Rough Day!

So yesterday was a rough day for my little guy. We had a normal morning and he was awake for a few hours and then went down around 10:45 AM and slept until 1ish. Then he was awake until 3 and I thought for sure he would go down for a long nap in the afternoon like normal and I would have to try and wake him up at 6 so he would be awake for a few hours before bed at 8 PM. Boy was I wrong! He woke up at 3:45 and proceeded to be fussy from then until he was finally in bed at about 9 PM. I kept trying to get him to take a nap and finally at 6:30 I decided to just get him ready for bed. I got his jammies on, put on his nighttime lotion, swaddled him and fed him to put him down around 7 and he didn't go down til 9. Every time he was asleep, I would put him in his bed and he would just wake up crying a few minutes later.

The only thing I can think is that he is going through his 6 week growth spurt and thrown off a little, yikes! Justin and I were both so tired last night after such a rough fussy evening that we both fell asleep at 10:30 watching our nightly show. Then our monitor started making funny noises and woke me up in the night so I turned it off and just opened my door so I could hear the baby. Then I was up with the baby at 1:30 for a feeding and again at 5 AM. Good grief.

Happy Easter!

Well, we had a nice Easter Sunday. My Dad came over the night before with his girlfriend Laurie and we had dinner at Arctic Circle. Then we watched the Wedding Planner and Laurie left to go home and my Dad spent the night. We woke up early, had fun with the kids as they played with their Easter baskets and then went to church. After church we cooked all afternoon and had a nice Easter dinner here with Sherri and Liz. It was a nice and long day.

Happy Birthday Tim!

Well, Tim is now 5, I can't believe I've been a mom for 5 years, woo hoo! He is so excited to start school this fall and so am I. Finally, one kid in school :) For his birthday we opened presents in the morning and had his birthday cereal, Fruit Loops. Then Justin went to work and I made his cake, a racecar cake of course :) For his birthday his big present was legos and he got a preschool workbook, an airplane, chalk, an easy catch ball game, frisbee and more that I can't think of right now.

Then we met Justin at McDonald's for lunch to play on the playland because it was bad weather but it was soooo crowded because 1) it's just been redone 2) bad weather and 3) spring break! We only stayed for 20ish minutes because it was so crowded and Timmy couldn't even make it through the playland without getting picked on and also because there were so many kids to go through. We came home and Steve and Lorna came over for cake and ice cream and then we went to Peter and Amber's baby shower for the evening, fun day! Justin took a half day, I loved it!

Happy Birthday to my sweet, helpful, car loving, learning to read, questioning, tumbling, soccer playing boy. I love you!!!

Legos

Soccer ball

Chalk

Frisbee from Allie

Airplane

I think I'm getting better at making cakes :)

Picture time!

Here are some new pictures of my kids, so fun!

Tim with Mikey

Allie loves her brother!

Mikey kept staring up this morning.

I just love this little boy!

Tim with little brother

Wish Me Luck!

So, today Justin is going out of town leaving around 3 PM and getting back on Tuesday evening, probably after the kids are in bed. He had the choice of going although it was highly recommended that he go to California for a meeting on Monday. Since our baby was so easy going a week ago, I told him he could go. Well, these past few days the crazy sleep patterns have really gotten to me and I'm tired, just plain tired. I finally feel like a newborn, sleep-deprived mom. And now he's leaving for 2 nights. Well, I know I'll survive, it will just be tough.

Feeling Blessed

Right now I feel so blessed. I don't know what I did to deserve such an easy baby. He is very sleepy during the day still, maybe awake 4 hours or so, hardly ever cries and is already in a good nighttime routine. He goes to bed around 8 or 9, sleeps til 1 or 2, and then wakes up again at 4 or 5. Then he sleeps in until 8 or 9 AM. Truly, I am not that tired and feeling so blessed. Two nights ago he went to sleep at 9 PM and slept until 4:15 AM, wow!

He is such a mild tempered baby, I just love it!

Thoughts on the hospital and coming home

Since this blog has become my journal, I am going to write some of my thoughts regarding the hospital stay and any other little tidbit that has gone through my mind that past week and a half. Warning, this post will probably be long!!

First off, I have really enjoyed having a newborn baby in my home. With Timmy, he was so cranky, never napped for more than 45 minutes and was difficult and I was struggling to heal for weeks which added to my disconnect. With Allison, I wasn't sure what to expect but she was an easier baby for the first month or so and then went on to nap only 45 minutes at a time also. I still didn't feel an instant connection to her at the beginning though. However, with little Mikey, I am so happy he is part of our family and I just really enjoy holding him and taking care of him. The last evening I was at the hospital Justin left early to spend some time with our kids and sleep over at his parent's house. I was a little lonely so I just kept the baby with me and snuggled him until it was time to go to bed. In the morning, I couldn't wait for him to come back and join me, he is so sweet!

This time at the hospital we didn't have as many visitors and I actually really enjoyed so much downtime to rest and enjoy my baby. When visitors did come, most of them overlapped so it worked out really well. I still love having visitors but it hasn't been as strong of a need this time around. With my past babies I got the baby blues pretty bad and needed people around me constantly to feel okay.

I just love Davis Hospital! The nurses were all fantastic in their care and concern. The nursery nurses were also wonderful and never made me feel bad for leaving my baby in their care for as long as I wanted, which was usually from 9:30 PM until 8 or 9 in the morning. I also love that you can order whatever food you want during your stay and get snacks for the evening. They also had a new spa service this time which allowed you to pick one spa service to be performed in your room for free. I chose a facial and shoulder/neck/face massage. It was fabulous being pampered for 45 minutes! Other services included a pedicure, hair cut or hair style. They really know how to treat their patients :)

I already wrote about my easy delivery, and I have had an easy time healing as well. I am not one to sit around and let everyone do things for me (I should probably take it more easy but I just can't seem to sit still for long). I do have to sit for several periods during the day to pump and to feed the baby, both which take about a half hour to do. So, I am forced to rest a little bit at least :)

So far Mike has been a really calm and easy going baby. He doesn't have to be swaddled to fall asleep, and he sleeps quite a bit. During the night he has already established a routine. He wakes up around 1 AM and I feed him and get him back down by about 1:30. Then he wakes up around 4 or 5 for another feeding. After that, Justin takes over until I'm ready to get up and face the new day. Overall, I am not that tired thank goodness!

I haven't lost very much weight yet. When I came home from the hospital I had only lost around 8 pounds. I guess I enjoyed my hospital food too much, especially getting dessert with dinner and lunch, ha ha! Since coming home though I have continued to lose some weight and I will probably be over 20 pounds lost at the 6 week mark. With my last 2 babies I lost the baby weight so quickly that I didn't really need in-between clothes. However, I am not losing it as quickly (too many treats including girl scout cookies being delivered the day we got home) so I am struggling to find something to wear every day. Jeans are out (besides maternity jeans) so I am wearing stretch pants and all of my more loose fitting shirts. My maternity jeans still fit really well sadly but the shirts are too baggy so finding the right shirts to fit low enough over the maternity jeans has been a bit of a struggle. I will do it though, I will lose this weight!

I have decided to pump again this time around instead of breastfeeding for 4-6 weeks. In fact, I have never even attempted to latch Mike on in order to minimize the damage done and so that pumping will be a little less painful. There are times when it really hurts, especially my right side, but other times no pain at all which is nice. I mentioned in my other post that Allie probably has RSV so I am definitely going to stick through with this pumping business so that my baby will be protected as best as possible. If any of you are reading this and don't know already, I have a yeast infection in my breasts from breastfeeding Timmy and it has never gone away and I am unfortunately always bruised. I also have an excess of the enzyme lipase in my milk which makes it taste metallic when stored in the fridge for more than a day or frozen in the freezer. To combat this, I have to scald my milk before freezing to keep it tasting normal - one more step, lucky me! When I try to feed Mikey those bottles that have been in the fridge for more than 24 hours, he usually rejects them and shakes his head when I try to feed him. My kids laugh and laugh at his shaking his head and I admit, it is really funny to watch! It is sad to throw out the milk that he doesn't like, I am in pain to bring him the good stuff! Oh well, my trials are not too hard to handle.

On Saturday my sister Sherri came to visit and I decided to go out and go shopping for a few hours without kids. I really wanted a new soft pink robe from Sears that I have noticed and wanted for a few months now but couldn't really justify since I have a nice robe already, although it is like 10-12 years old now. Well, with having a baby and being up a lot in the night, I decided I wanted the soft robe to put on to make the middle of the night feedings more comfortable. I went and bought it, yay! I love it! We did some other errands as well and it was nice to talk to her and just get out for a bit.

This time around, my Mom only stayed for a few days. She came Wednesday evening and left on Friday afternoon. She was a great help though and I was able to get some rest during the night and some naps during the day. She even made me her chicken soup so that I could have lunch for the next week which I love :) She just got married, and hasn't had much time to adjust to her new home in Wales so she was anxious to get home to her new husband and home. Since this time around has been easy, I agreed to her leaving on Friday. She said she would come back on Monday the 21st if I needed more help but I was doing fine so she just stayed in Murray to continue going through her old house.

The first night I got home from the hospital I got the baby blues really bad and I started crying and couldn't stop! I was soo tired and the baby was really restless that night. My Mom finally took the baby from 1-5 so I could rest and I did, but then felt really guilty for not taking care of my baby in the night. I checked on my Mom and she was so disoriented that she didn't know what time it was. She thought it was only 2 AM but then she felt a strong prompting from the spirit that she needed to get up and feed the baby. When she came upstairs around 5:45 AM she saw that I had been sitting at the table crying for the past 45 minutes. She didn't realize the whole night had past and she hadn't fed the baby once, just kept giving him his binkie. We quickly fed the baby and talked for a while. The baby went back to sleep so I went back to bed and started talking to Justin and started crying again, I was such a bawl baby! I slept in and went to see my chiropractor and started crying again. He suggested I start taking fish oil and overdose on them a bit. Instead of taking 2 like recommended, he said to take 5 a day. I bought some and started taking them and the blues went away almost like magic! I haven't been really sad or overwhelmed since then, they are great :)

Anyway, that's about it for my thoughts. If you read this whole post, then wow, I am amazed at you!

My birth experience

Well, here is the story of how Michael arrived. It's a little long but I wanted to write down everything so I can have it to read in the future.

Justin and I dropped off our kids on Sunday night to my in-laws so they could babysit during our hospital stay. Justin and his Dad gave me a nice blessing before we left which I really appreciated. We came home and I tried to sleep but I was restless and nervous. We woke up at 5:30 AM and got ready and arrived at the hospital around 6:45 AM for my 7 AM induction.

We got checked in and headed up to the labor and delivery room. Before any meds were started, I was dilated to a 2. She checked my blood pressure and it was reading a little high but she said it was normal since most moms are a little nervous. At 7:30 the nurse put my IV in and it hit a block so she pushed through it and it hurt like crazy! I am still bruised from it! My blood pressure dropped really low so she put me on oxygen for 15 minutes so I didn't feel so light-headed. She then started me on the oxytocin and contractions started to come every 3-4 minutes although not too hard. My doctor arrived around 8:30 and broke my water and said I was at a 3. After that the contractions started to come every 2-3 minutes and they were pretty rough. The nurse asked if I wanted to epidural and I said yes, although I felt like a wimp since I was only at a 3 :) By the way, I loved all of my nurses, especially my delivery nurse.

It took probably 30-40 minutes before the anesthesiologist came in and gave me the epidural. It still wigged me out a little but was okay although it worked much better on my right side. I told the nurse I was still feeling some contractions and back pain on my left side so she had me lay on that side to help the meds flow that way. It definitely helped and later they let me turn and lay on my right side which helped also. I stayed at a 4 for a while and felt like the labor would be really long.

The nurse then upped my dose of meds and came in at 11:30 AM to check me and I was at a 7. She said I would be a 10 in 20 minutes and to plan on having the baby by noon. She came back around 11:50 and indeed I was fully dilated. She called the doc, prepared the room and put me back on oxygen for the delivery. My doctor came and had me push once and said the head was crowning. He told me I would tear a little and recommended a little episiotomy so I agreed. He then had me push again and out came the head. For my final push the baby came out and it was amazing because I wasn't really numb above my belly button and I could feel the baby leaving my body :)

He cried for a few minutes and then calmed down. His first Apgar test score was 8.9 I believe. He weighed in at 7 lbs 14 oz, 21 inches long and was born at 12:06 PM. He was bundled up and Justin held him while the doc finished up with me. I guess my placenta wasn't cooperating so he had to push high up on my stomach a lot which hurt quite a bit since I wasn't numb there. Finally he finished and stitched me up. I held the baby and he was sounding like he had fluid in his throat so we asked the nurse and she sent him to the nursery to suction him out better and warm him up. He was gone for about 2 hours so it felt weird to give birth and then not have my baby for so long.

After waiting the standard hour in the delivery room, they moved me to my private room and my lunch had arrived and I was glad, I was hungry! The meds were wearing off pretty quickly although I stayed numb and didn't need medication until 9 PM that night.

Well, that's the story of how I delivered my baby. Really easy delivery, and a wonderful baby to hold.

I will write another post about my hospital stay because I love the hospital, the nurses, the food (well mostly) and the pampering they give you. It deserves its own post.

Welcome Michael Benjamin McMurray

He's here and such a sweet little boy! We are so happy to welcome Baby Mikey into our family and here's a little bit about him. He was born 1 week early by induction (story to come) and weighed 7 lbs 14 oz and was 21 inches long. His hair is dark brownish red and his eyes are dark bluish/gray. He loves to sleep and I have to wake him up during the day to have him eat enough although he is still below the recommended 2.5 x body weight = total calories in a day. He weighs just under 8 pounds and if you times that by 2.5 he should have about 19-20 oz a day but he usually has 15. Oh well, we'll see if he's back to his birth weight at his 2 week appt.



We have been really cautious with germs when it comes to Mikey. Allison returned home from her stay with my in-laws with a bad cold. She has a runny nose, cough and chest congestion. When I mentioned this to the doc at Mike's 5 day checkup he believes she has RSV which is no big deal for a 3 year old, just a cold, but for a baby it is more serious. Allie has not been able to touch the baby, touch his binkies, blankets or bottles at all. Luckily she is coughing less, nose is running less and hopefully she will be illness free by next week! The doctor is a bit worried about this and says if he shows any illness at all to bring him back before his 2 week appt. He did have a very small runny nose last night, but nothing today. This is motivating me even more to pump breast milk to feed him to keep his immune system in top shape. The pain is worth it!

Welcome Mikey, we just love you and the sweet spirit you have brought into our home of 5!

New pictures

Allison woke me up this morning at 5:30 AM because she was whimpering in her sleep and I had a hard time getting back to bed because of my funky dreams of having the baby at home and having my doctor as my old boss from Lewis Young.

Well, since I am awake, I thought I would post some pictures from the past few months.

Allison with her Strawberry Shortcake Cake

The cake up close

Allison in her new Ariel dress

Allison with her play shoes

New Princess shirt

Treasure Chest of Dresses

New Princess Table & Chairs

Justin and Allie blowing out the candles at the Family Party

Allie's umbrella from Grandma Beth

New outfit from Grandpa Griggs

Cute new dress from Jer, Andrea and cousins

Allie is potty trained, yay!

My kids are best friends!

Allison's amazing fashion choices!