Nine months gone in the blink of an eye

It's hard to believe that today marks the day where my little boy has officially been in the outside world for just as long as I carried him inside me.  The time has flown by in what feels like a second.  When I look at him, he is no longer a "baby" to me, but this little person with a huge personality and an even bigger smile.  I think for every month, I'm going to start listing his favorite things so I can look back and reminisce on these special and poignant moments before they slip by.

Likes:
Crawling
Turning the pages of books himself
The dogs
Clapping his hands at games - especially one where a ball goes down a ramp
Scrinching his face up and opening his mouth really big so his teeth stick out
The Very Hungry Caterpillar - especially the part where it lists all the food the caterpillar ate in one day: one sausage, one piece of chocolate cake, one slice of Swiss cheese, one pickle...
Dumping containers of toys out
Smashing toys together
Watching mommy vacuum
Peek-a-boo
Baths
Splashing bathwater everywhere
Walks in a carrier or stroller
Other babies and children
Waving at everyone
Eating fruit purees and oatmeal
When Mommy and Daddy sing songs
Nursing
Any sort of toy piano

Dislikes:
When Mommy leaves the room
The sippy cup
When Daddy gets up to tend to him at any point in the middle of the night - only Mommy will do
Getting into his carseat
Diaper changes
Getting into his pajamas
When you take a toy out of his hands before he's ready to let it go
Exersaucer
Green beans

A rose by any other name...

Nothing really much to this post.  As I was playing with my darling boy this evening, I thought about alllll the other names this little man gets called other than the one on his birth certificate.  Hopefully the poor babe doesn't develop an identity crisis because we just can't stop calling him some of these.  And like he needs a nickname, his name is four letters long!  Regardless:

Jude
Jude Dude
Judebug
Bug
Buckaroo
Pumpkin
Pumpkin Head
Mister
Judecifer (when he's throwing a tantrum)
Booger
Boogs
JP
The J Man
Junior
Sweetie Boy
Mr. Snoopy

Crawling Judebug

Jude started full-on fast crawling on Saturday.

He had been army crawling pretty efficiently for the past two weeks.  It was pretty impressive how quickly he could get what he wanted without being on his hands and knees to get it.  I was beginning to wonder if he was going to be one of those kiddos that has their own unique way of getting about before they actually just move on to walking.

On Thursday, he started sloooowly crawling to get something.  The sort of crawl that I would have to tap my fingers and look at my watch.  I believe they call it creeping?  Anyways, I thought to myself that this was indeed crawling and how crazy it was that there were so many different baby safety items on the market.  "I can totally catch my kid before he gets into something dangerous.  The majority of parents just must be pretty lazy and not want to watch their baby every second."  If motherhood has taught me anything, it's that I sure eat crow alot.

Cut to Saturday.

Dear God, I can't babyproof this place fast enough.  Mr. SpeedDemon is ripping all over the place at breakneck pace.  By the time I've realized he's tipped over his entire plastic container of pop-link blocks, he's halfway across the room, empty container in hand (you read that right, he crawls with things in his hands!) and heading for the rocking chair.  Sometimes the only thing that saves me is if he takes a pitstop on his mission, if only to smash a couple of things together, giggle at the glorious sound, and then proceed on his merry (breakneck speed) way.

This little boy is so proud of his accomplishments.  As he passes by me scooting along, he gives me the biggest, toothiest grin he can muster, as if to say "Hey, look!  Did you know we can get to things on our hands and knees???  Not even kidding, come on, follow meeeeee!" 

I can't have a bad day around this kid, I seriously can't.  For the first time in my life, the stresses of work don't follow me home.  The minute I walk into daycare and he beams and scurries toward me, the previous events of the day just melt away... 

Motherhood rocks hard.

Nostalgic over retired new baby items

Our neighbors recently had a little girl and we went over with a big care package for them of everything we found completely necessary during the first six months.  Infant Tylenol, Vick's Baby Rub (um, that stuff smells so good I often smear it on myself.  Not kidding), saline drops for stuffy noses (essential for any daycare-going babe, Jude has an eternally dripping nose), Fold & Go diapering kit, big box of Pampers Sensitive wipes (if you're going to do disposable wipes, these are the gentlest, the next little one we have, we will be using cloth wipes I think), a package of baby hair bows (SIGH- love my little boy but hairbows on  baby girls are just TO DIE), and Trumpette Mary Jane socks (:::squeal of cuteness:::). 

I guess we still use all of that stuff on Jude, but slowly we are putting some new, new baby stuff away.

The Boppy.  My breastfeeding companion that saved my arms and sanity during the early days.  Jude is so efficient at nursing now that he's done in ten minutes.  He can support his own weight so I don't really have to hold him.  Since he started sitting unsupported at 5 months, we haven't used it for extra support for him either.  Thank you, Boppy, and I commend you for a job well done. 

The bouncy seat and the swing. Both retired.  I remember reading on the manuals for both of those items that you couldn't use them once baby exceeded 25 pounds.  I remember thinking "Oh, well that's awesome, we'll probably be using these for well over a year."  Um, Jude was squirming and scheming ways out of them by 6 months and 16 pounds. 

The Bumbo chair.  He catapulted himself out of this at 5-6 months as well.  It served its purpose for a short time I suppose.  In retrospect, I think I would've saved the $40 (ridiculous pricetag in my opinion) and skipped it or bought a used one off Craigslist.  It's a rubber/plastic chair for God's sake, buy it used and wipe it down with a sani wipe.

My trusty Lansinoh ointment.  I couldn't have lived without it in the early days for our awful latch issues.  Now that we're such a great breastfeeding team, I never have pain or "injuries" anymore.  So I guess the only use I have for my previous favorite baby item is for when Jude's lips get a little chapped from the cold weather. 

The Moby.  Ahhh, the Moby.  The ONLY way Jude would nap during the first three months.  We're big fans of babywearing in our house  (a long post about this will happen this spring- my favorite babywearing season, I'm sure) and this one was absolutely wonderful for the newborn days.  We do still use it occasionally and I'm sure will continue to this summer.  The only complaint I have is that for a bigger baby, the material stretches out after wearing him for awhile.  I buy this for almost every baby shower.  If I am invited to your babyshower and you're reading this, sorry for the spoiler.  :)

Actually, I think I need to do a few "my favorite/unfavorite things" post.  More to come!

Watching a St. Patrick's Parade downtown

It was a great day.  I'm a lucky lady.

He never ceases to amaze me.

I'm moved by my son every single day.  I love looking at the world through his big, soulful eyes.  I guess I never realized the beauty and wonder in the littlest things like Jude does.  He is making me see the world as I never saw it (or remember seeing it).  I always thought it was the parents that teach their little ones, but I feel like I'm the one doing all the learning.

He's discovered his tongue and all the lovely sounds he can make by moving it in different positions.  He is so excited about all the doors he has opened in terms of "language" that he wakes up in the middle of the night to practice.  He talked and chattered away from 1:15 am until almost 3 am this morning.  And the thing is, I didn't mind.  Sure, I tossed and turned as he had a conversation to everything in his vicinity, but I loved listening to him revel in his discovery of words.  My husband is convinced that he is saying "Daddy", but that would be him learning the "D" sound.  If we are going to play that game, then Jude said "Mama" at three months.  :)

He is cutting his four top teeth.  The top two erupted yesterday.  It was a painful few weeks.  His upper gums have been swollen for the past month and you can see four prominent bulges where the four teeth are coming in.  I'm so glad the front main ones have finally cut.  Poor guy, he's been miserable.  Restless, fever, diarrhea and even a little vomiting.  He doesn't like to eat solids when he is cutting a tooth, so he promptly vomited up his food at daycare and they sent him home and said he couldn't come back until he was vomit free for twenty-four hours.  So, I had to take another day off work to stay with him today.  Not that I mind spending time with my sweet baby boy.  I love every second spent with him.

Jude waves now.  It is the cutest wave in the world.  He raises his hand in the air, fingers spread, and then bends his thumb up and down while keeping all his other fingers straight.  Hilarious and adorable.  I want him to wave like that forever.  He is just so darn pleased with himself.

This age is awesome.  I love him so much.

My son doesn't sleep.

Jude has sleep issues.  Big time.

I've avoided doing any sort of sleep training this entire time for a few reasons.  For starters, I never believed that they were necessary.  To me, sleep training has always implied that this is purely for tired parents' sake and not in the child's best interest.  I'm now retracting my former thoughts on this.  Sure, I'd love a full nights sleep.  But to be honest, I'm so used to 6-7 night wakings (you read that right- and this is on a good night) that they don't bother me much anymore.  I guess my mommy adrenaline isn't 100% depleted.  I'm honestly worried about Jude.  It seems like he always has bags under his eyes and is so cranky at the end of the day, that he just isn't himself. 

First, a background.

In the very beginning, we started off with Jude in a bassinet next to our bed.  When he would wake, I would nurse him or change his diaper or attend to whatever need he had.  During the first four months or so, I never gave his multiple, often hourly, night wakings a second thought since that is what newborns do.  Once Jude outgrew the bassinet next to the bed, we decided we wanted to cosleep and have a family bed until he was a year.  I'm a fan of Dr. Sear's Attachment Parenting principles and thought this was ideal for us.  Being as I'm a fulltime working mom, I love that I can spend all my time with Jude when I'm not working by sleeping next to him.  The night wakings continued.  From four months on, all Jude really wanted when he woke up was to nurse himself back to sleep.  That's fine.  Bedsharing makes this very easy to do.  Once six months rolled around and he was still waking up about ten times a night, I decided that we would try Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution.  I was not willing to let my son Cry It Out, but this seemed like an answer I could definitely go with.  It was all about weaning a baby off the suck to sleep association, which Jude clearly has.  After a few weeks of doing this, the only improvement I've seen is that he doesn't fight initially going to sleep like he used to and will actually sleep for a three hour stretch in the beginning.  It was also around this time that we put Jude to sleep in his crib initially and then upon the first night waking after we go to bed, we bring him into bed with us.

Now we are at the present.  Jude is 8.5 months and he has now decided that naps aren't for him.  Daycare is lucky to get two twenty minute naps out of him.  He comes home cranky, tired, rubbing his eyes, and ready for bed at 6 pm.  I know this is all because Jude cannot self soothe when he wakes up for whatever reason.  The littlest noise in the world will startle him awake and he cannot get himself back to sleep without a breast or a pacifier.  I'm at my wits end.  I've heard things about Ferber and really mostly associated his methods with crying it out.  Someone who practices Attachment Parenting told me to pick up his book because it has really great information on baby sleep cycles and sleep in general and I can put other bits of his philosophy into action without resorting to cry it out.  So, this is where we are at.  Updates to follow.  If anyone has any advice, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE comments.

This parenting stuff sure is hard.

Working on that new body

Well, I've taken greater steps at becoming healthier.  I've cut 99% of the crap out of my diet and really focusing on wholesome and organic foods to feed myself and subsequently my baby.  On one of my favorite blogs, Le Petit Owlet, she writes about all the benefits of juicing and got to try out The Healthy Juicer.  Reading about this awesome contraption on their website has me convinced not only of the benefits of juicing, but also of wheatgrass!  On all the research I've done throughout the years on PCOS and infertility in general, I've heard of the amazing benefits of wheatgrass on egg quality, but had no idea all the other added ones such as organ detoxification and immune system boosting.  I'm sold!  I'll be adding wheatgrass to my Whole Foods grocery list from now on.  Maybe I'll even be able to win the Healthy Juicer since Le Petit Owlet is giving it away on her blog!  Check it out!  :)

28

It's my birthday today and I'm a mommy.  It's pretty crazy to look back on everything that happened in one year.  Even though this day will probably be the most lowkey birthday I've ever had, it will most definitely be the most profound.  I look at my little Judebug and wonder how I got so blessed.  He is truly my everything.

No major plans for today.  Phil and I are going to go grab dinner at a deelish Mexican restaurant and my parents will watch Jude for the evening.  I sure miss being away from him, I'm so attached!  It's hard working full time during the week that I feel absolutely guilty when I go on a date or have to be away from him for any period of time on the weekends.  This is why I feel practicing the B's of Attachment Parenting works so well for a family whose parents both work fulltime.  We are able to bond every second we are together, and that means the world to us.

In an attempt to lose all my extra baby weight that I am STILL carrying around, I am starting P90X on Monday.  I know a few people who are dedicated to it and they are seriously RIPPED.  So, after Jude goes to bed every evening, I will be dedicating an hour a day to this regime.  I used to dance 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for years, so I'm not worried about the physical demands or the dedication that is required of me.  The only worry I have is if it will have any impact on my milk supply.  I always hear of people warning about starting up a fitness routine causing their milk supply to tank.  I've been looking into this alot over the past few weeks and it seems like the warnings are more towards newer breastfeeding moms whose supply hasn't been established yet.  On kellymom.com, she mentions some studies that point to milk supply increasing with more physical activity.  Also, breastfeeding immediately after cardio could cause a fussy reacion in the baby due to lactic acid buildup in the breastmilk, but this should subside in about an hour post- working out.  I'm already taking fenugreek, blessed thistle, eating oatmeal and drinking tons of water to keep my milk supply going strong at 8 months.  I want Jude to have nothing but breastmilk (and solids) until one year.  I didn't realize how important it was to me until my supply started to tank around 6 months.  I've been doing everything possible to keep up with his demands in regards to my pumping output and so far, things have worked. 

I will report on my P90X progress in this blog.  I will also be posting before pics soon.  Ouch.

I'm Back (and Jude's birth story)

I feel so awful that I've neglected this blog when really, it should be such a wonderful way to document and remember my sweet baby boy and his little life! I guess I should go back to where we left off. It looks like my last post was from 36 weeks. I'll recap:

On June 17, I was at work and I started to have crampy lower back pain. It was the kind of back pain I usually get whenever AF arrives, so it wasn't completely unbearable. I continued to work throughout the day and before I left to go home, stopped to go to the restroom. Lo and behold, I had lost my mucous plug! Still, I know that this didn't necessarily indicate baby arrival right away, but I knew that things were definitely changing! That night, I just laid around and watched TV while the lower back pain continued. I went to bed. I woke up around 3 am to go to the bathroom for the thousandth time that night. After I crawled back into bed, while I was lying there trying to go back to sleep, I heard a *POP*! Then, a huge gush. MY WATER BROKE! Apparently, that lower back pain was contractions! I woke Phil up and we got ready to go to the hospital. Here comes a funny part of the story: the night before, Phil had a work emergency (he is the area director for a beer company) so he had to grab a Coors Light van and was planning on returning it to work the next day to go get his car. So, I was driven to the hospital in a Coors Light truck! Oh the stories to tell this little one. :) Anyways, contractions started on the way to the hospital.  Once I got to Bergen Mercy Hospital, my water had broken again and again. Yeah, that’s right…one of the many things nobody tells you about labor: your “water” keeps refilling to keep the baby hydrated, thus, you keep having gushes of it breaking over and over and over…. By the time I waddled up to Labor & Delivery, my overstretched maternity jeans were soaked and sagging. Lovely. There were no questions: I was most definitely in active labor. I got hooked up to a fetal monitor and the mister looked good. I was dilated to four centimeters. The nurse asked if I wanted an anesthesiologist paged to start my epidural. I stupidly said “Nah, this is nothing, I’ll be fine until it gets to be a little later, I don’t want to wake anyone up, “ (Stupid, stupid, stupid) So, I waited. I facebooked, drank some water, read a magazine, grimaced and winced at contractions, listened to classical music, laughed with my husband. This labor thing was cake. The nurse came in to check my progress. Not much progress, maybe another half centimeter.

Then things started to change. All of a sudden, my uterus started contracting HARD. I vomited. And vomited. (Another thing I didn’t know, labor makes you nauseated. Go figure.) The short waves of pain became intense, long, and knocked the wind out of me. I breathed through them. I had decided ahead of time that I was going to try to make it as long as possible without an epidural since I have a high pain tolerance and really wanted to experience med-free labor for as long as possible. It was at this time that the nurse mentioned that the anesthesiologist was there for another patient and if I wanted the epi now, she would grab him. YES YES YES! And it was a good thing too. Right before the godsend administered the epidural (which was NOTHING, by the way), I had a contraction so long and painful that it seemed like it lasted an hour. After the “zap” of the epidural, my legs started to go numb and the pain from the contractions subsided. I was back in good spirits.

But then, my blood pressure dropped. Hard. I was on the verge of passing out. Cold water was administered on my brow and I struggled to keep my eyes open. My face went white. Ahhh, the third thing they don’t tell you. A side effect of an epidural can be a drop in blood pressure. For the next several hours, ephedrine had to be administered to me to bump my BP back up. And then, my progress pretty much stopped. Right before I got my epidural, I was at 6 cm. Two hours after, I hadn’t progressed much further than that. Another side effect. My labor slowed. They administered pitocin. (Something I didn’t want to happen, but because of my choice of an epidural, was probably inevitable.) The contractions became very strong and violent and I did feel the pain, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  I am totally rethinking pain management during labor for the next babe, more to come in this topic in the future.

 Two hours later, push time.

I was a champion pusher. I only pushed for twenty minutes before I heard my beautiful, wonderful son scream his entrance to the world. When they handed me my baby, time stopped at 12:46 pm on June 18, 2009. It was just him and me in a world frozen around us. I had never felt such love in all my years and knew that life would never be the same. The moment lasted but a second, but will stay with me forever.