One Month Old!

On January 10, 2014 Peter turned one month old!  Like many things in my life right now, this post is woefully late.  Peter is actually 6 weeks old as I type and getting ready to get his first round of vaccinations tomorrow morning (Ouch!).  I am going to try to keep his first month straight from whats been going on in his second month, but some of this may blur together.  This is going to be long and filled with things I want to remember.  You may get bored if you are not me reading this!

Peter:

At one month you have mainly been eating, pooping and crying.  Note that I don't mention sleeping, because that has not been your favorite.  

When we left the hospital you weighed 7 lbs and 4 ounces, down from your birth weight by almost a pound.  We were told this was normal and we were also told we should expect it to take some time for you to get back up to birth weight, especially since you are breastfed.  However, you exceeded expectations big time.  When we went for your two week check-up on Christmas Eve you weighed 8 lbs 10 ounces and you had grown almost a whole inch!  In  a little more than a week you had gained almost two lbs and grown almost a whole inch!!!  Your dad and I high fived right in front of God and everyone in that office we were so excited!  Then I took you back a week later because I thought you were having some reflux issues and you weighed 10 lbs and 3 ounces! This was all big news because you had a touch of jaundice when you left the hospital and we kept having to go back for checks of your bilirubin levels.  You were eating great, but you weren't really gaining weight or having proper bodily functions.  Turns out you weren't getting hind milk which is high in fat and helps baby livers clear bilirubin out and start functioning.  Once we figured out what was wrong we learned how to correct the problem.  It wasn't easy, but the fact you had gained so much weight in a matter of days meant we had done something right (and that the lack of sleeping was not for nothing!)

Since day one you have been a great eater, great latcher, great burper. For the entire first month of your life you ate almost every two hours on the dot.  Occasionally you would eat every hour and a half or go as long as every three hours, but that was the exception not the rule.  I'll be honest, your eating schedule was very exhausting.  You would occasionally do a three hour stretch at night, but not often.  You also HATED napping.  I could sometimes get you to do a 2 hour nap during the day, but most of the time the longest you would sleep was an hour or so at a time.  You would also sleep mainly two hour stretches at night.  This led to mom being at her wits end with exhaustion!  Plus, there was a great deal of crying when you were awake that we were having a lot of trouble getting a handle on.  The weekend after you turned one month old, Mimi and Pop came to give your parents  some sleep relief.  That Friday night you slept 5 hours straight, woke up once to eat, went back to sleep quickly and then slept almost 6 hours!  It was amazing! You took great naps and then Saturday night did similar lengthy stretches.  I thought we had turned a corner and I was so grateful.  Then that Sunday night you went to sleeping, maybe 45 minutes at a times for about a week.  GRRRRR little boy.  GRRRRR.  

We have mainly put you in your crib to sleep at night and for naps (when not being held, see below).  At first this was pretty hard for me, I wanted you to sleep in our room, but now I am glad we did that. I have started letting you sleep in the pack n' play in our room or nap in the swing/bassinet downstairs, but that is an explanation for your two month post.

Speaking of Mimi and Pop, they came to stay the first week you were around town.  Your dad was off work while we were in the hospital for a week, but had to go back that next Monday.  He took off several days around Christmas and then your Grandmama and Aunt Abbey came for a week after Christmas day.  I had so much help with you at first, I can't imagine what people who don't have that kind of support do.  I was still recovering from surgery so all I did was cuddle with you, feed you and sleep.  Everyone else did everything else! Plus, we had so many people who brought us food and I had made up several casseroles, that we still have half a freezer full as I type this post and I have not cooked a meal from start to finish yet!  

Peter, you hated tummy time this month and I am guessing that doesn't change anytime soon.  You didn't take a pacifier, didn't really like your swing and in general just kind of stared into space.  We would sing to you and you would start crying.  We would try to patty cake or play peek-a-boo, you would start crying.  The one thing you seemed to really like was a rainforest vibrating chair that your Aunt Maggie gave you.  It was a lifesaver!  

You mainly wore newborn clothes and some 0-3 month.  However, it really was like you skipped over a size, because now you wear mainly 3-6 month clothing due to your length.  You have clothes coming out of my eyeballs, but if I do buy you anything I am hoping you will stay in the 3-6 month range for a while.

Peter, I am guessing that between your grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and of course, your dad and I, there are a thousand pictures of you!  You have every stuffed animal I can think of, most of the books I have heard of for kids and every conceivable form of electronic soothing device, activity mat and plush toy.  All that to say you are spoiled rotten!  We have such a time putting you down to sleep and I am convinced its because the first two weeks of your life none of your grandparents would really lay you down when you fell asleep in their arms.  Neither did I though, so I share fault on that front.  I did start to ask people to put you down, but you would have thought I was torturing people with that one.  

We took your one month pictures and I couldn't get you to prop up by the stuffed animal I wanted to measure you by, so I have several of you either laying down or sitting in the aforementioned rainforest chair!  However, we have tons of other "one month" pictures that I will have to thumb through with you one day.

Peter, you are so loved!  Frustrating at times for sure, but so loved.  I have never seen anything like your dad looking at you and to be honest, I have never felt like I would jump in front of a train for someone until I got to know you this month.  I wouldn't say either of us were immediately that way, what with surgery and just the overwhelming sense of responsibility that comes with parenthood initially, but by the end of this first month you had both of us around your fingers along with everyone else!

I can't wait to watch you grow up and I am looking forward to writing next months post bubby!

Peter James Malatesta

Peter James Malatesta was born on December 10, 2013 at 12:39 p.m.  He weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounces and was 21 inches long.  Its hard to believe that it has already been a month since the big day, because to be perfectly honest, everything is a bit of a blur.  So let me rewind.

On December 9, 2013 I went to the doctor for what would be the last time.  I was 39 weeks by the calculation of my initial due date, but when the sonographer measured my fluid level, I was more like 41 weeks.  Which was about right.  I had an ultrasound and everything looked great.  The only problem we had was that the baby was estimated to be almost 10 pounds!  I knew what that was going to mean and I cried the minute the woman said it.  She started to worry that she had upset me and was trying to tell me that was good news.  Peter was a big, healthy boy!  However, I managed to squeak out that I did not want to deliver a 10 pound baby like some woman on the discovery channel before being quickly escorted from the room.

The real reason I was upset was because I knew my doctor did not want me to deliver the baby vaginally (sorry everybody, there is no other way to say that) if he was estimated over 9 pounds and I had not made a lot of movement on the dilation/effacement front (again, sorry).  Jake and I went upstairs and I was bracing myself for a fight.  I wanted to deliver the baby and not have a C-section.  However, when I got checked there had been absolutely no movement and it turns out, I had been given an overestimation of change the last two times I had been to the doctor.  I was miffed.  He took us into his office and we had a good discussion.

Let me stop here and say that I love my doctor.  I trust him.  I also have worked on several cases and studied many lawsuits involving OBGYNs.  I knew the stats.  He quickly advised I needed to have this baby ASAP.  In fact, he said if I had not had lunch, he would have taken him that afternoon.  I knew why he was advising us to have the section.  I knew that more "granola" people would have shouted him down that the "baby is too big" and the "no change" in d/e reasons were not good enough to not try to deliver Peter myself.  My doctor fully supported me trying to deliver Peter, but he advised us that he just did not see that happening.  He thought the most likely scenario was that I would be induced, labor for a long time and still have to have the c-section.  After talking through it and what the surgery would mean for me recovery wise and with future pregnancies, Jake and I decided to do it.

Looking back I am so glad we did, but I'll get to that.

After the doctor's visit, I was pretty upset.  We made calls to our families to let them know we had scheduled Peter's birth for the next day.  In an awful twist, Jake's dad was on a plane to New York (we had no idea) thankfully with a layover in Atlanta, so when we got him on the phone he had to turn around and come back for the big day.  Everybody was excited.  I thought I was going to throw up.  I made a few more calls and then we decided to go out for a last meal.  We wanted to take a picture at the restaurant, but did not. However, for your viewing entertainment, please find the only solo picture of me pregnant taken the night before the big day.  I say solo, but Yazoo is also pictured:)

I had told my doctor that I needed some anxiety meds and he gave me a prescription so I actually slept great that night!  I woke up the next day and was very calm.  Possibly a hangover from the meds taken the night before, but who knows.  Jake was actually much, much. much more nervous than I was at dinner the night before and that morning.  We headed to the hospital about 9:30 with a scheduled go time of noon.  When we arrived, it was all very weird.  I had seen myself coming in the hospital doors panting and almost ready to pop, like in a movie.  Instead we waited in the waiting room for about 30 minutes, filled out some paperwork at registration, saw my parents and then walked back to pre-op.

Now I had never been in the hospital before.  Never broke an arm or had stitches.  Nothing.  So my calm demeanor started to deteriorate as things became more real.  They did blood work, an IV, a catheter and then we waited.  I did a lot of crying and Jake made a lot of bad jokes in an effort to get me laughing.  Honestly, the worst part of the actual prep or procedure itself is the catheter.  The spinal was nothing.  Once I was wheeled back and got the numbing juice I didn't feel a thing. None of the dreaded pulling or pushing.  However, the one thing about the section I did not like was that when they pulled Peter out the spinal got pushed up and I could not swallow.  Scared me to death.

Once Peter was out and I knew he was okay, I completely spaced.  I wish I could say the heavens opened up and I was consumed with love for my child, but the truth is, I really don't remember much about seeing Peter.  I remember being very worried and asking about him.  I remember Jake teary eyed.  I remember the doctor showing him to me and that's about it.  We actually have a lot of pictures and I don't remember any of them.  Peter supposedly peed on me and I do not remember.  What I remember most after the delivery was freaking out about not being able to swallow and wishing the doctor would hurry up.

After they wheeled Peter to the nursery, the anesthesiologist started pushing Demerol and everything went even more hazy.  I don't remember the rest of the day.  I vaguely remember skin to skin with Peter and nursing him for the first time.  I kind of remember seeing my parents and Jake's parents.  That's it.  The next real thing I remember is the next morning when the night nurse woke me up to take the dreaded catheter out and to force me to go to the bathroom.

When I was much more lucid I found out that the umbilical cord had been wrapped around Peter's neck and that his head was not positioned correctly.  In fact, my doctor told me that his head was at such an angle that he very likely could have choked if I had tried to deliver him and if my doctor had allowed it once he realized the cord was wrapped around him.  So the "too big" section was actually a big blessing!

All in all, I don't regret the section.  Its not what I wanted, it was a very hard recovery, but it was what was best for Peter.

When I get a minute, I am going to do a whole other post on Peter's first month, newborn pictures and my initial thoughts on motherhood.  Spoiler alert:  breastfeeding is the hardest thing I have ever done.