eating at her oh so leisurely pace as usual frustrating both of us. 

We have gone a different route with feeding David.  We don't feed him baby food.  I actually just feed him off my plate.  There is an official name for it, Baby Led Weaning.  They talk all about gagging and choking.  99% of the time they are just gagging and can get whatever it is up by themselves given time.

Tonight I was not paying close attention to the amount of food I was putting on David's plate.  I was just trying to get through my dinner fast enough so that I could get him to bed.  Before I realized it, David had way too much in his mouth and began what I thought was gagging.  It quickly escalated to what both Ryan and I knew as choking.  We both looked at each other hoping that the other remembered that Infant CPR class we took when I was pregnant with Ainsley over 4 years ago.  Nope.  But we had to do something. 

Ryan's instincts were pretty good.  He threw him on his knee and started hitting his back.  Out came piece after piece of food.  Finally he was crying.  The obstruction was clear.

This is by no means going to dissuade me from continuing on with Baby Led Weaning or even encouraging other people to do the same.  What it made me do is look on You Tube for Infant CPR videos. 

I strongly urge you to watch this, even if you don't have an infant in your life.  You never know when you might need it.

Conscious Infant Choking

 

 

Unconscious Infant Choking

David got a few extra cuddles tonight. 

All Clear

Our family has a history of Urinary reflux (a disorder where the valves from the kidneys into the bladder don't form properly and urine refluxes back up into the kidneys causing infections and potentially kidney damage).  It started with my sister Jill then went to Wendy and then me.  Both of my sisters had surgery to correct it.  I grew out of it when I was in 3rd grade. We didn't think much of it until my sister Jill's little boy popped up with it when he was an infant.  That has led to every child who is born into our family being tested for it.

We tested Ainsley when she was 8 weeks old.  She had it.  It only took a year for her to grow out of it.  We were so incredibly grateful for that.  My sister's both have had children who have had to have surgery to correct it, one more advanced than the other.

When David was born, we knew that we would be making a visit to the urologist.  I dreaded it.  But at 2 days shy of 4 months, Ryan and I brought our happy baby to the hospital to be tested.

 

He had no idea what he was in for.  Everyone in the lobby was just enamored by how cute he is.

Then it was our turn to go back.  They put him on this large table and prepped him to be catheterized.  Still happy.

Even after he was catheterized, he was still happy.  I personally think that's because they essentially swaddled him in this velcro suit and he was snug as bug.

Then they started filling his bladder and watching to see if it refluxed.  This part he did not like at all.  We had to try and keep him calm so he wouldn't pee all the liquid out before they could get accurate pictures.  We tried lullabies on my iPhone.  We tried Baby Einstein videos.  Eventually the only thing that worked was some extreme breastfeeding, but we will keep those  pictures to ourselves!

He was a trooper.  By the time we were done at the hospital and eating lunch, he was wiped out.  And so was I due to a random fever that popped up in the middle of this whole thing!

We met with the doctor later that afternoon to find out the best news of all.  David does not have one sign of reflux!  We couldn't be more thrilled.  Our baby is happy and definitely healthy.

Just look at those rolls!

My Newest Accessory

There is this blog post that is floating around Facebook.  I even re-posted it.  It's really good.
 
This blog post has me thinking so much about how I spend the time I do have with my kids while I'm not working.  Time seems to be flying by so fast.  It seems like just yesterday it was Ainsley that I was breastfeeding and Ainsley that I was washing diapers for.  And now she's almost 4 and cracking me up with her commentary on life.  When did that happen?

It makes me look at David in a whole different way.  With Ainsley I was just trying to survive these early stages.  Becoming a mother was just such an adjustment.  This time it wasn't so hard so I am really getting to enjoy the little moments with this little guy.  I am begging for time to slow down so that he will be little forever. 

I've been attending a group that promotes baby wearing.  It sounds hippy and it kind of is. (I'm actually learning to embrace my hippy self but that's another post altogether!)  And yet it's one of my favorite things I have done with David.  I go to this group to learn more about how to strengthen the bond between us.  I am learning so much about the benefits of keeping him close to me.  I don't think it's a coincidence that when I put him in his carrier, he almost instantly falls asleep.  He feels secure and safe and loved.  I think my favorite part is when he's in his carrier, his head is so close to me that I just can lean down and kiss him as much as I want.

Yesterday I went shopping with my mom.  Instead of putting David in the stroller, I strapped him on.  He was awake and looking around for a bit but then he fell asleep.  I had so many comments about how sweet a baby he is.  I think you get more comments like that when you wear a baby because they are at eye level. 

But in this case, they were all right.  Sweet baby indeed!

Sacrifices

When you get pregnant or even dream about getting pregnant, your dreams include things like baby smiles, cooing, sweet little sleeping babies.  Your visions of what life with the baby will be like are all roses and sleeping babies. 

Even though I have had a baby before, my mind blocked out all the hard stuff.  My brain went right to 6 months where Ainsley was smiling and sleeping well.  She was easy to put to bed.  She only woke up once a night and was up for 20 minutes at most. She was just generally a happy baby.

And now reality has hit. David wasn't home a week when he was diagnosed with thrush, which is a yeast infection.  The main symptoms are a white tongue, horrible diaper rash, and gas.  The white tongue we can deal with.  The diaper rash got better with some special diaper cream.  The gas on the other hand was miserable.  When he was awake, he was screaming.  It was down right miserable.  We had a couple nights when we slept only an hour or 2. We would just watch him pull his legs to his chest in pain. At his one week checkup the doctor told me that the best way to combat the yeast was to stop eating things that fed yeast.  Gluten and Dairy.  I told him thank you very much but that's impossible.  I explained that I was a vegetarian and cutting out gluten would leave me with nothing to eat.  I went home and listened to David scream for another week.  It was painful.

At his 2 week checkup the thrush had only gotten worse.  I was again faced with the decision of gluten and dairy free.  And this time, I embraced it.  I was going to try it for a week and see if it helped.  If it did, I would do it until the thrush cleared up.  And so this became my life.

And guess what, it worked.  He's happy most of the time.  There is still a good bit of gas (he cleared out a room yesterday but I think that's more genetics he gets from his namesakes), but for the most part, he's good.  And so I continue with the diet and I am figuring out how to keep myself full.

Sacrifices in life are worth it, especially when it comes to your children.

Boy Crazy

When we found out I was pregnant with David, I asked Ryan if we could wait and be surprised on the sex of this baby.  We had found out that Ainsley was a girl when I was pregnant and I told him that I wanted to try it the other way. 

Secretly, I didn't want to know if it was a boy.  People would ask me if I cared if it was a boy or a girl, and I would give the standard answer of "Just as long as it's healthy, I don't care".  Honestly, I cared.  I wanted a girl so badly. 

I was actually petrified of a boy.  Not only did I not know anything about the anatomy (I'm still asking Ryan questions about "it" regularly!), but I was also scared of boy activity.  Boys are rambunctious. Boys are crazy.  Boys are wild.  Boys are everything my little girl is not.  And if I love my little girl and everything about her just the way that she is, how can I love just the opposite.

Everyone told me that I would love a boy just as much as I would love a girl, but I just couldn't picture it.  How was a boy ever going to fit into our lives?  So I convinced Ryan to wait and not find out the sex of the baby.  I didn't want to dwell on the fact that this baby could be a boy for months.  I knew I would stress and worry like crazy if I knew ahead of time.

With each passing day of the pregnancy, I was more and more convinced that this baby was a boy.  My pregnancies were just so different.  Hardly anything was the same.  And so I started to settle in to the fact that this was more than likely a boy.

Then came birth day.  When he was born, I was privileged enough to "catch" him.  When I turned him over in the water, there "it" was.  His boyness was staring back at me.  And I have to say that I panicked.  When Ainsley was born, they put her on my chest and it was instant love.  My little girl.  But when they put David on my chest, I was kind of in denial.  This boy, and a big boy at that, was my baby? 

While I went through all the post birth things, Ryan held David "skin to skin" on his chest.  He bonded and enjoyed every second of that time.  And there I was just staring at both of them.  Confused of my feelings.  Where was the instant love?

I'm not going to tell you that it was instant after I started breast feeding or after I held him for a bit.  I don't actually know when it happened. But I have fallen so deeply in love with this little boy. 

And I can't wait for the soccer games, the dirt, the trucks, the tree climbing, the legos, and more.  Let the invasion of blue begin!

He's definitely a sweet little boy.  And he's definitely mine to love.

What's in a Name?

I always thought it would be so fun to name children.  In reality I have found it just the opposite.  I find it to be an impossible task and with both my kids I have had periods of doubt after they were born and named.  Don't get me wrong, I love their names but they are so permanent that the fear of making a mistake just gets to me. 

With this baby, we did not know whether it was a boy or a girl and therefore had to pick out 2 names.  The girl's name was set from day 1.  The boys name wasn't set until we actually met him.  I had a feeling his name would be what it was but we just weren't sure. 

David's name does have quite a bit of significance though and so I wanted to share it with you.  It's not a hidden fact in my life that my father and I have not always gotten along.  There was a period of time when we actually didn't like each other at all.  I actually wouldn't even stay at his house when I came home from college. 

BUT God's grace is bigger than either of our sinful hearts.  God healed both of our hearts and today my dad is one of the most important people in my life.  He is a friend, an advisor, and a father.  I couldn't ask for anything more. 

And so when we thought about a first name, my dad's name came to mind quickly:  David.  It doesn't hurt that the name also has such strong biblical significance - "a man after God's own heart".

When it came to a middle name, the choice was obvious.  How could we not name our son after his father?  Ryan is such an amazing dad that it seems fitting to name his son after him.  He's my rock and the leader of this family.  And his name's meaning is pretty gtood too - "Little Prince".

So my prayer for you little David Ryan is that you live up to your name.  Those are some pretty big shoes to grow into but we have faith in the man you will become.  God has big plans for you and we trust in Him to fulfill them.  And I am just so happy that the 3 most important men in my life are forever linked by their names. 

He's Going to be a Swimmer

Welcome to the world David Ryan.  If you don't want to read the full birth story, I would suggest you skip this entry.  I won't get too graphic but I do have to post one picture that is worth 1000 words.

On Sunday January 8th, I went to bed and was starting to contract.  I was contracting pretty consistently at 6 minutes apart but they weren't gettting any stronger.  And then they stopped around 4 am.  I woke up in the morning and went to the bathroom.  My pants were a little wet and I figured I might be leaking a little fluid but since I was not contracting anymore, I let it go.  I went to work on January 9th and worked my full day until 2:30.  I came home and laid down on the couch and set Ainsley up with 2 Veggie Tales videos.  Everytime I got up I leaked a little more.  I knew at this point that my water was broken but I still wasn't contracting hard enough or consistent enough to be in active labor. 

I was super bummed.  This is exactly how my hell of a labor started with Ainsley and I knew the road.  It led to pitocin and an epidural and an epic long labor.  I was so disappointed.  I actually waited until 7:00 to call the midwives and they asked me to come in to check if indeed my water was broken. 

Ryan and I decided to send Ainsley and Tucker to Grandma's house and do a few things around the house.  We put 7 boxes together for our business and I took a shower.  The shower seemed to spur a few more contractions.  My doula, Mary, arrived around 9:00.  After evaluating the situation, we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to see if we could get contractions moving.  It was a full moon and foggy outside.  It was so still and eerie.  I have to say that this walk changed my mood.  I was ready for whatever came my way.  We took a few minutes and prayed over what was to come.  What a gift to have a doula who loves the Lord like we do!

We left for the hospital around 10:30 and I finally got seen by the midwife at 11:30.  She quickly determined that yes indeed my water had broken.  But I was at 4 cm and so they were going to give me some time before putting me on pitocin.  She did strip my membranes though which apparently was the right thing to do at the right time.  I turned a corner and was in active labor.  We really wanted to have a water birth so I hurried Ryan into setting up the tub.

After an hour of contractions in labor and delivery my midwife, Virginia, checked me again and I was at 7.  I was beginning to shake and entering transition.  We moved positions and things got dramatically more intense.  My midwife asked if I wanted to be checked before getting in the tub.  I didn't.  I just said, let's get in there. 

For some reason I had it in my head that it was going to be much easier in the tub. Oops.  Not so much.  It was really hard but I knew there was no turning back.  There was going to be no epidural and this baby was going to be born in the water.

It was at this point that they wanted to get another heartrate check on the baby.  They used 4 different monitors and 3 different nurses and couldn't find it for 45 minutes.  While I just wanted them to go away and forget it, Ryan was freaking out.  I was in a bit of a different state of mind than he was.  Finally, 3 minutes before he was born, they found the heartrate and quickly got away.

And then the moment came when he entered the world.  He was born in the water and I grabbed him and flipped him over to realize he was a BOY!  You can actually see him under the water in this shot!

After 3 hours of active labor, baby David came into the world at 2:25am on January 10th, 2012.  He weighed 9lbs 2oz and was 20 inches long (which is a lot bigger than 7lb 10z Ainsley was).

I can't tell you how proud I am of myself for doing this naturally.  It was so hard but so worth it.  We are already so in love with this little boy.  I never pictured myself as a mother of a little boy but I must say that it is AWESOME!