Game day

New pictures

I gave it up

I gave up MY plan yesterday and life is so much better. It's not that I have anything in the least against formula feeding - apart from the price. It was just the fact that I had done months worth of research and decided that this was the way to go for us. Everyone says the first few weeks is hard - so I was anticipating that. What I didn't anticipate was that Matthew's struggle to feed - every time, him not sleeping well between feedings and my inability to sleep at all was taking it's toll on all of us. Because I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't making enough milk to stisfy him.
After our doctor visit yesterday - which she said he looked healthy - but sounded like we did need to supplement and come back next week for another weigh in - Mark and I decided to just go the formula route, I would continue to pump as much as I could to keep up production and give him as much as we could. Amazingly enough, after we made that decision, I felt the weight and stress just fall off!
Mom and Dad spent the night at our apt so Mom could get up with Matthew and feed him while I would try to pump. After the 11:30 feeding - Mark said - no more for me that night - I needed to stay in bed and sleep.
Thankfully, I finally fell asleep!!!!! I probably got 5 or 6 hours - that's about as much as I had had in the past three days!
Matthew is a different baby now that he can get a full tummy. This mommy has a better outlook on life and Daddy can get enough sleep now, too instead of trying to keep Matthew quiet so that I could try to sleep.
God has been very gracious to us!!!

Overwhelmed

That pretty much sums us up right now.
I have to believe that life will get better. Breast feeding is HARD with a newborn that goes ballistic when he doesn't "get it" after one or two sucks.
Matthew has his first doctors appt tomorrow. I'm anxious to see how much he weighs, since we are doing the breastfeeding thing.

We're so thankful for my parents who came down yesterday. They have been a great help!!

I'm also thankful for Cheryl - my new favorite person down here! She's is a lactation consultant that we called twice yesterday(on Christmas) when I was at my wits end with feeding. She came over and was a tremendous encouragement! I would say that this is probably the hardest thing I've ever done - I want to persevere and I want to give up.

I'm thankful to not be pregnant. Even though I'm still recovering from the C-section - and that's still sore, I feel so much better.

I'm thankful for my wonderful husband. If nothing else, this experience is making me love him more than ever!

Matthew Terry

Matthew Terry came on Friday, December 21st at 9:31am via C-section. He weighed 8#12oz. 20 3/4 inches!! I had called my dr. Thursday wondering if I was coming down with a sinus infection, he asked me if I could check my BP and call him back. It was 126/86 - he decided that I needed to go get another NST at the hospital. We got the NST Thursday evening and he came by to offer a C-section the next day. He said that I was bascially uniducible - my cervix hadn't budged a centimeter at almost 42 weeks! Of course, he said that I could still wait to have the section on Monday if I wanted to. I was so relieved and happy to have the offer!!!
We checked in at 6:30 and had to wait for another planned C-section ahead of mine - that was the hardest part! Thankfully, I had bought a "search a word" puzzle book for the whole waiting process when I assumed that I would have a normal 12-13 hour labor.
Thankfully, I can say that it wasn't a bad experience at all. The hardest part was the waiting! One of the best things, apart from seeing a beautiful baby boy, of course, was being able to lay in the recovery room afterwards - for the first time in months, I was laying on my back and on not having any type of pain or discomfort! It was nice not feeling anything from about my diaphragm on down :o)
We came home this afternoon, Matthew has been fed and is currently sleeping. He is such a mystery! It's very humbling to have this responsibility, we do feel the weigt of it.
Anyway, overall, I feel good!! Thanks so much for the prayers and notes of encouragement - it really does mean so much!

Winter in the South

It's supposed to get up 68 today!! I'm not complaining, it's still a little weird.

Mark "gave birth"

We are very happy to report the birth of Mark's kidney stone yesterday evening!! What a relief. For those we have spoken to with histories of kidney stones, though, everyone is a bit tense "waiting for the next one" - Mark is no different.

I'm very proud of him - he's really doing a good job of drinking water. It's hard because he normally only drank one or two glasses a day at the most, and the rest of his fluids came in the way of Coke or Pepsi. Cola's are off limits now, Sprite and juice just isn't the same for him.