Merry Christmas!

Victoria's new mommy tip: drink your mulled wine while pumping. That way, no alcohol gets into your milk and you can enjoy the fruity goodness with no guilt! :)

We are tired and no, it's not the wine:

Tis a horrible picture of me, but meh. Glamour girl, I am not.

Jon gets to sleep at night and I am up until 6-7 am, at which time he gets up and I get to crash. For some reason, he gets 8+ hours and I only get 4-5. Hrm. But we're coping. Ian has his first pediatrician appointment tomorrow; I'm sure he's developing just fine.

He's currently eating 2 oz of milk every 2-3 hours, which is great. He's learned how to spit the milk back out to aggravate his parents, which is not so great actually.

Here's some cute pictures from Christmas:

Ian in his stocking that Aunt Amara made.

He's going to be big fun at office parties someday...

With my Gram who is 87 this year (I think).

His blurry 1-week-old footie picture.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! On to New Year's where I can drink one alcoholic beverage every hour! Wahoo!

No one told me there would be foam...

I think I needed to be prepared ahead of time for the foam in the diapers. I mean, poop we expected. Pee, yes. Foam? Not so much. Even the lactation consultant had no idea what the heck I was talking about. Green foam, lady! Dost thou know whereof I speak?

That was a couple of days ago. Now we've got the "curdy" poop which is only interesting to me because the word "curdy" is all kinds of awesome.

Ahh, poop. For this, I went to college.

The visit with the lactation consultant went well. He nursed well while she was there, but she said that he had lost too much weight and had to start gaining. So we scheduled a weight check at the hospital for this morning. He's gained 6 oz in 2 days, so he is doing just fine. (He's at 8 lbs 5 oz again).

We've made the decision that we're going to switch our feeding method; instead of me feeding him every time, I will pump ahead of time and that way either one of us can feed him. It also will let me get more rest (I'm pretty tired). We gave him a couple of sessions of formula today, and I was able to pump a couple of feedings ahead, so we should be all set. I also got 6 hours of sleep in a row - wow, was that full of win.

I'm a little disappointed that no one has visited us. We had some visitors in the hospital, but very few folks have called while we've been home, and no one has come by. I'm sure everyone just wants to let us get acclimated (and newborns sleeping and pooping aren't all that interesting, I will admit), but it's a little lonely. Jon and I take shifts with Ian and we sleep when we can, but most of the time it's one or the other of us awake while the other sleeps. Ian's cute as a bug, but he's not much of a conversationalist (although I am fully convinced that he is composing the next Great American Novel in his head, as we speak).

I know it's the holidays - I'm just a whiner :) Everyone's out of town or doing holiday-ish things. It's just hard when you're watching Star Trek at 2 am and bored silly - and why didn't I ever notice that Captain Kirk's hair is all sorts of stupid?

1st Bath!

Ian had his first bath on Thursday night. He's been having gas attacks so he was unhappy when he went into the water. We were hoping that the warm water would make him feel better but it didn't seem to. We got a stern talking to.

Apologies for the brightness of the picture. We're still figuring out the digital camera. We had to get an extra picture of the super cute giraffe towel sent to me by my Fertility Friend shower buddy, Cosmicgirlie.

Feeding continues to be a challenge. His gas pains kept him from feeding as usual, so we were forced to use the S-in-S feeder last night with formula, as we hadn't gotten the pump that Amara sent to us yet. By 10:30 pm, I was very sore and we really needed to pump or feed, so Jon got ready to go to Walmart to get me a manual pump to tide me over. He stepped out on the porch and - voila! - UPS had apparently delivered the pump and put it on our front step instead of inside the covered porch, and without knocking to see if anyone was home *roll eyes*

So the good news is, we got our pump (thanks Amara - it is a huge lifesaver!) I'm still not able to feed Ian myself for whatever reason, but we are pumping and feeding that way, so hopefully our days of formula are over.

The lactation consultant is going to be here soon for our home visit and I'm hoping for some help with feeding, sleeping at night, and gas issues.

The gas keeps him up at night for some reason - it may have been that nasty formula last night - so we are very tired. I do ok with 1-3 hours of sleep at a time, but I need it more often. Jon does better with 4-5 hours at a time, but needs it less often. So we're tag-teaming it for now. I don't know how single parents do it!

We're hanging in there and everyone is doing well :)

Ian is here! 12-17-2007, 2:38 pm

Ian James Spain was born 12-17-2007 at 2:38 pm at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

We're not sure when labor began; I woke up on Sunday 12-16 with Braxton-Hicks contractions that went away when I drank some water. Around 2 pm on Sunday, the contractions returned but were painful, which was new. We tried timing them, but the intervals were varied; they'd be 8 minutes apart for 3 intervals, then 2 minutes apart, then 10, etc. So we assumed we were having false labor.

Around 10:30 pm on Sunday night, I had 5 painful contractions in a 7-minute period. We decided to call the Birthplace and they told us to come on in. We got there at midnight and I was 1 1/2 cm dilated and about 50% effaced. They had me walk up and down the hall to see if it would dilate me further, and it did - by 5 am, I was 3 cm dilated. So I was finally admitted.

At 7:30 am, they broke my water and gave me an epidural. Ah, sweet relief! I was able to get a few hours of rest at that point.

At 11 am, the epidural wore off (boo!). They gave me some additional medicine and I continued to labor, but the contractions were still very painful. Jon was there with me the whole time and was just as tired as I was!

We started pushing at 1 pm and I swear I felt the full pain of every contraction, but I didn't feel anything vaginally. Dr. Bemus delivered Ian at 2:38. They said I did a great job of pushing; I don't know, I had my eyes closed! I suspect they tell every mom that. Jon was originally just going to stay by my head and not look at anything he didn't want to look at, but he was drafted into holding my leg for me. He got to see Ian's head in the birth canal and got a little suspicious when told it had blond hair!

Ian weighed 8 lbs 5 oz when he was born - not too shabby for 3 weeks early! He was 20 inches long. The only thing they checked him for was blood sugar, because he was early, but everything was fine (tell that to Ian - he hated those heel sticks!)

I had a 2nd degree tear and that's giving me some pain issues. But on the whole, I am very pleased with how our labor went. Mostly, I'm pleased that it's over!

We were in the hospital until Wednesday afternoon. We've been home about 24 hours now and Ian is doing very well! The first night was, of course, a challenge. He wants to be held all the time - he's quite the cuddle bug! At first, we couldn't get him to sleep in his crib. I'd feed him and we'd change his diaper, and he would start to cry the minute he was laid down. But we worked out a system and now he's sleeping peacefully.

Last night, I was up until 1:30 am, then got some sleep until 3:30; another feeding, and then another at 5:30 am, and then he slept until 10:30 am! What a great baby!

My milk has finally come in and he's sleeping longer and longer after each feeding. He learned to latch on great at the hospital and feeds like a champ. I took a little longer to get the hang of it. The second night in the hospital, I had to ask them to take him to the nursery because he kept crying and I'd tried to feed him 6x in three hours and he was still hungry. I just didn't have any milk for him yet, and I was exhausted. The nurse helped feed him with a little formula in a S-in-S feeder. She then took him to the nursery but I told her "No bottles!" I wanted them to bring him to me when he got hungry.

I woke up 4 hours later with no baby and not knowing what was going on. I am a little ashamed that I freaked out. I forced myself to take a shower before storming down to the nurses' station to demand my son. I was convinced that they had given him a bottle against my wishes! When I got out of the shower, Jon was there (thankfully!) and I cried to him. He found Ian for me and he had *not* been given a bottle; they'd given him some formula in a S-in-S feeder so that I could get some rest. While I'm still not happy that they did that - I would have rather they brought him to me and woken me up, I was worried about him losing the latch - he is still feeding very well and so I don't think that any harm was done.

Our house is a mess and the cats are confused :) We were worried about Caz and how he would react to Ian, but he did awesomely well. He sniffed disdainfully and then ignored us. I just had a belly-rubbin' session with Caz while Ian was sleeping. Looks like I'm forgiven for bringing this little screaming, stinky thing into his house! Boo hasn't accepted it yet - she just avoids Ian and I right now. She looked like E.T. when we showed up yesterday; her little head rose up on her neck as far as it would go. Wish we'd had a camera!

Speaking of cameras, here are some great pics of Ian. It has been a tiring experience but the most awesome one ever!

This is my favorite picture so far - we took this on Ian's first night in the world, while he and I were cuddling in the dark quiet room. I'm hoping to take a footie picture every Monday for a while to see how he's growing.

You'd think this was taken right after delivery but no. THAT picture will never see the light of day! :) This was taken 24 hours later.

Ian in his Raiders onesie sent to him by his Aunt Stacy.

And his Bears outfit, sent to him by Uncle Jeff and Aunt Pam

Welcome everyone!

This is going to be the blog for my new son, Ian James Spain. Our due date is 1/03/08 although we're hoping to have him sooner. The countdown to Baby Day has begun! I plan to begin the main posts with his birth story, so check back after that.