Thursday, July 26, 2012

the second month

Nolan at two months:

Weight: 15lbs 5oz (above 95th percentile)
Height: 24in (75th percentile)
Head Circumference: 16in (95th percentile) 



- Started smiling all the time after his first smile (5 weeks)



- Was blessed at his Nana and Pap pap's house.

- Took a trip to mama's work to meet all her co-workers before she quit
- Took his first trip to St. George for his Great Grandpa Keyes' funeral
- Met his cousin Serenity (closest cousin to his age on the Keyes side)

- Went "swimming" for the first time (we just stuck his feet in)
- Sleeps best when swaddled in the woombee
- Developed eczema

- Moved up to size three diapers
- Holds his head up really well
- Loves to be held

- "Yells" most of the time instead of crying
- Sleeps anytime we put him in his carseat
- Gives kisses back by making a clicking sound with his tongue



Apparently I have a lot of pictures of him sleeping! :)

Monday, July 02, 2012

the first month

The very first month of Nolan's life was crazy! After he was born, we spent a couple of days in the hospital before heading home. Despite all of the craziness surrounding his birth, he was proclaimed healthy as can be!



...besides the poor little marks on his head from the vacuum suction :(

Here are a few pictures with family that came to visit us in the hospital:







And here we are back at home!




By the time we left the hospital, Nolan was down from 9lbs to about 8lbs 8oz and he had a little bit of jaundice. So, we had to take him back to the hospital a couple days later to get him checked out. Luckily he was eating like a champ by then and getting rid of his jaundice!

Happy Easter! - 3 days old


The first couple of weeks were hard for me. I came out of the birth with third degree tearing and an episiotomy as well as a broken tail bone. This made sitting just about impossible, which made nursing even more difficult. Thank goodness for the side-lying position!


My mom stayed with us for the first week and helped us out a ton! Also, Scott's new job didn't start until about 3 weeks after Nolan was born. Although this was kind of stressful money-wise, it was definitely nice to have him around to help out!

At his two week check up, Nolan weighed in at 10lbs 8oz and was 22in long! Already growing so much!

When Nolan was about three weeks old, Scott's Grandpa Keyes was not doing well, so he went to St. George to visit him before he died. Nolan and I went to stay at my parents house while he was gone. Here is a cute picture of him while we were there!


Overall, the first month is kind of a blur! Nolan slept a lot and ate a lot and pooped a lot! He really is a good baby. He didn't cry that much, but would mostly just call out when he needed something. He either slept in his bassinet in our room or in bed with us (mostly when we both fell asleep while he was nursing...) Even right at the beginning, Nolan would usually sleep for 3-4 hours between feedings - which I hear is pretty lucky for a newborn!

He loves being held and cuddled especially when sleeping! Luckily there was plenty of family around who wanted to hold him! 




He also loves his binky!


Here we are celebrating grandpa's birthday!


Nolan smiled for the first time at 5 weeks! It's crazy how happy one little facial expressing can make you! And it definitely makes all the late nights worth it!

(Here he is actually 6 weeks, but its the first smile we caught on camera!)

Sorry for the picture overload! But I just can't help it! :)

the birth

I decided I should probably take some time to write about Nolan's birth since I'm already beginning to forget the details even though it wasn't even three months ago!

The whole process began about a week before I actually ended up giving birth. I started getting these awful back aches and so I began paying more attention and realized I was actually having contractions. It was hard to notice them without actually feeling my belly. I could feel the tightening with my hands, but they weren't painful yet (other than in my back, of course). So, I started to measure the time between contractions. One night they were about 1-2 minutes apart so I decided to go to the hospital just to get it checked out. But unfortunately I didn't dilate much during my hour under observation so they sent me home.

I decided I needed to do something to take my mind off of everything. I was in pain and frustrated that the baby just wasn't coming! Not to mention how huge and swollen everything was - I couldn't sleep because I was so uncomfortable and I could barely eat anything since there was pretty much no space left for my stomach! So I went up to spend a few days at my parent's house and to see my sister Katie and her baby Carter who were in town for Easter and to bless Carter. We had a fun time playing games and celebrating my mom's birthday!



My doctor had me come in for an appointment on April 1st. Everything looked okay to him, but because I was overdue, he set up an appointment for me to get a non-stress test at the hospital. So on April 4th I went in for the test. They basically just strapped me up to a monitor where they could monitor my contractions and the baby's heartbeat for an hour. After my hour was up, they had the on-call doctor and my doctor review the results. It turns out the baby's heartbeat was dropping slightly below normal when some of the contractions peaked (probably worn out from a week's worth of them! - I know I was!). So they opted to keep me at the hospital and induce me. 

I was admitted around 12:30pm and my doctor came in at about 1:30 to break my water. I was already about 3cm dilated so they went ahead and started me on pitocin at about 2pm. After a couple of hours my contractions were coming pretty strong and I was already worn out from the past week, so I opted to get my epidural. They kept checking me every hour, but there was very little progress so they slowly kept increasing the amount of pitocin.

I don't remember all of the details and what time everything happened, but at one point in the early evening, the baby's heartbeat began dropping. The nurses came in and had me roll over onto my side. They turned off the pitocin and put me on oxygen. They also decided to put an internal monitor on the baby as opposed to the belt I had been wearing all day (so that they could keep a closer eye on his heartbeat). When the heartbeat was back to normal, they eased me back onto the pitocin, but pretty soon the same thing happened again. They nurses put me back on oxygen and came in to talk to us. They basically said that the pitocin was stressing out the baby and they most likely wouldn't be able to turn it back on. If his heartbeat didn't steady out the way they would like it to, I would need to have an emergency c-section. But they were very calm about the whole thing and I really wasn't that worried.

When they came in to check me the next hour, I was at a 3+ (a tiny bit of progress!), but since I wasn't on pitocin anymore, we decided it was going to be a long night! I sent Scott home to get  couple of things for me. While he was gone, I started feeling the contractions in my back and my side (the side that was up). The anesthesiologist came in to change out my epidural drugs and I told me him I could feel the contractions and it had only been about 30 minutes since I'd been turned over. He told me just to wait a little bit longer and then have the nurses turn me over. About that time, Scott came back and I had him page the nurses to turn me over because I was in a lot of pain. It took a while for them to come in (actually they didn't come in till the hour mark when they had to turn me over and check me anyway.

I was in so much pain at that point. I remember one of the nurses said something to me but I didn't even register it because I was working on getting through the contraction. When I finally realized she had been talking to me I apologized and told her I was in a lot of pain and I could feel my contractions. I felt like all the nurses, like the anesthesiologist just kind of blew me off when I told them this. So the nurse checked me and was shocked that I was complete and ready to push! So in the past (very painful) hour, I had gone from 3+cm to 10. No wonder I was in so much pain!

They called my doctor and I began pushing at around 10pm. At this point they had increased my epidural so that I wasn't in so much pain and the whole experience seemed very surreal. I was kind of in this weird drug/adrenalin induced state and I was pushing every so often while the nurses talked to each other and my husband. I was kind of being ignored but to be honest I was glad - I was able to have the experience in my own little world. 

After an hour and a half of pushing, my doctor said he thought the baby might be too big to come out on his own, but he wanted to try a vacuum before opting for a c-section. The first two times he used the vaccum, the suction broke - if it happened again, I was going to have a c-section. Fortunately the third time he used the vacuum, it worked! He came right out and yelled out to let us know he was here!

Nolan Scott Keyes was born at 12:23am on 5 April 2012. He was 9lbs and 21in long.