Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘newborn’

On Thursday evening I finally went into labor! Matt was at work and I started noticing regular contractions, about 15 minutes apart, at 6:30. He came home for dinner around 7:30 and by then I thought it might be a good idea for Matt to stay home rather than return to work for the rest of the night. Things were going great and we got Rhino down for bed, got the bags ready, and called Charren. When contractions got about 3-5 minutes apart, around 11pm, she came over to spend the night here for Rhino. That was so much more convenient than waking him up to take him over to her place and have her try to get him back down in a strange place. Thankfully, he didn’t wake for her or complain the whole night. He never even knew we were gone!

I got admitted at the hospital around 11:30 and was hooked up to the monitor and checked. Everything looked good, but I was only 4cm dilated. So at midnight I Matt and I walked the hall for about 30 minutes until things got too uncomfortable and I wanted to lie down and relax. The pain started getting worse and worse and I even broke down and tried to convince Matt that maybe having them break my water would be a good idea and that I had changed my mind about the epidural, that it was no longer a big deal to me and we should probably call the anesthesiologist! Well, I’m so glad that he was supportive and didn’t let me give in because it didn’t last much longer! At about 1:30 my water broke and I started to panic a little from the pain. The nurses checked me again I was at 9cm but feeling ready to push. They called the doctor and told me to try not to push, which was pretty much impossible. By the time the doctor arrived, Matt announced he could see hair and the doctor told me to give two good pushes. I did, but the baby’s shoulder got stuck and I needed to try a little bit harder. Compared to when Rhino was born, I think I lost my cool a little bit more and was yelling at the nurse who was yelling at me.

Our little boy was born at 1:56 and was put directly on my chest to feed. The doctor waited to clamp the cord until it stopped pulsing, as we requested, and then Matt cut the cord. I spent about a half an hour with our little guy to feed him before giving him up to get weighed and measured. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 4 ounces and is 22-3/4 inches long. What a big guy! Matt gave him a sponge bath to clean him up as the doctor and I finished up. I had the same issue as I did with Rhino where I lost way too much blood after he was born, so I needed to stay in bed for quite a while. Around 4:30 I was fine and taken to our room. Matt decided to go home and relieve Charren before Rhino woke up rather than room in with me, which was fine. Between feedings, nurses coming in to check the baby’s vitals, and then coming in to check mine, and other interruptions, I never got more than 10-15 minutes of sleep at a time. All the endorphins probably kept me awake too, as I was just really giddy for the next 24 hours.

So, all of you who know us personally probably all ready know Baby’s name. For the sake of his online privacy, we don’t want to use his real name and picked a nickname for him. I think Rhino’s nickname is super cute and appropriate and really wanted an animal nickname that was on the same level, but I’ve had a difficult time finding one. Tonight Matt and I came up with “Heron”, in part because of his height. It’s not as cool and masculine as “Rhino”, but herons are cool and and I need to pick something to call him online!

I was discharged from the hospital Sunday morning and am very glad to be home! It was nice to relax a little bit in the hospital, but I did miss Matt and Rhino and got a little bit bored hanging out with Heron. Today has been nice, although he’s pretty much spent the whole day sleeping. Rhino enjoys having him around and always waves to him, cuddles up next to him, kisses him on the forehead, pats his head, and pokes at his hands and feet. So far he hasn’t seemed too crabby about anything and is probably just enjoying having a new “toy” around. I love sitting around, feeding Heron and having Rhino snuggle up next to us. He’s curious about what’s happening when I’m feeding the baby and just likes to stare and point a lot. Our boys are super sweet and I am so in love!

So when Rhino was 10 days old we had a newborn photo shoot. Danette just sent me some digital copies of a bunch of our photos to put up online, so here they are! It’s so crazy to see tiny, 10 day-old Rhino compared to gigantic, 7 month-old Rhino today! Here’s the photo set.

I heard that newborns are most interested in high-contrast images. We can tell this is true with Rhino, he was always looking at the blinds in the daylight or Matt’s hairline. I printed out a handful of black and white images of checkerboards, stripes, and targets and pasted them to cardboard and taped them to his swing. Now most of the time when he swings, he is staring up at the side where an image is taped.

Rhino has often been fussy during diaper changes. We set up a new, more comfortable changing station for him and decided to give him something interesting to look at. I took a mobile that came with the Pack ‘n Play and removed the cute but potentially uninteresting (for now) bears that it came with and taped some of my images to the mobile. It is set up on the changing table so Rhino can look right up at the papers and he obviously enjoys them. Now he has started cooing and babbling and during about half of his diaper changes he holds little conversations with his black and white buddies. This isn’t a diaper change video, but this is just what he does!

Here is Rhino on Matt’s tummy, wobbling and whining and wearing himself out!

Here is Rhino, sitting on the couch, looking at the blinds.

Here he is again, kind of smiling, kind of looking devious.

Rhino has such adorable little fingers and toes and they’ve all ready grown so much in a month! I definitely wanted to capture their cuteness while they’re still tiny!

We have a lot of videos of Rhino hanging out on a Boppy pillow or in his swing. Really, he does other things too.

Rhino first smiled what I believe to be genuine, intentional smiles 9 days ago. I’ve just failed to get any good photos of his adorable smiles. The first time he smiled, Matt was at work and I was “baby talk”ing to him and giving him kisses. He kept smiling every time, so I figured it wasn’t just gas! Then Matt came home and did the same thing and Rhino smiled up at him. Now he usually smiles at us when he wakes up and when I sing songs with him. Here are a few photos from today’s play time.

Here’s Rhino hanging out on Matt’s shoulder. He was just staring at something on the wall. Then Matt took him to go get changed and dressed for bed. He’s really not usually this upset when he’s changed, but he was pretty cranky until he got clothes on again