Madelyn in the Morning

Ok ya'll I have been trying for a couple weeks to figure out how to post video clips. I finally did it!! I was so excited to catch Madelyn smiling and talking I wanted to share it with everyone. Now that I have this skill added to my blogging abilities expect a bunch more!! Enjoy!!

Live and learn

It has been a couple weeks since my last post, things have changed with our little Madelyn. She has now started to be awake more and wanting to interact. This has decreased my time to check email and blog. She is doing great, almost weighing in at 10 pounds. I think we are about done stretching her into the newborn onesies that we do not want to actually let go of yet! We also are about to consider moving up to size one diapers! She is getting so big! I know, I know many babies are born this big, but I sure enjoy the fact that she is soooo small.

Next week brings a whole new set of learning experiences as I go back to work. I am sad to leave her, but also looking forward to getting back to a somewhat routine life. I love my job and know that God gave me the gift to be able to help people and their animals. This is the only comfort that allows me to go back to my job and know I am doing the right thing.

We did have one episode this week where Madelyn got very congested and started spitting up a lot. So far she rarely spits up so this was quite different! She woke up Friday morning and did not want to eat. Being a new mom....I panicked, cried, called my mother, and called the doctor's office. The nurse told me it was likely all mucous and to get a humidifier, aspirate her nose/throat, and elevate the bed. Of course I knew mucous makes the tummy upset, but when your little baby is not acting right everything I knew went out the window! I am happy to report that today (Saturday) seems like a much better day. She is not as ''mucousy." I am not even sure if that is a word, but it is my blog and I can make these things up, you moms know what I mean. What a bad mom, I should have known they sell those humidifiers and humidity level monitors for a reason. Live and learn. We are headed to a wedding today with Maddy so we will see how that goes!

Here are some updated pictures of our little princess. Now these first two are what she does when I try to take a cute picture! The slower shutter speed of a digital makes me miss the smile and the flash catches this pic. Big eyes!!




Below are pictures of another learning experience where I thought she would do her five-hour "nap" after her midnight feeding. So I stayed up and got stuff done around the house until midnight. I went to wake her up to eat (so I could then go to bed and sleep 5 hours). Boy was I wrong! She started her five hour nap after the 9pm feeding. We tried unswaddling her, putting her on the bed and these are the pics. She was not about to be woken up, needless to say I only got 2 hours after these pics!! Live and learn!





....and then some more pics of the past couple weeks! Enjoy.

Chris' Catch......the Verminator!

This story is a few weeks old, but I have been wanting to post it for awhile. After weeks of Maddy and I being tormented by a "creature" living in the attic my dear husband finally caught it! We had been hearing a large animal moving about in the attic right before Maddy was born. We called some pest people and they wanted to charge an arm and a leg to catch this thing. They wanted to set hundreds of various traps in the attic for hundreds of dollars. We decided that we would try and give it a go ourselves. Chris tried several rat traps which did not work. We finally decided this thing was bigger than a rat when it would slide down the walls and make loud noises. Our poor cats were going crazy chasing this noise around....determined to catch it. Since I was home more often with Madelyn, I would hear the animal all day. It started to chew on things and that is when Chris got serious.
We invested in a high pitch noise maker and a humane animal trap. Chris found a pathway through our fence that the animal must be coming in and out of and decided to place the trap there.

One week later, I was feeding Madelyn early in the morning and he came out of the bedroom with the biggest smile on his face. You would have thought it was Christmas morning! He quickly ran to the backyard with his eyes lit up to see his trap had worked. I could not help but be so proud, and then.... I asked him "now what are you going to do with it?" He replied he did not know and had to leave for work soon. I told him not to leave it here, try releasing it in the woods at the back of the neighborhood. He drove back there only to find that it was next to a bus stop full of kids. Not wanting to make a news headline "Children attacked by angry opossum," police still searching for the man who dumped the animal, Chris drove on to a quite area and opened the trap. All in all, Chris is so tickled at his catch and so am I. Now the house is peaceful again.

4 Weeks...

I cannot believe we are the proud parents of a 4 week old baby! Time has really flown by. Things are going great. We have established a so called "routine." Madelyn is eating every 2-3 hours and is getting a 4-5 hour window of sleep at night. If anyone knows me they know I love my sleep, but who would have ever thought that a 4-5hour interval would make me so happy! I mean to tell you it is so refreshing! She is holding her head up very well now and starting to "coo" at us. It is so exciting to talk to her and get a smile or "coo" back. She is such a precious little angel. I cannot help but tell her that every morning when we take her out of the swaddle. This is the time she is active and in a good mood. Our lives have totally changed, everything we think about doing now we think about the 3 of us. I love this new family we have created. I only have a few more weeks off for maternity leave and I am trying to enjoy every second I have at home with her. Here are some new pics of her this week. I also got some hospital pics from the grandmas that were present for the birth. I wanted to include a few to reminisce where we were 4 weeks ago.

3 weeks

We made it to the 3 week mark that everyone says is the hardest part. Things are going pretty good. We have had several bumps along the way but we are surviving. We had one rough night that we had to put our little princess in the car and drive around at 3 am to get her to sleep so we could get come sleep. We are working on getting the 4-5 hour sleep interval at night and getting her to sleep in the cradle. The past couple days she has only slept if someone is holding her. Yes, I have broke the rule a couple times of letting her sleep with me, but in the middle of the night with no sleep I could care less. Some recent advice was to try and swaddle her tighter to feel like she is being held. This seems to be helping. So much to learn along the way!! We do still think she is adorable and a gift from God. I am getting better at sleeping when she sleeps round the clock and telling what her cries mean.

Our cats have finally adjusted to the new addition. I know they were hoping it would leave soon. For the first week or so they hid and only came out to eat. My cat was vomiting every morning for a few days that poor Chris had to clean up. They have finally given in to the fact that she is here to stay and now come and hang out with us. You can see in the picture my cat is happy to be with the girls now.

Chris is having a great time dressing her up in coordinating outfits, hats and socks. Also, as evidenced by her picture he loves to do her hair (I am not sure she would love it). This is pretty funny since the next day her hair remained spiked because it dried this way! Her great grandmother came to see her for the first time and she had crazy hair! (Note to self her hair dries fast so style it quickly)

Here are some updated pictures of all the fun we are having with her!

Blessed

Well here we are....we did it!! And right up until that moment it still seemed so surreal. I cannot believe we have been blessed with such a beautiful, healthy baby girl!!

The delivery went pretty well. We started the induction at 8am and she was born at 7:26pm. There was a slow period around lunch time where there was no progress and the doctor was about to send us for a C-section. Luckily, I was able to labor a little longer with an epidural and sure enough things went really fast! I have to say my labor was not bad at all, probably because the epidural had messed up a little and they had to bolus a dose right at the pushing stage. This was so great...I was numb, I could not feel contractions, and the doctor had to tell me to stop pushing because she was already out!! Madelyn did have the cord wrapped once around her neck (which was scary), but I was assured by the best nurse ever (Jenni) that she would be fine.

Madelyn is a little over one week old now and I have learned sooooooooo much. Madelyn is doing great. Her first Dr visit went wonderful. I started crying in the parking lot thinking they were going to draw blood from her and I would have to see her scream. After we got in the room, he was so pleased with how she looked he did not feel the need to check her bilirubin. No pokes, yeah!!! She is doing great at nursing I could not ask for much more (except sleep.....but that is ok). As for me (now known as 'mom'), I am also doing good. I am still adjusting to the sleep schedule, but that gets better with every day. Here are some updated pics. There will be plently more to come!

Madelyn Paige has arrived...

Below are a few pictures of our baby girl!

Madelyn Paige
Born - April 4, 2008 @ 7:26pm
Weight - 6 lbs 15 ounces
Length - 19.5 inches