One Month- 1/30/12

Dear Hunter,

Today you are one month old. I cannot believe that one month ago I gave birth to the most perfect baby boy. In the month you've been here you've already brought so much joy to our lives. Your daddy and I love you so much and everyday thank God for blessing us with you.

The past month has been one of the most challenging and rewarding for us. We've never been so scared or worried as we were the first week after you were born and in the hospital but you came through like a champ and are growing and thriving everyday.  Your doctor is so impressed with how well you are growing and how strong you are already. You already are able to hold your held up well and your little legs are so strong your daddy is convinced you'll be standing on your own in a few weeks (I told him it may be a little longer before that happens!)

Mommy and daddy haven't gotten much sleep the past month but waking up every morning to your sweet little face and seeing your little smiles makes the sleepless nights totally worth it. I spend my days staring in amazement at this incredible little person that your daddy and I created. Each day you show us more and more of your little personality. You are such a sweet baby and you love to be held and snuggled. So long as you have a full belly and a clean diaper you are a happy camper. You love to smile and make silly faces at your daddy. Not a day has gone by that you haven't made us smile and laugh and count our blessings for having you in our lives.

Here are some of your one month stats:

Weight- at 3 weeks you weighed 9lbs 7ozs, almost 2 pounds up from your birth weight. I suspect you're right at 10 pounds now.

Eating- you LOVE to eat and can easily chug a 4-5oz bottle. You eat every few hours and are doing well with nursing though you prefer the ease of bottle.

Sleep- you are slowly learning your days from nights. You are now staying awake more during the day and sleeping in 3 hour increments at night. There are still nights when you wake up every hour or take a long time to go back to sleep but it's getting better everyday. You don't really like to lay flat on your back or sleep in your bassinet. You much prefer to sleep in your pack n play or on the boppy and your favorite is to nap with mommy or daddy on the couch.

Clothes- You can still fit into some of your newborn clothes but are rapidly growing out of them. The 3 month clothes are still a tad too big. It already makes me sad to see that some of your clothes are too small already.

Favorites- You love reggae music. Anytime you get fussy we put on some reggae music and you almost immediately calm down. You also love your pacifier, or as you daddy likes to call it, your mute button. You love to lay on the boppy and stare at mommy during the day. You love riding in the carseat and immediately go to sleep when riding in the car. You are slowly learning to enjoy bath time.

One month pictures

We love you so much Hunter!

Love, 

Mommy

More Newborn photos

My friend Laura who took Hunter's newborn photos sent me a link to a slideshow with all the photos. I've posted the slideshow below showing all the beautiful pictures of my baby boy. I love them all and I'm tempted to wallpaper my house with these. The ones of Kristian and Hunter especially melt my heart. I couldn't love these two men anymore.

No more tail

Kristian and I would always joke that the two wires that were connected to Hunter's chest and hung off his body and connected to his portable apnea monitor was his "tail". We always had to be mindful of the wires because if we pulled them loose this god-awful loud alarm would sound and scare the shit out of all of us. It made changing, feeding and just loving on Hunter more of a challenge and since we had to carry his portable monitor around with us we basically would just hang out in a small area of the living room or bedroom at all times. Hunter has only seen his own bedroom twice.

Well I'm happy to say after yesterday's doctor appointment Hunter's "tail" has been removed. After reading the print-out from the monitor which notes any breathing episodes that he may have had the doctor said he could be taken off the monitor. He didn't have any real breathing episodes, there were a few false positive alarms but nothing to worry about, which is fantastic news! Hunter is now a free man and I can't tell you how nice it's been to hold him without having to worry about his wires and be able to freely carry him around the house. So much worry and anxiety has now been lifted and our little boy is growing and thriving. He's also up to 9lbs 7ozs (holy chunky monkey!)

3 Weeks Old

Today Hunter is 3 weeks old. I can't believe how fast time is flying and that he's almost a month old already!

3 weeks old

We took Hunter to his pediatrician appointment yesterday and he's already up to 9lbs 3ozs (he was 7lbs 12ozs at birth) so needless to say we have a little chunky monkey on our hands. As you can see from his weight gain this little boy LOVES to eat. I'm still doing a combo of breast feeding and pumping/bottle feeding and every now and then we'll give him a small bottle of formula-- mainly at night to help him sleep. The BF/pumping definitely is a time commitment, I'm having to do one or the other (and sometimes both) every 3ish hours or I feel like I have two boulders on my chest.

The doctor says he's looking great and developing well and we're hoping once we see the pulmonologist he'll be able to get off his apnea monitor. We were supposed to have seen that doctor yesterday but had to reschedule due to delays with Hunter's insurance.

We're still working on the whole sleeping at night thing. Overall he's doing much better but there are still nights (like Wednesday night) when he's up ALL NIGHT. We've started a nighttime routine which seems to be working a bit. We try to keep him awake for at least two hours before bed, then we'll move him upstairs, give him a big bottle, change him, swaddle him and either lay him in bed with us until he falls asleep or rock him to sleep. The whole routine can take up to an hour or more and he's usually asleep by 10:30pm. He then will typically wake up around 2am wanting to be fed again and then again around 5am. We've had relative success with this and hopefully with time he'll get more used to it.

The doctor explained that a lot of babies his age hate to sleep on their backs, and this seems to be the case with Hunter, he hates sleeping in his bassinet. He has no problem sleeping anywhere else so long as he's not flat on his back. The doctor said it was fine to let him sleep in his pack n play (which has a cradle part) or even in his car seat. My concern is that he'll never get used to sleeping flat on his back and will make the transition to the crib even harder, the doctor said that as he gets older he'll get better at sleeping on his back so hopefully it won't be an issue.

Last night in an attempt for both Kristian and I to get some sleep I stayed in the living on the couch while Hunter slept in the pack n play and Kristian stayed in our room so he could get a good nights sleep. Hunter actually slept great and only woke up once to eat and be changed.

Hunter has also been staying awake more during the day which is nice however it also means that I'm not able to rest as much or get as much done around the house because he's always wanting to be fed, changed or held. Fortunately, playing Reggae music still seems to settle him down when he gets fussy, it's actually amazing how well it calms him down.

As for me, the area where my incision was is still pretty tender and gets sore but other than that I feel pretty much back to normal. I still have a good 15 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight but my belly pooch gets smaller by the day. It will be nice once I'm allowed to start exercising again. I have noticed that since having Hunter my right wrist has been killing me and it's even hard at times to pick him up because of it. I've read that there is such thing as pregnancy related carpal tunnel syndrome and I'm pretty sure that's what I have. I'm hoping it will go away on it's own, if not I plan to talk to my doctor about it at my 6 week checkup.

Newborn photo sneak peek

This past Sunday we took Hunter to my girlfriend's house so she could do some newborn photos of him in her home studio. It's the same friend that did my maternity photos and as with my maternity photos I think she did an AMAZING job. She plans to send me a CD with all the photos from both sessions and I can't wait to see what other amazing shots she got. I have to say I think Hunter is a natural little model.

*I love the way my little man looks at me*

*His feet are so tiny in Kristian's hands*

*This is my favorite so far! I wanted a Christmas-y photo for my Christmas (week) baby and she even caught him when he was smiling!*

2 Weeks Old

Today Hunter is two weeks old and it's been one week since we brought him home. In some ways it feels like he was born just yesterday and in others it feels like he's been here forever. This first week with him home has definitely been challenging.

I had my one week follow up appointment with my doctor so he could check my incision which looks great. He said I could increase my activity level, which is good since it's hard to be too lazy when you have a newborn. I had also lost 20 pounds in 12 days! The nurse was quite impressed. My belly seems to shrink daily and I'm slowly starting to look like my old self but with bigger boobs. Breastfeeding and living in a 3 story house where I go up and down the stairs a million times definitely helps.

I've been a bit of an emotional mess the last few days. Yesterday I broke down in tears over someone's facebook status (it was one of those "repost this if you love your mother" ones). Yeah seriously. I was lucky during my pregnancy that I wasn't super emotional and didn't cry much but boy is it hitting me now. I'm still struggling with the whole way the birth went down and get upset whenever I see someone have a baby on t.v. because I'm reminded of what I missed. I'll get over it eventually. I hope. And as with most new mothers I'm sure, I'm constantly questioning my abilities as a mother, especially at 1am when my kid has been crying for hours and nothing seems to help. Yeah, that's been almost every night this week. It's hard. But logically I know it's totally normal. Emotionally it's a different story.

Hunter has been doing well except for the whole having his days and nights mixed up. Tuesday night was awesome he slept in 3 hour stretches and would fall back asleep after being fed and changed no problem. However, every other night has been incredibly frustrating and tiring. We try to keep him awake for a few hours before bedtime, we feed him a big bottle, change and swaddle him and even play some music for him (he LOVES Bob Marley and Reggae) but so far it doesn't seem to be working at least not until around 1-3am when he finally wears himself out. Monday night I had a total breakdown and started crying because I felt like a horrible mother who couldn't soothe my child. Poor Kristian was stuck dealing with a crying wife and child. Have I mentioned my husband is a saint because he pretty much is.

Other than that Hunter is a great little kid (during the day). He's still eating like a little piglet and breastfeeding well and everyday a little bit more of his personality comes out. We have an appointment next week with a pulmonologist to see about getting him off this Apnea monitor.

If anyone has any advice for making this kid sleep at night I'm all ears.

Below are some more pictures and a cute video we took last night of Kristian making Hunter smile.

First mohawk!

Bright eyes.

My two most favorite people.

Hunter Kristian

Since we decided to keep Hunter's name a surprise until he was born I never did write about how we chose the name. I wrote before about how Kristian initially wanted to name Hunter after himself, more specifically he wanted to name him Kristian, he didn't really care if he had the same middle name. You see, the name Kristian has been passed down now through three generations, it's my husbands first name and his father and grandfather's middle name. I was opposed to using it as a first name because I didn't want there to be constant confusion between my husband and son (Kristian also goes by Kris so even if we used the nickname there would still be confusion). Knowing how much it meant to him to have Kristian as a part of his son's name I agreed to use it as a middle name which made him happy.

As for the name Hunter, well it's actually the one name we discussed long before I ever got pregnant. I remember seeing or hearing the name somewhere and thinking to myself  "that would a fitting name if we ever have a son" (for those that don't know my husband LOVES to hunt and fish) but since this was back when the thought of having a child still freaked him out I just kept it to myself. Well literally a few days later Kristian randomly breaks out with "So I heard a really cool name to use if we ever have a son...Hunter". I couldn't believe it.

When I first got pregnant, in the very early days, I did feel like the baby was a boy (though thanks to all the old wives tales and signs I later convinced myself the baby was a girl) and I just automatically envisioned his name being Hunter. Well after we agreed on the middle name we went back and forth over and over again on the first name and the one name we kept coming back to and ultimately could agree on was Hunter. It just seemed to fit.

I'll be honest, Hunter is not my favorite boy name, there are several others that I actually prefer however when I tried to envision this child with any of those names it just felt wrong. He was a Hunter even before he was created.

Fortunately we've gotten a lot of positive feedback on his name from both sides of our families, everyone seems to really love it and think it fits him perfectly and I can't help but agree.