Trying to remember

I remember things being easier with Dom...I blogged more. I had more free time. I don't remember being so incredibly exhausted ALL THE TIME. I guess that's just what happens when you have two kids. I wonder what it feels like when you have three!? My uncle said to me the other day, "Two kids aren't twice as hard...they are three times as hard." Amen to that. It's so true. But I'm trying to keep it all together. I'm trying to remember to pull food to defrost for dinner and clean up the toys and do the laundry and just recover. I'm still in some pain from the surgery. But we're making it. Dom was such a helpful boy this morning. He got me the boppy to feed Annabelle and grabbed a diaper for himself. When I dropped him off at daycare, I was so excited because I wanted to get him back into a routine, but when I left he was crying for me and that broke my heart. I think we're getting there. We're almost into OUR routine and I think just a few more weeks away from really getting it together. And then I'll have more time to blog... ;-)

Patience

I'm really struggling to keep my patience lately. I try, but it's very difficult. Dominick is really pushing our buttons recently. He likes to do something that he knows he's not supposed to do and then when we tell him "no", he laughs and does it more. I still can't lift him and lately Nick's been gone during the day (at work) and gone at night (helping our friend Mike with demo at his house). It's really hard to be a "single" mom. I drop Dom off at daycare in the morning and the mornings are rough. Dom doesn't want to get dressed, doesn't want to have his diaper changed, doesn't want to get his shoes on, etc. It goes on and on.

Nights are even worse. He's been doing all kinds of things just to push us. He always needs something while I'm feeding Anna. Last night he found a straw and came over and just jabbed Anna in the face with it. When she sleeps, he goes right next to her and bangs on something to wake her up.

I know he loves her. She's all he talks about most of the time. He's trying to get MY attention and it has nothing to do with her. And I'm struggling with that.

I find myself closing my eyes and counting to ten with deep breaths a lot lately. I don't want to get too mad at him because I know that he's going through a major transition too. I don't want to let him completely off the hook though either, because he is directly ignoring what we are asking/telling him to do and I don't want to let him think that doing something that Mom and Dad say not to do is OK. It's really tough.

Nick and I thought that two years would be perfect in between kids. They would love each other and play together, etc. But I didn't think about how hard it would be NOW. I think we have a rough few months ahead of us. :)

It's ok. I'll take those rough months because I LOVE both of my kids so much and every second with them is worth it. Even if they are driving me crazy. :) But I need to have more patience. Hopefully I can find some in the next few months. For everyone's sake!

SLEEP! :)

Annabelle is doing so good at night!! Now don't get me wrong, she's a stinker from about 5 pm to 9pm, but after that, she is so good! First off, I love our pediatrician. When we went for her one week check up, our pediatrician told us that since she was definitely growing, we don't need to wake her up for feedings at all at night. If she wakes up, obviously feed her, but don't wake her up. So we didn't. At first, it didn't matter, she was still waking up every 2 hours to eat, which was fine. But these last two nights have been great!

We've been staying up until midnight and then putting her down. Two nights ago she went down at 11:45 and was up at 3:30 and then 6:30 and then up for the day at 8:30. That's not bad!

Last night was even better! She went down at midnight, She got up at 4 to eat. Then slept until 7:50. Holy cow!! It was fantastic! :)

I'm very proud of my big girl!!

And Dominick is still doing GREAT in his new room in the toddler bed. My kiddos are so perfect right now!

♥ Annabelle's Birth Story ♥

Wow. What a whirl wind.

It all started on Tuesday, March 8th. I'd been having contractions all day long. I had a big test on Tuesday night so I was trying to fight the contractions, as if you can do that. I went as far as emailing my teacher telling him I might not make it to class. I couldn't focus on studying at all. But I really didn't want to miss the test. Not that I was ready, but I didn't want to do the make up test, which is an essay test and sounds way harder than the multiple choice test. So I went to class. I actually felt better too. I failed the test...but now I think I understand why. Ok I didn't FAIL, but close. It was hard. (I just looked it up...I got a 74%).

After class, I headed home. Class went a little later than normal and I hit the highway to go home around 9:05. I called Nick to talk to him for part of the drive. I just didn't feel good. I almost stopped to get food, but decided I'd rather just go to bed. I got home about 9:30 or so and basically just got ready for bed. Nick came up around 11 or so and we both fell asleep pretty easily. For awhile.

I woke up about 1:30 with a sharp stomach pain. Much different than anything I had ever felt before. It felt like severe gas pains or something. It passed and I decided to drink a little water and go back to bed. But I couldn't go back to bed. The stomach pains kept coming. I started timing them. They were coming ever 4 minutes. I tried going to the bathroom. I tried all the "false labor" tricks. You know, the things they tell you to do if you are in false labor. Drink water. Empty your bladder. Walk around. Change positions. Etc. Etc.

Things were not improving. If anything, the pains were getting worse. Now 3 minutes apart. At 2:40 I decided to call the exchange. At this point I was sitting in the nursery. I didn't want to wake Nick up if it was false labor. I called and the on call doc called me back immediately. I told him what as going on. I got a contraction during the call and couldn't talk. I was almost in tears. He told me to come in.

I got up and went back into our room. I asked Nick to call his mom and see if she could watch Dom. Then I went to get all my stuff together and make sure my hospital bag was ready. I put my contacts in and straightened my hair. (For the record, I had showered that night and went to bed with my hair wet and it was everywhere and my hair isn't long enough to put in a ponytail...that's why I straightened it. It only took like 5 minutes...).

Then we went to get Dom's stuff together. At this point, the contractions are hurting more than ever. I now know exactly what active labor feels like. We got Dom up and headed to Sue's house. In the car, I had quite a few contractions. Every time I would try my breathing and squeeze Nick's hand and I probably sounded awful. Dominick was up at this point and he kept asking, "You OK, Momma??". I would tell him that I was ok and then he would ask, "I kiss it??". I told him yes, he could kiss it and I would hand him my hand. He would kiss my hand and say, "All better?". He's such a sweet heart.

Of course, right after we dropped him off I realized we didn't have a camera, so we went back to Sue's and borrowed her camera. Then we were finally off to the hospital. My contractions were now about 2 minutes apart and very painful.

We got to the hospital at 3:30 am and went straight to Labor and Delivery. They checked me in and brought me back to a room. They hooked up the monitors and saw that my contractions were 2 minutes apart and measuring around 90. They checked to see if I was dilated at all, and I was at 2 cm. I was in pain. I was already asking for the epidural. They called the on call doc and we decided to do a c-section. I had the option of trying on my own, but I didn't want to at this point. I was exhausted already and we had no idea how big the baby was. Unfortunately, I was the fourth person to come in that night in labor...and the fourth repeat c-section. So we had to wait for the OR.

The anesthesiologist came in around 5 am for the epidural. Not gonna lie, it was still a little painful, and didn't take effect right away. But after about 30 minutes, I was ok. She left and came back at 6 am to get me ready for surgery. They thought the surgery would be about 6:15, but we didn't get into the OR until 6:50.

I remember being wheeled in and "Here I go again" by Whitesnake was playing on the radio. They said Annabelle was going to be a Rocker! They got me on the table and started prepping me. I could hear the nurses doing their counts of tools and what not.

Then they started. It was so much better than with Dom. With Dom I was throwing up and in pain and he was stuck after pushing for so long and it was plain awful. This time I was alert and it didn't hurt. I honestly just felt the pressure. After what seemed like hardly any time at all, I heard the vacuum. She was stuck (although I'm not sure where!?). But then I heard them say, "Here she comes!" and then it was over. She was born at 7:06 am. They pulled her back and she was COVERED in the white goo since she was so early. She was crying and it was beautiful. They brought her over to the scale to clean her and do her APGAR scores and I just watched her. At first I was scared because she wasn't breathing as well as they'd like. Since I didn't push, the fluid wasn't pushed out of her lungs. But then they got a good amount out with the bulb syringe and she let out a yell! Her apgar scores were 7 and then 9. So very good.

Nick went over to cut the cord and they weighed her...8 lbs and 11 ounces. Thank God I didn't try a VBAC. I couldn't get Dom out who was 8 lbs 9 ounces so I'm sure I would've had the same result with AJ.

It didn't take long to get me put me back together. I think I was in recovery by 7:20. They brought her back to me almost immediately and I was able to try and nurse her. She latched immediately. It was such a different experience from Dominick's birth.

I recovered a little slower this time around and I'm not sure if it's because it was my second c-section or what it was. But I'm feeling much better now. And how much better it was has been worth every second of pain.

I still can't believe we have TWO kids. Dominick has been fantastic. He loves his "baby sissy". He likes to hold her and when she cries, he brings me her binky. He's already a great big brother.

I also want to mention how great our families have been. Nick's mom, Sue, basically kept Dom for Tuesday through Friday. Nick watched him Friday night and then my parents took him Saturday morning and kept him until we were ready to go home on Sunday. They even brought him up to the hospital since I wanted a picture of the whole family at the hospital and forgot to take one before then.

We are so lucky to have such great family and friends and I'm so in love with my husband, my son, and now my daughter.

I'll update more later with more pictures but this is a good start...for me. With two kiddos, I haven't been on the computer at all. Hopefully I'll get to update more again soon.

But there's her story.

Annabelle Jean

March 9, 2011 at 7:06 am

8 lb. 11 oz.

21" long

Playing Catch Up

Hey blog world. I'm here. Barely. Just writing a quick post to say that I'm planning on doing lots of updates soon. Hopefully today even.

For those of you who don't know, Annabelle Jean was born one week ago today, which was three weeks early. We are all healthy and happy but very very tired.

I'm getting ready to start writing her birth story because I don't want to forget it! I'll add a few other posts soon too. So please keep being patient with me!

Be back soon. :)

Big Boy Bed!

Dominick slept in his Big Boy Bed last night!!! I'm so proud of him!

Like I previously mentioned, we moved the crib downstairs over the weekend (on Sunday actually) to get him used to the new room. New look, new sounds, new light from the outside, etc. And on Sunday night we gave him the option of which bed to sleep in and he said the crib. So we put him in the crib and he slept all night. :) Our plan was working. He was in the new room and getting used to it. It was in the crib, but that was fine.

Well last night, we did PJ's, brushed our teeth and read our books. Then I asked Dom which bed he wanted to sleep in. He pointed to his toddler bed. I said OK and he climbed in. I tucked him in "snug as a bug" and then gave him a kiss. I left the room and shut the door. I listened by the door, fully expecting him to get up and walk around and I didn't hear anything. So I went upstairs and got the monitor. A few times I SWORE I heard him get up...so I'd check on him. Nope. Still laying in bed.

He did have two slip ups. He woke up once about 1 or 2 am. I went downstairs and he was crying because he lost his binky. It was on the floor by his bed. I gave it to him and he rolled right back over and layed back down. I recovered him up and gave him another kiss and he was back asleep in no time. He woke up again around 4 am. This time Nick went downstairs and he said Dom was walking around trying to find his binky. Nick gave it to him but he wouldn't lay back down. So Nick rocked him for about 10 minutes and then he layed him back in bed and that worked. He went back to bed until I woke him up around 7:20 this morning.

So I will call that a success! I know that doesn't mean he's made the transition and he'll never want to sleep in the crib again. But I think this is a great start.

We told him that when he's done with his crib we can move it and get him a new book shelf and some new books and he's very excited about that. So we'll see how this goes! But no matter what, he did it! We know he can do it! :) We'll see what happens tonight. I'll keep you posted.

New Nickname

Nick and I keep calling the baby different things...

Anna, Annabelle, Annie, Bells, Baby A, etc.

But Nick just started calling her AJ (for Annabelle Jean) and I have to say, I really like it! That might stick!

So she might switch from Baby A to Baby AJ! :)