Boo!!!!!!!!!!

Talon was looking a little under the weather today, should I take him to the ER?

Lack of Naps, oi!

Yesterday was a mess! The Lions won, the Steelers lost to the Bengals, and my child would not take a nap to save his life! He would fall asleep fine only to wake up 10 minutes later as if awoken by a night terror. This would happen whether we let him sleep in our arms or in his crib, I seriously think he was having nightmares.

Today seems to be better already as he's down for his 2nd nap already today and it's only noon and his sleep seems to be more restful. YAY! Daddy has duty today so we're home alone, maybe he wants to give mommy a small break. Going to walk to walmart with him in the moby when he wakes up.

Jumperoo!

So we've been having issues with the jumperoo that I bought Talon. His feet wouldn't reach the floor and not just by a little - by A LOT! I was kind of put off by this because he's not a short baby length wise. We had it on the lowest setting and still couldn't reach.

Well I made Ryan look at it again today and it seems the little straps were twisted up, once they were untwisted he can ALMOST reach. Makes me much happier knowing he doesn't have to wait another 4 months to jump in it lol. We put a towel under his feet folded up and he was able to jump! He jumped for about 30 minutes - yay!

WoW!

Today was a day for milestones! He's going through a growth spurt so he's sleeping alot but he rolled over from belly to back 4 times in a row! He also has been enjoying time on his back (that has NEVER happened) and he's been coo'ing at his little activity mat toy ring thing! OH MY! It has been a WONDERFUL day!

Exhausting Night!

Yesterday was a GREAT day considering Ryan had duty so he was unable to come home at all until today. Talon was great for mommy. Not many fussy fits, played and laughed with me most of the day, went down for naps easily, even went down for the night easier than usual at 9:30pm. The thing is... Ever since we have been giving him Zantac, he has been sleeping long stretches at night - usually going a good 5 or 6 hours, then waking up for 30mins to eat (an hour max) and then going back to bed for another 2 to 3 hours, up for 1 more, then another nap for an hour. Last night was DIFFERENT and I had 0 help as I usually have Ryan here to rotate with me or at least take one of the feedings so I can pump. Talon slept from 9:30pm til 2am - I was an idiot and went to sleep at 11pm instead of 9:30pm like I should have. He was awake from 2 til 3:30am then went back to sleep... til 4:30am! Took me 45 mins to get him back to sleep after feeding him (yes he was hungry AGAIN)and he woke up again around 7am. This was very unlike him and made for a very groggy mommy come 7am when he was ready to start the day!

Could it have been a growth spurt at 2 months old? I dunno, he wasn't extremely cranky - just HUNGRY - from 2am til now (3pm) he's downed a total of almost 20 oz and we still have 7 hours approximately til he goes to bed for the night! He's definitely going to hit the 30 oz mark today or exceed it.

The Flower Preserve

Yesterday Ryan and I took Talon to the park. There were far too many kids on the playground so we went to the other side and noticed it was a beautiful flower preserve. I decided that I haven't been in enough pictures with my son since he was born because I've been insecure about my weight but he needs memorable photos of this age with me so we took some shots with the flowers. I have to give him props - usually Talon HATES his carseat and while it didn't last the whole trip he was at least amiable to it the entire way there. It was to the point that I figured he fell asleep and I was going to have to wake a sleeping baby for pictures... I was wrong. We pulled into our parking space, got out of the car, I looked in the window in the backseat and he's just glancing up at me smiling. It was amazing. Here are some of the pictures we took.





We almost lost a shoe because Ryan wasn't very observant when he was taking pictures lol. We didn't notice the shoe missing until we looked at the pictures when Ryan took Tal out of the moby to take some shots with the two of them together. We had to backtrack to find it but we found it! The shoe has been saved!

On the way home Talon decided to go from amiable with the carseat to kill on sight! Oh my goodness, you'd think we were stabbing him the way he was screaming. We ended up having to pull into a parking lot and park so I could get out and hold him for a few minutes before putting him back in the seat. He was much better after that, I don't know if he thought we'd abandoned him or if he was uncomfortable the way he was in the seat, or if he was just being Talon the Terror. All was fixed though and he was better until we got home. He was REALLY tired by that time but every time he'd doze off, we'd put him in his crib and he'd be up 10 minutes later. At about 9pm, Ryan and I decided to give him his colic calm dose and take a shower with him. Showering with a baby was actually easier than bathing him in his tub! He doesn't like his tub at all so he's squirmy squirm squirm but in my arms chest to chest with his back to the stream of water, he LOVED it. I think we found a new routine calming method.

After the shower he ate and fell asleep, was around 10pm. It is now 10am and he has only woken up once (at 5:30am) for his zantac dose and feeding. He was up for an hour fussing until I realized he wasn't getting much of his milk out of the bottle although he was sucking alot so I bit the hole in the nipple bigger and voila - he chugged it down, burped, and fell right back asleep at 6:45am. If only I'd have thought about biting a bigger hole 30 minutes earlier. He's still sleeping! :) He should be well rested for our day of football games.

We went exploring!

Talon and I were really excited that daddy was home early today! That's always a nice surprise. They played for a bit and then Tal got sleepy so Ryan laid him in his crib and he laid in bed and they both napped for quite a bit til Talon's zantac dose wore off mid nap - his dose has been wearing off about an hour early each dose now, I think he may be outgrowing it so we'll speak with the pediatrician about that next visit. I gave him his dose but he was already in so much pain that he wouldn't eat and he couldn't stop crying so I strapped on the moby and put him in it in the joey tie and we went on a hike!

Our apartment complex is bordered on one side by one of those electric fence highways? We didn't have them in Florida that I can remember but they're all over the place up here. Like this but with more foliage and tall grass instead of cactii and desert lol.

I've never went past the 2 poles that border our apartment complex but today we hiked a long trail that people have made with 4-wheelers. Twas about a mile long so 2 miles round trip! It was beautiful - all the wild flowers were in bloom. I didn't bring my camera with me but I will next time! The dogs had a blast and so did Talon - I think we'll make it a daily ritual. After our hike we fed the geese and ducks that hang out in the pond right outside our back door and then we asked Ryan if he'd like to come hike with us some more since it was so nice out and he agreed... we didn't make it too far before Talon passed out in the moby though so we headed home and put Talon down for the rest of his nap that his reflux had so rudely interrupted.

When he woke up we played a bit on his mat and tried out his new jumperoo which is a bit too tall for him yet so we'll have to wait a while before we give that another shot. Then Ryan strapped on the moby and fed Talon while he played his computer game lol. I had to share the pic - not only women can wear their babies! :)


That was our day in a nutshell. Hope to get some good hike pictures tomorrow!

Poor Baby

So we think Talon might be teething. He's been mighty drooly lately and last night as we were bathing him he didn't want anything to do with the bath and so we got his demon side. While he was crying, my husband showed me his bottom row gumline and sure enough I can see 2 white nubs. Now I don't know if they're teeth coming through or if they are those gum blisters people talk about babies getting from bottle feeding but it looks like teefers to me.

He's having a hard time getting comfortable to sleep now so we resorted to some tylenol and mister vacuum cleaner and some colic calm. Those 3 things have calmed him down but he's not dozing off like he should be and man his eyes are so red from being sleepy. He's calm in daddy's arms right now but he really needs to sleep. Sleep my love!

Earlier today we tried out the joey tie with the moby wrap and he enjoyed it. We took several walks around the apartment complex until it got too cold. I hope his baby banz come in tomorrow so we can walk all day when the sun is bright and shiny! Here's a shot of Talon in the joey hold with the moby... Don't mind my fat butt in the background - we'll pretend I'm not even there :). Oh, speaking of fat butt... I ordered the 30 day shred last night to attempt during naps. Can't wait til it comes in and I hope I can stick with it!

Introduction

Originally due on July 30th, our little bundle as his daddy likes to call him decided to arrive a little early (with no complaints from me) on Wednesday, July 22nd at 3:48pm in an emergency c-section after 11 hours of labor with not much progress. I have always been somewhat of a hard person when it comes to emotions but when I heard the very first cry from my son, I couldn't hold back, I cried. Just listen to him - even his CRY is perfect!

We had to stay in the hospital until Saturday due to recovery from the c-section. I probably could have done with a few more days in the hospital with as slow as that recovery actually was! Nobody told me c-section recoveries were so painful, and I was expected to take care of a newborn as well? All I can say is thank God that I have a helpful and absolutely wonderful husband. He only left our side for a total of 4 hours or so the whole 3 days in the hospital, and that was to do things for US! I was breastfeeding but Talon would fall asleep every time he fed so he wasn't getting much nutrition, by the 3rd day we decided to supplement with formula.

So we finally got to take our little man home! Besides the everlasting pain of the c-section, everything else was cake. Frequent diaper changes were a breeze and he slept about 20-22 hours out of every day! Loved his swing that my dad had bought him before he was born. This whole parenting thing was going to be a piece of cake. We were ecstatic that we could spend a day together as our own little unit before my family arrived so that we could get to know eachother without all the hustle and bustle that visitors usually means. Breastfeeding was still not really working out for us, I had to get shields to help with the latch and it would take both Ryan and I to get him to eat plus he was still falling asleep midmeal and I'd have to wake him up several times to remind him to keep eating.

My grandparents arrived the next day and my dad, sister, niece, and mother arrived on Monday. The whole week was bustling with activity which Talon slept through the majority of. The little guy was impossible to wake up unless he was absolutely ready to be awake. Even being passed from family member to family member or being taken with us out to loud restaurants in his carseat would not wake him. He wasn't sleeping through the night but he was sleeping long stretches that first week and so we were still under the impression life would be easy with this little guy. Breastfeeding was just not working out for us but my sister brought me a Medela Pump-In-Style so I started pumping whenever we had to supplement so that I wouldn't be engorged but finally I decided to just feed expressed milk. It was just too stressful for me to not be able to provide for my son naturally and we weren't getting that "bond" that everyone kept talking about so I figured expressed was the next best thing. I'm still expressing to this day and feeding 100% breast milk... in a bottle.



Little man's second week of life wasn't much more difficult. He was sleeping a little less but still barely cried at all. Towards the end of that second week we started to see what people referred to as the "witching hours." Ouch, we were taken aback. His witching hours only lasted from about 6:30pm til 9pm so I didn't think much of it. Everything pointed to normal as it seemed this was the perfect time for the unexplained fussiness to ensue. I was starting to feel a lot better from my c-section and didn't have to take so many pain pills to get through the day so all in all it was a happy week with the normal bumps. Nothing couldprepare us for what came next...

Remember that cry that was so perfect to my ears that very first day? Well, I guess he decided it was high time I heard more of it. Towards the middle of week 3, my little angel decided he wanted to cry night and day, every waking hour. The only thing that would make him stop crying was the vacuum cleaner. He was running elevated temperatures (turned out to be his normal body temp) in the 99 degree zone but never a fever. I didn't know what was going on with him. We ran the vacuum lots during that week but we didn't take him to the pediatrician because we just figured they'd tell us, "Hey guess what? Babies cry! Welcome to parenthood." Mr. Hoover - my vacuum cleaner - and I became very good buddies during that week and the next few weeks that followed. Some nights we had to run the vacuum for 2 hours at a time just so we could get a little bit of sleep because little Talon would only sleep with the vacuum on.


We took him to the pediatrician in the middle of week 4 because his "elevated temperature" never went away (duh, he still has a 99 degree temperature now that doesn't go away,) and I just could not fathom that any baby could cry this much. I knew he just HAD to be in pain to cry this much so I wanted them to check his ears for any type of infection and his mouth for any type of thrush to make sure he wasn't in pain. The pediatrician checked him over and she said what we had on our hands was just a colic baby. She said he obviously wasn't in any pain because he would quiet down when he heard the vacuum running. She told us we were doing everything right and we should expect to see him improve by 12 weeks of age (*GASP* 12 WEEKS?!.)

We dealt with the colic for the next couple weeks one day at a time. We had many sleepless nights and some nights we even had to sleep in the living room on the futon with the baby monitor because the vacuum cleaner was just not something WE could sleep through and it was still the only way little boy would get any sleep. I heard screaming in my ears even when he was sleeping because it was just something I was hearing day in and day out and it was a tinnitus of sorts. When my husband got home from work every day I would hand him the baby and dash out the door to just get away; I was going insane. At the end of week 5, beginning of week 6, while I was browsing colic support group forums with the vacuum going on behind me and the baby sleeping on my chest in his moby wrap (did I mention we bought every single thing we could find to help with colic?!) I stumbled across a post that mentioned a gripe water called colic calm. I decided to try it out since it had some different ingredients than the other gripe waters we had tried. It came in a few days later and we tried and seriously he stopped crying while the dosing syringe was still in his mouth. It helped ALOT (enough so that I decided to start telling EVERYONE I knew with babies about it - I'm even going to give it at baby showers as a gift) and the thing is, this gripe water was supposed to help with colic based on the idea that part of the colic is caused by some sort of digestion issue. Since the gripe water worked so well, I decided to try a different route.


The middle of week 6, I started giving my son a formula instead of breast milk (but I kept pumping in case it wasn't the milk.) I chose a formula that did not have cow's milk protein in it to see if maybe his colic was due to a milk sensetivity. Surprisingly, it worked a little bit. I didn't have to give as many doses a day of the colic calm but I was still having to use it and I was almost out. I ordered more but I ended up running out a couple days before my next order came in (I waited too late to reorder, won't make that mistake again!) and I had a few theories as to what was really going on with my son (milk sensitivity or acid reflux) so I called and got an appointment to see the pediatrician the beginning of the following week. Week 6 we had alot less colic episodes thanks to the colic calm and the formula so we were able to take some "professional" looking pictures at home on our futon with some sheets and some cheap props bought at Walmart. They came out really well, we were really surprised and we've decided we won't be getting professional shots of him at 6 months old either. We're just going to do them ourselves.


Week 7 we saw the pediatrician. It was a different pediatrician at the clinic than the original one we saw and this one diagnosed little Talon with acid reflux (I WAS RIGHT!) but told me to go back to breast milk or cow's milk formula because he didn't think it was a milk sensitivity. He prescribed Zantac twice a day. We gave Talon his first dose when we got home and a few hours later we had results! The colic has been gone ever since. Now we have a baby that only cries when he is hungry, or needs a diaper change, or has gas.... but not every waking minute. It's wonderful! We still give the colic calm when he has gas though and it works wonderfully still. I'm so glad I can finally enjoy my little guy and I now have energy to take care of him during the day because he's sleeping so much better at night. I'm glad I stuck to my guns and went back to the Dr and didn't just take the first diagnosis of "colic" at face value or I'd still be dealing with a baby that is in excrutiating pain from the reflux.


Now you have our background information! Time for blogging to commence.