Happy To You

Well, my son has officially turned two. Today we had a great day. He woke up to presents waiting for him in the living room - a space shuttle, a doctor play kit, and a few more super heroes.

He got to have a giant chocolate chip cookie from Barnes & Noble, and after a supper of his favorite meal (hot dogs), we sang "Happy Birthday" and he blew out two candles and enjoyed a little birthday cake.

Yesterday and today all I could think about was where I was two years ago. At 7:53am this morning, I got a little teary eyed. Motherhood has changed me in so many ways - the biggest of all my capacity to love. There is no feeling like watching your child grow and seeing him find joy in the world.

And the cutest thing ever - he likes being sung "Happy Birthday" to. We sang it to him, my parents sang it to him over skype, and his class sang it to him during snack. While he was playing downstairs, I could hear him singing to himself, "Happy to you."

Happy Birthday, son. We love you very much.

Good Mornings

Some days, L is extra cuddly and our goodbye hugs last a few seconds longer. Every day I drop him off at daycare, I kiss the top of his head and say, "I love you. Have a good day."

Most days, he takes his place at the breakfast table, then turns to me. He waves and says, "Bye, Momma," and blows me a kiss. If I'm lucky, I get an "Ah loo."

This morning he didn't want to break our hug. But then one of his good friends Ava called out from the breakfast table "Lucas!" (of course it sounds more like Goo-cas :0) .) She pulled out the chair next to her and pointed to it, saying "Lucas" over and over.

I don't know what it is, but these two little tots definitely have a special place in each other's hearts. These are the same babies that would crawl over to each other from across the room grinning from ear to ear when they were not even a year old.

Lucas sat in the chair next to Ava. I was just leaving the room, certain he had forgotten me already, when he looked up and I got my "Bye, Momma," wave, and kiss.

I love starting my days this way.

Luke's Favorite Foods

fruit loops

watermelon
animal crackersblackberries
mandarin oranges
baked beans
green beanschocolate chip cookies :0)
ice cream
chicken nuggets
peanut butter & jelly sandwiches

(of course Luke only gets a small taste of ice cream/cookies on a rare occasion, but his arms start waving like crazy when he does get a taste!)

It's too cliche -

but what a difference a year makes.

A year ago today, Nathan and I checked into the hospital at 7am and I was hooked up to pitocin. A year ago from this moment, I wondered if he'd ever come. And a year ago from tomorrow morning, Lucas Arthur was born at 7:53am. At 7:53am, I met my son for the first time face to face. I was in such awe of his beauty, that it took all my concentration simply to reach out and stroke his cheek with the tip of my finger. At 7:53am on Thursday, April 16th, time stood still.

It's so bittersweet. I can't believe it's been a whole year since Lucas was born. I will never forget all of the emotions that came with that day. All of the struggles, all of the hope, all of the love.

The greatest things do come in the smallest packages.


Lucas on his birth day. 4/16/09


Nearly one year later. 4/3/10

We love you, Lucas.



Luke's birth story.

Cell Phone Files

Last weekend we went to the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, MN.

Lucas really enjoyed it and I'll have to put up some pictures from our real camera later. Here are a few I snapped with my cell phone after we left.

He loved the river otters! Tia bought him his own little stuffed otter.


And I was looking through all my old pics and I came across these three taken way back in July. Look how little he was! I can't believe he's going to be one in less than a month!

My son has a superpower

He can make any person, at any given time, smile.

He makes eye contact with everyone he can when we are out shopping, and then he lets loose his big grin. And even the grumpiest of people can't help but smile back.

I think it's a good power to have. :)

Friends

Yesterday at daycare, I set Lucas down on the floor and Ava was on the other side of the room. She was "talking" to Lucas and then started crawling towards him. Lucas got a huge smile on his face and started "talking" back to her. Then he started crawling towards her, too.

It was really cute!

Tonight

Tonight, I rocked my baby for a few extra minutes.
Tonight, I held him close a little bit tighter.
Tonight, I nuzzled his cheeks a few extra times.
Tonight, I kissed the top of his head a little more slowly.
Tonight, I gazed at his tiny nose, fingers, and toes a little bit longer.
Tonight, I laid him down a bit more reluctantly.
Tonight, I memorized everything about him.

Because he won't be a baby very long. He will never remember snuggling in close and falling asleep with a smile on his face. He won't remember how we made each other smile. He won't remember all of these little moments.

But I will.

At last, an update

I finally have an opportunity to do a little writing. I have been so busy at work and home. It's actually hard to write this. Now that I have a moment where I don't have to think about anything, my brain has just shut down. My thoughts are scattered and it's difficult for me to put them in order.

I don't think I will ever be a normal person again. I am still super emotional and irrational. It's frustrating. I also can't remember random things - like where I put the student file I literally JUST had in my hand.

Lucas had his 4-month shots a couple weeks ago. He is such a trooper. He weighs 18 lbs now. Yikes! I still can't believe how fast he is growing. I get sad each time he outgrows an outfit. I love to watch him and Nathan together. My favorite times are when Luke is in his pj's and sitting on Daddy's lap in the rocking chair, contentedly chewing on his tiny fingers while Dad reads bedtime stories. It melts my heart.

It's still hard to leave him at daycare. I feel like I rarely get to see him. This morning when I dropped him off, I was so reluctant to hand him over. I was thinking, But I haven't even gotten to see him smile yet today.

Well, my free time is about to come to a close. Hopefully I can do a longer update soon.

The most dangerous place in the world

Is between a mother and her child.

I now completely understand what this phrase means. Words cannot describe the feelings of being a parent. Before Lucas was born, I wasn't sure how I would feel as a parent. Sometimes I worried that I wouldn't feel an overwhelming love for him, especially since pregnancy had not been wonderful and all I really wanted was for everything to be over. But I couldn't love him any more. I can't believe Nathan and I created this tiny miracle.

On Tuesday, April 14th, I went in for a regular checkup with my OB. Nathan had the day off, so he came with me. At this point, I was overdue by 3 days. Because I was overdue, the first thing the nurse did after checking blood pressure, weight, etc. was hook me up to the NST- non-stress test. For some reason, the nurses couldn't get baby's heartbeat to rise like it should. At one point she even pressed a little buzzer to my belly. But his heartbeat stayed right around 130.

Then we had the tummy check with the dr. When he checked, I was still just a fingertip dilated and not very much effaced. He did want to schedule me for an induction. "How does it sound to get this baby out this week?" he asked. "That sounds good!" I was so relieved. Pregnancy was not kind to me!

He called the family birth center and asked about openings. When he got off the phone, he told us to check in to the birth center the next morning (Wendesday the 15th) bright and early at 7am. "It's going to be a long day. Be prepared for 18-20 hours of labor." (In my head I didn't think I would really be in labor that long. Boy, was I wrong!)

He left and I was shaking as Nathan and I left the hospital. I couldn't believe I was finally to that point. I wanted pregnancy over so bad, but now when it came down to it, I was terrified.

After dropping Bandon off at a boarding kennel, we arrived at the hospital. I started a quick timeline of when things happened, and Nathan kept it up for me after I got my epidural.

7am - check-in/hookup
Nathan and I wheeled our suitcase into the family birth center where a nurse checked us in and showed me to the room I would labor and give birth in. She started an IV and the pitocin and hooked me up to a machine that monitors contractions. Nathan and I went on a couple short walks to help things progress, watched How I Met Your Mother on his laptop, and played cards.

This was the easy part! The contractions were not painful, much to my surprise and pleasure.

8:30am - attempt to break water
Dr. Herzog (my OB) came in and told me he was going to try to break my water to get things moving along. Apparently baby was too high up, and all the discomfort was for nothing. I wasn't happy. The dr. told me he would try again later.

1:45pm - broke water; contractions hurt!
The dr. came in again and this time, successfully broke my water (it was quite uncomfortable!) Having your water broken is a very strange sensation. The dr. did tell the nurse to notify NICU because there was meconium in my water. I almost started crying. This meant that I would NOT be able to hold my baby right away. Instead, the first people he would be passed off to were nurses.

After my water was broken, the contractions became quite painful. They were coming every 1.5-2 minutes and it was hard to breath through them. I was looking forward to the epidural, but I had to be at least 2 cm before getting it, because an epidural slows down labor progress.

3:05pm - 2 cm; epidural
Finally the nurse announced I was 2 cm and I could have the epidural if I liked. Um...YES! She made the call and an anesthesiologist arrived shortly. Getting an epidural is really painful, much worse than I anticipated it to be. Getting things shoved up your spine is no walk in the park, especially when you have to hold perfectly still while having painful contractions. For a while, I honestly thought about telling him to stop and I would just skip the epidural. If only those contractions weren't so painful...

Once the epidural was in place, I felt amazing. All of a sudden, I couldn't feel any contractions. The only bad thing was that it made me feel incredibly itchy all over - like having the chicken pox only 1,000 times worse. Thankfully he gave me something to make the itchiness go away, and then I was happy.

3:30pm - sleep in and out
With the epidural in place, I was able to sleep because the pain of the contractions was nonexistent. I drifted in and out for a while and crunched on ice chips, imagining the big meal I would have when this was all over.

9pm - 3 cm
Surely with how painful and close together the contractions were, I must have made a ton of progress, right? Wrong! When the nurse checked at 9pm, I was only 3 cm. I wanted to cry. Dr. Rondeau came in and introduced himself. He was the OB on-call that night. "Hopefully we'll deliver your baby tonight." I hoped so, too! It seemed to be taking forever.

9:30pm - high temp; tylenol given and thrown up
Throughout all this, the nurse is checking vitals every two hours. At 9:30, all I know is that I had a high temperature. She wouldn't tell me how high. She went to talk to Dr. Rondeau came back with three tylenol pills. I took all three and threw them all up about 10 seconds later. She went and talked to the dr. again and then told me we would try again in a little bit.

10:00pm - high temp; more tylenol
My temperature was still high, so I was given more tylenol. This time it stayed down.

10:30pm - temp still high
The nurse came back again to see if my fever was getting any better. It wasn't. She disappeared to find the dr. He came in and asked what I was allergic to. I am allergic to sulfa so he couldn't give me what he originally planned to. He left to find alternative drugs.

11:45pm - gave ampicilin & gentamyacin
The nurse came in with two more bags of fluids to put into me. I don't know exactly what they were, but they were to bring my fever down. "We really need to get it below 100.4," she told me. She checked me a little bit later and it was starting to go down. That's all I really remember, I was dozing in and out.

1:30am - 7 cm
It was time for another cervix check (yay). I expected to be maybe 5 cm since it seemed like I was progressing so slowly. I was shocked to hear I was at 7 cm! I remember thinking "It wont' be long now!" Haha. Try another 6 hours!

4:00am - 9-10 cm
The nurse came in again at 4am to check me. She said I was between nine and ten centimeters. It was almost time to push! She told me she would come back soon to check again.

This is where I really started to get nervous. I couldn't believe it was practically time and my baby would be here soon. It all seemed very surreal.

4:55am - 10 cm
Almost an hour later, the nurse checked again and said I was definitely at 10 cm. She began to prepare the room (dropped the bed, etc). She told me she was done with her shift at 7, so she hoped the baby was born before she had to leave. I thought for sure he would be born before 7am - that was two hours away!

Pushing is hard work, and I mean HARD work. Nathan held one leg and the nurse held the other. I pushed and pushed and it felt like I was not making any progress. I wanted to give up. After an hour, I was exhausted. The dr. came in to check on me and told the nurse that I needed to have oxygen for the baby (he wasn't getting enough.)

So 7am came and one nurse left and another came in. I kept asking about when the dr. would come to deliver my baby (I wanted him OUT) but I only got a vague "soon" as an answer. It wasn't much past 7 when I was so tired and so uncomfortable that I was crying, begging the nurse to call the dr., telling her I needed help and that I couldn't do it. Every minute seemed like an eternity.

She did her best to reassure me, but after every contraction, I asked her to call the dr. Finally, at about 7:20ish the baby had crowned and it was time to call a dr. in. She told me she would first page Dr. Herzog, and if he couldn't make it, then Dr. Rondeau would deliver my baby. She paged Dr. H. About five minutes passed and she says kind of nervously, "I'm going to try again, sometimes the page doesn't go through." She paged him again. And I went through another horrid contraction and cried for her to get a dr. She said she would call Dr. Rondeau and called the nurses station. It was 7:30 and Dr. R. had just left.

I screamed, "There's no dr. here?!?" She paged Dr. H. again and assured me he was coming and on his way, then she called the NICU. I remember her telling me, "In just a few minutes this room is going to be very crowded. Don't panic. Blah, blah, blah." I just remember that her trying to calm me down actually freaked me out more.

Finally, Dr. H. rushes into the room, throws on a gown and gloves while I was in mid-contraction and doesn't hesitate to cut me. Thank heaven I had the epidural! It still hurt and I could feel it, but the pain was dulled.

Even with the episiotomy, pushing was hard. It still took a lot of work, but finally Lucas was born after 3 hours of pushing.

7:53am - Lucas Arthur Remmich born
The first comment I heard was, "He's a big boy," as the nurse held him right in front of my face. I remember thinking how beautiful he was, but I had no more touched his cheek with the tip of my finger when he was passed off to the NICU nurses.

When I heard his cry, my heart melted and I ached to hold him.

I watched the NICU nurses examine him, suction out his lungs and clean him off while I was stitched up. The nurses talked about how strong our son was and also that he was big. One said he must be over 9 lbs. (That explained why delivery was so hard!)

The placenta was still high, so the dr. had to knead my stomach to work it down to be delivered. This also hurt. I was under the impression that delivering the placenta was relatively painless!

I didn't get to hold him very long - Nathan and the nurses took Lucas to the nursery to be checked in. I was cleaned up and changed.

That is my delivery in a nutshell. There's actually much more to tell and maybe one of these days I'll write more about what happens after delivery, especially since Lucas' story isn't quite finished yet - he had to be readmitted to the hospital for jaundice. But I will tell that another time.

Early Ode To My Son

You aren't even born yet. But I can somehow see your face.
You have given your mother quite tough time already.
Now it's past your due date and your running out of space.
For now the epidural is allowing her to sleep.
And I am left to wonder what you will be like as you grow.
Will you be a good sleeper? Will you help your mother?
Will you share our sense of humor and maybe help me mow?
I can't wait to see you smile when I hold you tight.
I have images of me pitching a ball as you give the bat a swing
I'm afraid I'm not great at sports but we can learn together.
I want to see your first step and be there for you in everything.
I have to wait only a little while longer to hold you in my arms.
Until then we have to help mommy in her labor with you.
I know she will be just as happy to see you too!

40 weeks, 4 days

I had my final dr. appt yesterday afternoon. After getting checked, the dr. decided to schedule me to be induced the next day at 7am.

That's only 3 hours away. It's 4am and I'm completely terrified. It might be one of the scariest feelings I've ever had. So here I am, awake, crying, and sitting next to my dog and cat on the living room couch in the still of the night.

I hope everything goes well tomorrow; all I can think about is everything that can go wrong.

The good thing is that very soon I will get to hold him. That is what I am trying to focus on...

Done being pregnant

I wish I was done being pregnant. I'm tired and uncomfortable all day long. And his movements aren't cute or fun anymore. They HURT. My legs and back are especially sore from supporting all the extra weight. I only have about 7 weeks left. It's coming fast, but sometimes 7 weeks sounds like an eternity.

I miss my normal clothes. I miss going for long walks with my dog. I miss walking up the stairs without running out of breath. I miss eating and feeling satisfied after. I miss sleep. I miss not being an emotional basket-case. I miss wearing my wedding ring.

I'm kind of hoping the baby comes a couple weeks early, even though I know post partum is filled with its own wonderful aches and pains.

30 weeks and 6 days

Only 64 days to go, little one!

This past Wednesday, your dad and I attended our first Lamaze class. It had a lot of good information and we met a few other couples who are due within a day of your expected arrival.

You must be growing a lot this week. No matter what, I am always hungry for more food. I bring snacks to work with me every day. Yesterday, I ate all my snacks before 11am - and I was still hungry!

We got your car seat yesterday and Bandon and Dakota sniffed every inch. Don't worry, we'll wash it before you get here. :)

My only current request is that you please settle down by 9:30pm. Mommy needs her sleep.

Hugs and kisses,
Mom

Drained

Completely drained of all energy. Feeling like this at 26 weeks 4 days is not making me look forward of what's to come. I would love a day off completely to myself. I would take naps, do some reading, and do a little work on baby's room.

The sleep deprivation is awful. I'm always so uncomfortable and wake up frequently during the night.

Only 94 days left until baby's due date. It's coming fast. Yikes! Time is flying. But I'm looking forward to holding my little boy. He gets stronger every day. Many times, his kicks/punches hurt. I keep wondering what he'll look like and what his personality will be like...

23 weeks, 3 days

We got over 10 inches of snow in a blizzard Sunday night.

Monday morning we had a 4-foot snowdrift in our driveway and also a 1-foot drift inside our garage. Nathan got up at 4:30 to get the snow-blower going. He worked for an hour and only cleared a path big enough for one car to fit through.

Once baby is big enough to hold a shovel, he'll be out there alongside his daddy!

Only 16.5 weeks until our little one is due. It's scary to think of it that way.

Hormones have been raging. Yesterday I just needed to cry. No reason. Nothing bad happened. And yet I couldn't stop the tears from spilling over. It's frustrating.

I have another check-up on Thursday. We're also starting to register for classes at the hospital. We're going to be busy.

21 weeks, 2 days

Dear Son,

Why morning sickness again? I thought we were pretty much over this.

If you make it stop, I will buy you anything you want for your first birthday.

Please and thank you,

Mom

To my son

Yesterday we found out that you are a boy! Daddy and I couldn't be happier.

I have started crocheting a blanket just for you - the yarn is white streaked with different shades of blues and greens. It reminds me of the ocean, somewhere your father and I love to visit. I can't wait to wrap you in it.

Everyone is excited to meet you. I'm glad the time is going fast. April will be here before I know it. I'm sure you will look very much like your father. We can't wait to see you!

Love,
Mom

It's a boy!!!!

Had an ultrasound today and there was no doubt about it; It's definitely a boy. He wasn't shy but he made it difficult for the technician to get a good profile view as he liked to keep his hands up by his head and keep moving. The family is so excited and grandma Remmich knew the whole time it was going to be a boy when everyone else thought it would be a girl. Dakota and Bandon already said they will be good big sisters plus now daddy will have at least one other male in the house.

19 weeks

Finally, many of the bad pregnancy symptoms are going away. Tomorrow afternoon is our level two ultrasound.

I feel like the baby is a girl. We'll find out soon enough!