Chunky Monkey

Hayden turned 2 months old yesterday. Yeah, you heard me right. I said months not weeks. The next thing I know she is going to be 20. It is crazy to me how the first few weeks just creep by and then suddenly time starts going at warp speed. Just about the time I decide that I start manage to keep myself busy enough to consider the virtues of being a SAHM, I will be heading back to work.

At 2 months Hayden is truly the sweetest, easiest baby ever. I kept waiting for sky to fall and the fussiness to begin, but that never happened. She rarely cries. She is sleeps easily. She was most happy to sleep in her crib rather than her pack'n'play when I decided at 3 weeks that I would rather not be awakened by strange baby noises all night long. Falling asleep is never a big production. She even tends to sleep in a 6-8 hour stretch followed by a shorter stretch which makes her mommy most happy and reasonably rested. When she is awake she is happy to just sit and watch the commotion of our household. Or she can hang out under her play gym batting at toys provided that her older sister doesn't steal them. Best of all in the past week she has started flashing the loveliest smiles and uttering the most adorable baby coos ever.

All three of us are quite taken with her. She is such a sweet baby that I almost feel guilty that she requires so little work. If she had been my first baby I would have had the most restful maternity leave possible and sworn that I would have a dozen more just like her. Of course, I had Jillian first who manages to fill any leisurely time I might have had these past few months and reminds me why two babies are plenty. Luckily her passion and enthusiasm for life remind me why colicky babies who turn into high energy toddlers are wonderful too.

We took Hayden in for her 2 month appointment this afternoon. As we suspected she is a very big girl (something that sounds much better at 2 months of age than it would in her teenaged years). According to Dr. M she earns an A for health and here are her stats:

Height: 23" (95th percentile)
Weight: 13 lbs 1 oz (95th percentile)
Head: 16" (100th percentile)

She is bigger than her sister who was closer to the 50-75th percentile range for height and weight. Despite having a large head, Jillian actually beat her there with a head circumference of 16.25". Yeah...that girls head was crazy big...still is. I can't say that I am too disappointed by having 2 c sections with these kinds of head measurements.

Now here is something that is really crazy. The other week when I was cleaning out our office/craft room, I ran across this picture of Jeramy's dad with Jeramy.

Compare that to Jeramy with Hayden.

The resemblance between Jeramy and his dad and baby Jeramy and Hayden is so striking that I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference if it weren't for the age of the photos.

Sisters

I must admit that I was pretty damn excited when I learned that I would be having two girls. Sure a boy would have been great too. But deep down, I think that I really longed for two girls. My sister and I are two and a half years apart and have always been close. Growing up we were very different children. As toddlers/preschoolers I was bossy and demanding while Jaime was quiet and compliant. In school I was a studious bookworm whereas she was social and athletic. We still maintain many of these differences as adults, but they somehow seem less significant now. I always know that I have her to talk with and confide in no matter what, and she always gets where I am coming from. I can't help but want the same for my two girls.

One of the big questions we get these days is whether Jillian likes her little sister. So far the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Within an hour of arriving home from the hospital, Jillian picked up the word "baby". Since then it has been baby this and baby that, and this past week she has begun saying "sissy". If she hears that baby cry in the morning, she'll say baby until we go pick her up. If Hayden is still asleep in her crib and Jeramy lets Jillian into our bedroom in the morning (he lets me sleep in) she will run to the pack and play looking for the baby. She likes to hold Hayden (with our help of course), and as you probably guessed from the last post pushing her in the baby stroller was a huge hit. She loves pushing her in the swing despite our protests. For the most part she touches Hayden gently, which cannot be said for how she touches the dog. Poor Cujo.

Of course it is easy to love somebody so helpless and cute. Especially when she is a calm baby who does not demand too much of our attention. We'll see how much she likes he sister when she begins stealing her toys.

This isn't to say that the arrival of Hayden has had no negative impacts on Jillian. She has demanded our constant attention and tantrums have been frequent. However, I can't quite separate out how much of this is due to her age and how much is due to her sister. I'm sure it is a combination of both, and I'm sure things will get better over time. Everybody I have met with two under two tells me that the first year is the hardest. Only 10.5 months left...

My Parenting Philosophy

It seems like I am often posting pictures of my children doing things that are forbidden in all of the parenting rule books...like letting my 20 month old push my 6 week old in her baby stroller. Or pictures of Jillian (but one day Hayden too) screaming for falling off of something or getting stuck somewhere. I don't know why but I find the crying pictures kind of funny and keep the camera handy so that I can catch those memories before helping my toddler out. As a bonus, Jillian is a fearless child who provides me with ample opportunity for such pictures.

It is not only that I find such pictures funny. But they are also reflect my children learning about life.

In general, I'd say that my parenting philosophy is to avoid intervening and letting my children learn about the world themselves. If I see Jillian climbing on something that she may fall from, I let her do it provided that she would not end up seriously hurt. The rules that I choose to enforce are few at this point and basically limited to biting, pinching and hitting and anything that might result in injury like leaning over the banister above the stairs. If she wants to stand on the couch, fine. If she wants to sit in the window sill, fine. If she wants to pick at her food, whatever. She cannot understand logic at this point, so why bother trying to reason with her on why she should not do those things. My motto is to pick my battles and let her learn through her own experiences. Sure the rules will change more as she gets older, but I hope my general philosophy will remain the same. It seems like there are so many overprotective, helicopter parents out there hovering around their children in an effort to make their lives as pain free as possible. And while that really isn't a big deal when we are talking about learning to climb stairs, it does become a problem when your teenager succumbs to peer pressure to use drugs because they never learned to think for themselves.

I think my relaxed parenting style comes from my mom. My sister and I could punching each other in the middle of the living room, and her only response was to ask us to take it into another room. Ultimately, we had to learn to work things out on our own rather than having our parent do that for us. And really life does not come with some sort of fairness referee which is the role so many parents end up playing. Sometimes you wind up with a jerk for a boss or a co-worker, and you have to figure out how to cope with that. And sometimes life tosses situations that are unfair, and you have to deal with that. You can't go running to mommy or daddy in those situations, although many people in essence do by blaming everybody around them but themselves. I hope my children grow up learning that you cannot change anybody but yourself.

Of course my mom was also unfazed by finding a peanut butter sandwich stuffed in the VCR. Maybe I'm not quite that relaxed...

Time to Get Caught Up

One of my goals in the next week of so is to try and get caught up with my blog posts. There has been so much going on, and it is difficult to get online when I am at home given the demands of Jillian, Hayden and even Jeramy. When I am lucky enough to get a little down time I either clean, take a nap or do something relaxing like knitting. I don't want to neglect my blog though. Besides connecting with people, it is how I keep track of important memories.

First of all, Hayden passed her sweat test for cystic fibrosis, so we can set that worry aside. Most likely she failed the initial screen because she is a healthy carrier like Jeramy. She may need to take that into consideration should she decide to have children (when she is much much older thankyouverymuch!), but otherwise everything is just fine.

Overall, I'd say that things are going very well. The postpartum blues and anxiety have passed, and life has resumed its usual busy pace. We've been getting out to see friends, I've been taking both girls to a toddler play time at the local community center, I have tried to keep up on my hobbies like knitting and reading even if it is just a few minutes during the day, and between getting a little more sleep and adjusting to my ever-interrupted sleep pattern I am feel a little more alert during the day. I even managed to back-up all of our photos on CDs...yes, I do lead an exciting life. 95% of the time things go perfectly smoothly. Of course it is the other 5% of the time that stand out in my mind and usually those times involve Jillian's temper tantrums, Jillian's night terrors, diaper blow-outs, teething, endless whining, and projectile vomiting. Good times really.

Jillian just turned 20 months. It is simultaneously a completely adorable and entirely frustrating age. Her language skills have simply taken off, and yet we cannot understand everything that she is trying to tell us. Until last week she had gone through a phase of saying "yeah" and "thank you" to everything which was quite wonderful. But then she learned the word "no" which she says with both head shaking and attitude just to make sure you know that she means it. Daily events which used to go smoothly such as bedtime and diaper changes are now accompanied by screaming and flailing. And if either Jeramy or I For the most part my approach is to ignore the tantrums and recognize the good behaviors (and there is still plenty of good as she is pretty much the cutest and funniest kid on the planet). We have also been adhering to a more stringent sleep schedule than we have in the past mostly due to night terrors which almost always strike when she is the least bit sleep deprived. I find all of this exhausting, and I find it difficult to keep my temper at times more often than I care to admit. I try to keep reminding myself that I am the adult in this relationship and this phase is necessary as she learns independence and will pass.

Luckily all of this is offset by the fun times. She has become quite the little helper from unloading the dishes (gotta pull those knives out quick before she gets to them) to putting diapers in the diaper pail (as long as they aren't new ones) to putting her books away. She can follow simple instructions like when I hand her a clean diaper and tell her to take it to daddy. She also loves Hayden. She loves to hold her (with help of course), push her swing, lay under the activity gum with her, and give her hugs and kisses. She is surprisingly gentle, and given that she loves Cujo but spends much time biting and pinching him that is a little astonishing. We can only hope that continues.

Hayden is growing by leaps and bounds at 6 weeks. She continues to be a relatively content baby and her fussing is more like restlessness and very minor compared to my experience with Jillian. She sleeps the majority of the day with one or two awake periods of a few hours sprinkled in. At night she has slowly been going from waking every three hours to giving me one longer stretch of sleep at the beginning of the night. Last night she slept from 10pm - 4am and then from 4:30am - 7:30am. If this trend continues that would be wonderful, but I've experienced baby sleep regression enough to know not to count on that and simply enjoy it while it lasts. At about three weeks I moved her from the pack and play in our room to her crib. Sleeping newborns are just too noisy for me, and I sleep better when she is at a distance. Of course a newborn who sleeps unswaddled in her crib is a foreign concept to me as Jillian slept in her swing with it swinging all night long, swaddled, with a pacifier and with white noise playing. Quite frankly this is too easy, and thank God for that because with a toddler I think I would go insane if I had another colicky baby.

I'll post more soon about our trip to Mt. Rainier, the impending arrival of a new cousin and fun outdoors. For now I'll leave you with a couple of pictures to show how the girls have grown.

Getting Better

In general, I think things are getting better on the two under two front. Despite a case of explosive diarrhea over the past few days, Jillian has been in good spirits and a little more willing to play on her own rather than with and on me. She has also been getting better sleep during the day and at night, which has cut down on the night terrors she tends to have with overly tired.

Hayden continues to prove herself the opposite of Jillian in terms of newborn behavior. Jillian never napped by herself for more than 15 minutes at this age, and had to be swaddled in the swing at full speed with white noise and a pacifier to sleep for a few hours. Hayden does the same sleeping in the crib with none of those interventions. For the most part she falls back to sleep at night right after feeding, and Jeramy wakes up with the girls in the morning letting me get a couple extra hours of sleep. I do get kind of grumpy at times though about any husband or dog related sleep disruptions, so I wouldn't say that I'm in good spirits all of the time. But it is getting better, and I have a good supply of caffeine on hand for when it is not better.

If anything Hayden's tendency to sleep all the time almost worries me. She is awake for feedings, most diaper changes, and then maybe two couple hour stretches during the day. I'd describe her as a lump at this point. Jillian was a surprisingly strong newborn. Her legs especially. I have a picture of her at two months old standing on the ground using only my finger as support. I'm sure Hayden is probably just fine, but it sure is a shock after Jillian.

In other Hayden news, it seems that she failed her routine newborn screening for cystic fibrosis. We are not overly worried about at this point for a couple of reasons. One, only a fraction of babies who fail the screening ultimately turn out to have CF. And second, both Jeramy and I were tested to see if we are carriers of CF by our RE. Jeramy who has a family history of CF (his cousin's son has it) is a carrier, but my test came back negative. Now that doesn't mean that CF is an impossibility as I could be a carrier of one of the rarer mutations that are not covered by that test, but it does greatly reduce the chances of me being a carrier. CF is recessive, so both Jeramy and I would need to be carriers to pass it along, and even if both parents are positive the chance of transmitting it is 25%. So all this means that we have to take Hayden in for the more accurate sweat test next week. Most likely, Hayden failed the newborn screen because she is a healthy carrier of CF like Jeramy. But I do admit that I'll feel better once we rule out her having CF completely.

Oh and have I mentioned that Jillian is all about her little sister? She loves to push her swing saying "weeeee" despite all of our discouragement. She also climbs up in our laps whenever we are holding or feeding her, and especially likes it when we let her "hold" her. For the most part she is very gentle with her although I dare not leave them along together. If I do "this little piggy" to Jillian she does Hayden's piggies at the same time, and she also spends much time pointing out all of her sister's facial features to me. These heart warming moments are important in offsetting the heart breaking moments when everybody in the house (myself included) is crying at once.

Well my afternoon break (Jeramy has Jillian and grandma has Hayden) is almost over. Hopefully I can report back next week with more positive news. Like a little longer stretch of sleep or in a few more weeks maybe even a smile.

Drive By Post

Even with a baby who fusses very little (still waiting for all hell to break loose) caring for a newborn and toddler is hard. Have I mentioned that I really hate sleeping in 1 to 3 hour stretches. Actually, I take that back. The 3 hour stretches are almost luxurious. The toddler makes it hard to catch a break though. Since we got home from the hospital, Jillian has had problems on and off with teething. First it was her last one year old molar causing pain and fever, and now her first eye tooth seems to be bothering her. Between her meltdowns and mine, our household is an emotional wreck at times.

I know it will get better. I know this blah feeling I have will eventually go away. I know that one day she'll grow bigger, sleep longer and learn the difference between night and day. One day she'll start hitting all those milestones that make me so happy. Smiling, laughing, sitting, crawling, walking. But man oh man, do the days move by slowly right now. And the nights can be even slower. Of course in a few months I will look back longingly and wonder how my maternity leave flew by so quickly. I wish knowing this would somehow make me handle this new baby stage better. *sigh*

I did promise pictures though, and I can deliver. We had our photographer, Keren Fenton, on hand for before and after delivery to capture some of those precious moments.

Hayden's Birth Story

Nearly two weeks later, I am finally feeling human enough to turn on my laptop and write up Hayden's birth story. Granted I am doing it one handed with a newborn taking up the other arm. And it will probably be done over several days. But progress is progress, and my standards for accomplishment are low these days.

As planned, Tuesday the 27th arrived. I tried to sleep one last night with little success. I ceased eating and drinking at midnight as instructed. At 5am, my MIL arrived and we left the house full of expectation. Once at the hospital we went to triage where we discovered my blood pressure was high. Like 150-something over 100-something. It had been fine 4 days before. Urine showed no proteins. Blood work was ran and after the platelets count came back fine we moved forward with the c section.

Next up was the spinal block. I really hadn't thought much about the spinal ahead of time. Last time my epidural had been easy and effective. Unfortunately for me that was not the case with the spinal. For whatever reason I was a difficult case and the anesthesiologist had to try three times before getting it to work. The final (successful) time an electrical shock went down my leg so horrible that I cried out in pain. Poor Jeramy was sitting outside and could hear all the commotion but did not know what was going on. Luckily numbness kicked in soon after the shocks, and we were finally ready to go.

After that things moved pretty quickly. Jeramy came in. Dr. C got to work. Several minutes later Hayden entered the world screaming heartily and everybody in the room declared her to be a big girl. After she was cleaned up Jeramy brought her over for me to take a look. Lots of dark hair...more than Jillian had and darker. I think she looks a whole lot like her daddy's baby photos.

Soon afterward Dr. C told me that the blood work showed that my kidney and liver functions were impaired, which coupled with the high blood pressure indicated preeclampsia with HELLP syndrome. Considering that I had been fine when checked just days earlier, it seems that my c section was perfectly timed. Unfortunately this also meant that I had to be put on magnesium for the next twenty-four hours. Those familiar with that drug will understand exactly how much that sucked. It is a central nervous system depressant, and I have never been so horribly groggy and fuzzy in my life.

I was finally taken off of the mag by early Wednesday afternoon and began moving around. Dr. C kept me in the hospital until after office hours on Thursday to monitor my blood work. Since it was headed back to normal ranges, she released us and we got home late Thursday evening.

Hayden has been a very easy baby so far. She seems to be the opposite of her sister who from day one was very alert, did not sleep well and had tummy issues. Hayden, on the other hand, pretty much eats and sleeps. I should be enjoying this, but instead I am constantly on edge waiting for colicky behavior to set in.

Jillian has handled the transition fairly well. She picked up the word baby within an hour and usually treats Hayden with unexpected caution for an 18 month old. What has actually been tougher has been her teething. Within a couple days of arriving home Jillian developed a fever, began drooling endlessly, chewed her pacifier and became inconsolably fussy as her 4th molar started breaking through her gum. No amount of tylenol or teething tablets or orajel or ice seemed to make things better. She has seemed to be on the mend over the past few days, but will still sometimes meltdown for what appears to be teeth related reasons.

I have spent my time trying to feel normal again. Rather than tears, anxiety and a general blah feeling seems to accompany the hormonal craziness and sleep deprivation I experience after giving birth. Honestly I hate it, and I do not feel that I handle it well. Now that I am beginning to get out a little more and resume normal activities, I am finally starting to feel like I'm shaking those feelings. I think I am getting back to speed a little more quickly this time than last thankfully.

I've got lots of pictures to post, and I'll get them up as soon as I manage to get them downloaded from the camera.