Remington's First Easter

Y'all, this mom life is something else.  I don't know how any of you find time to blog daily, or sleep during the day for that matter.  I finally broke down and ordered a dockatot after reading so much about it in hopes to get little man on some kind of schedule.  
Anyway, last weekend was full of celebration for Remington's first Easter.  We are new to this holiday with a baby thing, but it was everything we hoped it would be.  
Saturday, our church threw the Spring Spectacular they throw every year, and we took Remington for his grand debut. It was his first time to church since he was born, and he got all six weeks worth of snuggles, kisses, and "aww"s that he had missed.  We ate cotton candy and corndogs, mingled, and Remy met the Easter bunny for the first time!

On Sunday, we took him to church for the first time. He wore the sweetest bubble that was handmade just for him! He was a champ and only had to be changed twice! lol. Daddy didn't mind, though; he was inducted into the diaper changing dads club. :)

We all had a great weekend celebrating our risen King!!

RemyJones: 1 Month

This has been the most terrifying, most sleep deprived month of my life, but it has been the most amazing month.  It's hard to believe we've been parents to this chunk for a month, when it feels like he's been here for years (see also: sleep deprived).  I don't know why a month on the outside was faster than any of the months inside.  Thanks for making me a mommy, Remy Jones, and for making your daddy a daddy.  Watching the two of you together is my favorite thing ever.  

(working on a better monthly setup...)

Sleeps: 1.5-2.5 hour stretches in the bouncer Eats: 3 oz of breast milk first thing in the am, and 3-4 oz of formula every feeding after that Wearing: 3month onesies, size 1 diapers, and no socks. ever.  Nicknames: Remy Jones, Remy, Chunk, Brother Bear, Bubs Celebrated: St. Patrick's Day, Papa's Birthday, UNC becoming National Champions Likes: Snuggling, Daddy singing, eating, the swing, riding in the car Dislikes: sleeping in socks, diaper changes. being burped
Photo Dump:

(the day we left the hospital. Mama lookin' ROUGH)

(Remington's first lesson in ducks)

No One Told Me

Everyone tells you how much sleep you're going to lose, or how much you're going to love your tiny human, but no one could wholly prepare me for life with a newborn.
1.  sleep No one told me how well I would learn to function on 3-4 hours of sleep. Not 3-4 hour stretches, but 3-4 hours total.  When we brought Remington home he was sleeping 3-4 hours at a time, and we thought we hit the jackpot. We then came to learn that because he had lost so much weight after birth, he was lethargic and had very little energy.  Once he started packing on the pounds, he started sleeping less and less, and so did we. It's amazing that I used to be able to sleep until noon, eat, and go back to bed until 3pm, and now I can function on less sleep than I've ever had. 

2.  poop No one could have prepared me for poop... the amount, the consistency, or the smell.  Lord, the smell. No one could have prepared me to be pooped on, or how hard I would laugh when Remington pooped on Jackson.  There was also no way to convey how quickly babies go through diapers.  We go through 20 on a good day. He's peeing and pooping his way through our bank account. 

3. snuggles No one tells you how sweet baby snuggles are, or how much you'll cherish them, or how much fun they can be.  Remington loves to play opossum, and he will lay there with his eyes open until I look at him, and then he will close them. He's a ham, that's for sure, but boy does he love the snuggles. 

4. patience I am not a patient person, but no one told me how much a newborn would test that patience.  I remember after our third day home, I was crying and asking my mom why he wasn't sleeping more than a couple of hours, and she said "Baby, he's six days old. He won't do that until probably six weeks".... and I bawled. 

5. love No one could have prepared me for the love I'd feel for my sweet boy... or how my love for Jackson would change.  I watch them together and I am just in awe of how amazing this life is. And to think, our love story started 13 years ago with me stealing his shoe and throwing it down the hallway. I remember laying in the hospital the night before we were discharged bawling because I thought it was all a dream and that they were going to make us leave him for someone else to have (hormones, am I right?). I'm just in awe at how much I am blessed with these boys.  

Remington's Birth Story

How is it that my sweet baby boy is a whole four weeks old? Why did my pregnancy crawl, but his being here has been a blink of an eye.  I figured I needed to sit down and write his birth story; with every passing day, the details get fuzzier and fuzzier.  
At 35 weeks, I had the flu. That week, I started taking Tamiflu, and then subsequently started itching all over my body, but especially my hands and feet.  I did a little Googling, which I know was a bad idea, but I stumbled across a condition called Cholestasis. It was me to a T.  I e-mailed my doctor and she had me come in for blood work the next day. At our 36 week appointment, my bile salt test had finally come back, and my doctor said I absolutely had cholestasis, and we would be meeting baby Monday.  I was dilated to a 4, and everything looked great, so the C-Section we had discussed wouldn't be necessary.  
We were checked into the hospital Sunday night at 11:30, and by 1:30 were changed and in our delivery room ready to start induction.  Our nurse got my medical information, and then started my IV.  She put it in my arm, took blood, and between taking blood and attaching my pic line, I started feeling light headed.  Jackson was holding my hand and I looked at him and said, "I'm feeling really light headed" just before I passed out.  I woke up to him waving an alcohol swab under my nose, and the nurse calling my name.  After she had me all hooked up, I started feeling really weak contractions.  We started Pitocin, and the ball started rolling.

At about 5am, our doctor came in to check and said we were sitting at about a 6, and she would be back later to check on us.  Our families arrived at the hospital about 7am, and came in to visit.  The day was full of visitors coming in and out.  At about 8:00, Dr. Norman came in to check, and we were between a 6 and 7.  She broke my water at about 8:30 (which, why did I never read up on what that includes? It was the weirdest feeling in the world.) and I immediately had an intense contraction. I told her I passed out with my IV, and that we should probably go ahead and get the epidural ordered.  The anesthesiologist came in about 9:45 to do my epidural.  At that point, the nurse I had was incredible, and I could not have done the epidural process without her.  We go to church with anesthesia queen of St. Thomas, and she called in a favor for us.  We had a great anesthesiologist who talked me through it and kept me distracted.  I remember focusing on Remington's heart beat on the doppler, and keeping my eyes on Jackson. After my epidural kicked in and each of my legs weighed 300 pounds, I was able to take a 3 hour nap, straight through contractions, straight through visitors. It was the most comfortable I had been in weeks.  
The nurse kept thinking we would have Remington here by about 4pm or so, but as she was checking, we realized we were stuck at an 8.  While they were watching my contractions, they decided that they were strong enough, and spaced far enough apart, but in between, my resting pressure was not low enough which could have caused uterine rupture.  They started tweaking the pitocin levels to get the resting pressure low enough.  Once that happened, we were back on the road to baby.  At 11:00 that night, I had finally reached past a 9, but not quite a 10.  They had me sit up and let gravity do the work. I was feeling intense pressure at every contraction, and the anesthesiologist offered a block. I was going to pass until Jackson told me not to be a hero, so I accepted. Twice. I remember watching the television and seeing an IHOP commercial saying that March 7 was National Pancake day. I told the doctor and the nurse that it would be fun to have a pancake day baby, but I could not do another hour. At 12:35, we started pushing! My nurse, Megan, was a Godsend and helped keep me calm through every contraction. Once he started crowning, she had me wait until Dr. Norman could get there.  
There was another woman in labor, and Megan was watching her monitor on my computer next to mine.  They had called Dr. Norman for the other woman, and apparently she had fallen asleep after they called her to come in, but she was on her way.  Megan said that the lady was at the point that if she put her feet up in the stirrups, her baby was coming out.  We kept watching her monitors, and a note popped up saying Dr. Norman was there, and Megan had us watch the monitor saying that when the baby's heartbeat disappears that means the baby was born.  It wasn't 45 seconds after Dr. Norman checked in that her baby was born.  
She scrubbed in and got everything ready in my room, and we started pushing.  He was moving perfectly, but then Remington got stuck right at eye-level.  She told me she saw his eyebrows, but I needed to push again because he was stuck.  She then had me stop because I was no longer contracting.  So he sat stuck for a whole minute, and we pushed again.  After his head was out, he turned himself from face down to face up, and his shoulders were stuck.  She asked if I could feel the contraction coming, and I couldn't because everything felt like pressure.  I started shaking because of the adrenaline, and couldn't push, so they laid my bed all the way back and a nurse started pushing on my belly to get him out.  When he wasn't coming, Dr. Norman told the baby nurse to call the NICU just in case his shoulders were stuck for more than a minute because it could have caused nerve damage. After about 25 seconds of the nurse pushing and Remington not moving, Dr. Norman reached in and loosened one of his shoulders, and the other followed.  
They laid my goopy alien on my chest, and I cried tears of joy, relief, and pain.  The nurses started wiping his face, and all of a sudden, he let out what Jackson describes as a crow.  The nurse said thats what she wanted to hear, and took him to the warmer.  I told Jackson to go with him while they stitched me up.  All of my stitches were internal, but I was not completely numb, so it took a while for them to finish stitching.  Once they were done, Remington was brought back to me to try to feed him. I had no milk yet, so we fed him 30mL of formula to get his low blood sugar back up. They checked it again, and it was up to 49 which was perfect.  He was perfect. Bruised, swollen, but perfect.  

Remington was born at 1:32am on March 7, weighing 9 pounds 2 ounces, and 19.5" in length.  He rocked our world and was more than worth the 24 hours and 2 minutes of labor.