First Word

I realized as I have been looking over my posts that I never wrote down about Owen's official first word...

When he was about 6 months old, we were up at night together (as we often were!) and I laid him down on the changing table to do a diaper change. It had been a tough day and I was exhausted, thinking about work in the morning, church callings, other things I had to do... Owen was laying quietly, sleepy, when all of sudden he looked right at me and said 'Mama'. Just one time, all by itself - not in a babbling sort of random way, with meaning and intent, then back he went into sleepy mode. Heart melt, right there in the middle of the night!

Oh the wonderful things Owen Cole can do...

 New since Christmas...

• trying to stack blocks - success with just a little steadying from us to make a tower of 4-5
• pointing to items to request
• shakes his head for 'no'
• new sounds - lots of /s/ and /n/ recently - when he is playing, he'll say 'ess, ess, sessess' and 'nananana'
• getting inflection, you can tell when he is asking questions and using exclamation points in his conversations with us!
• such a great helper at undressing for tubby time - today he let me know that I wasn't doing it fast enough and tried to take off his diaper himself!
• crawling behind the couch and taking stuff with him, like my phone
• loading up his car with random items to push around the house - stuffed animals, balls, his toothbrush, cars, a bowl, Fisher Price animals/people- pretty much anything that will fit and lots of things that don't (when they fall off, he has a lot to say about it!)
• taking steps
• playing catch
• trying to turn on the buttons for the oven

Every morning after I feed Owen, he wants to take a minute to say hello to everything in his room. First he points and waves at his stuffed animals sitting on his dresser - Chaucer, Bear, Dragon, and Meow. I bring them down to say hello and he chats away to them. Then he turns around and waves at the tree on the wall, the puppy dog pull toy, his books, changing table, then back to his crib. After this, he is off and cruising out of the room to find Todd. First he looks to the loft, listens near the stairs, and if no sound, he turbos to our bedroom door, pushes it open and starts talking away until Todd says good morning and I put Owen up on the bed to say hello!

Party Rockin'

For Owen's first birthday, we ordered pizza and I made a truck cake for him to smash into. Owen was lovin' the pizza crust (dough, not the chewy stuff!) and had some delicious chicken soup as a side, before we brought out the cake. He was fascinated by the candle and wanted to touch it, but was less interested in trying the cake. I put the whole thing on his tray for him to dive into and he pushed it back at me! We had to convince him to try a bite, but after that, he was all in! It's funny because the night before when I was decorating the cake, he was chowing on the extra cake bits. He had a few small bites of ice cream too and even though I scraped the icing off so he had less sugar overload, he was on high steam for the next 4 hours until he crashed into bed at 9:00. Poor baby!

We bought Owen a tugboat for the tub and a push toy - he tears it up around the house now and loves that he can stand up and walk with it!

A One Baby

I can't believe Owen is almost a year old (or as we like to say, 'a one baby'!). What an amazing year...

Love you, baby boy!

Owen's Birth Story

Being pregnant was such a crazy rush of emotions all the time. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I went off my Prevacid and started only using Zantac, which was completely useless in taking care of my reflux. but, there was no other options. I tried every home remedy out there, including apple cider vinegar a tablespoon straight up and one in 2 oz of water. There aren't words to describe how disgusting that is - trust me, don't try it to find out yourself. When it was really bad, it felt like I was choking and Todd would come home from work to find me standing up, watching tv and crying. Since standing up was the most comfortable position, it made sleeping a little tricky! I was exhausted, but luckily did not have anything more than just some basic nausea. We felt pretty strongly the whole time that we were having a boy, so when we had our ultrasound at 20 weeks, we were excited to confirm and share the news with our friends and family. Due to my family's diabetes history, they had me work with a diabetic educator from the start, watching my carbs, and tested me for gestational diabetes early and unfortunately I had it. I limited my carbs and exercised to keep my numbers in check and avoid meds, by the end I could only have 7 grams of carbs per meal or else my blood sugars would go up. I ate a LOT of spinach/chicken salad during the last 4 months!

By the second week in January, my caseload had been transferred to another therapist and we went in for our 38 week check/ultrasound to discuss our options with our midwife. She had initially said that given the gestational diabetes, it would be best to induce early, but at that appointment she said it was our choice. We had been having weekly ultrasounds/non-stress tests for the past month and everything looked fine, but we felt that we should go ahead and induce. Sarah told us to go home and pack up, then check into the hospital that night to start the process.

We had a super sweet nurse, but she herself was pregnant and throwing up, so one of her partners that night was trying to cover her caseload and our nurses' as well. I had a plan for walking the halls after the induction, using my birth ball, using my hypnobabies CDs, but cranky nurse said I needed to stay monitored. Things I know now - stand up for yourself! I thought she knew best and I was worried that maybe they thought Owen would go into distress or something. Really, it just makes their job easier and I know she was overstressed that night, but I could have used the support to use alternate means to manage the contractions. As it was, being stuck in bed left me with flat on my back, side, or up on all fours as my only positions. After 7 hours of contractions, I was still only dilated to a 3 and feeling very stressed by my lack of progress. It was about 3:00 in the morning and we felt that we should call the anesthesiologist to place the epidural so I could sleep. I was having severe cold chills, with my teeth chattering and I couldn't get warm, despite heated blankets and Todd turning up the heat in our room. The anesthesiologist was a bit of a jerk and told us that one wrong move by me could spell disaster so Todd locked his knees while he helped steady me at the edge of the bed. Suddenly, he made a funny noise and fell straight back, almost hitting his head on the counter, smacking it super hard on the floor. The nurse called for help, she and the epidural guy ran to Todd, other nurses came running and they tried to sit him up - he passed out again. When they were able to get him into a wheelchair, he was disoriented, unable to answer questions, and headed out the door to the ER with one of the other nurses. I was so calm through the whole thing, I was shocked and at that point, I wish I would have told the anesthesiologist to hit the road, but instead we went forward with the epidural while he told me horror stories about other dads who had passed out during various stages of delivery, subdural hematomas and people dying from them not being discovered, etc. And, found out later that our nurse NEVER has the dad stabilize the mom for the epidural without sitting in a chair to avoid them locking their knees and passing out. Thanks a lot sub nurse.

Meanwhile, back in the room, I was waiting for news from Todd and stuck in bed, unable to sleep when my water broke at 4:30. Todd came back in the room just before 7:00, on hydrocodone, and still super disoriented. He fell right to sleep and with the changing of shifts, we had the sweetest nurse come on board. 

Owen's Birth Part Two

With Todd back in the room, we both slept for a couple of hours before the nurse came in and announced that I was fully dilated and ready to push. We tried for an hour, but baby wasn't budging. When Sarah, our midwife came in to check on us, she suggested turning down the epidural, adding pitocin, and rest. Not much rest happened with the epidural lowered, but the pitocin definitely increased the contractions and an hour later, we were back to pushing. At 3:32 p.m. on 1/12/11, Owen arrived, with no noise - the nurse had just asked Sarah if she should grab the suction when to our relief he let out a huge cry! They wrapped him up and passed him to me to snuggle, Todd moved to the other side of the bed to be close to Owen and then went with him as they weighed, measured, and took Apgars scores.

When Todd brought him back all swaddled, he held him beside the bed and said the two names, we had picked out - Owen or Liam. Each time, he opened his eyes when Todd said Owen and we both felt that should be his name. With that, the epidural was out, I was patched up, and we were off in a wheelchair to our new room. Along the way, we stopped at the nurse's station so Todd could push the button that sends beautiful bells tinkling over the PA system to let each floor know that a baby has been born.

Waiting in our room were Nana and Papa who took a ton of pictures, Todd called my family members, and I picked out some yummy food to eat. He was still pretty out of it so the nurses sent him back down to the ER for a cat scan. He had a killer headache and they gave him more hydrocodone which knocked him out. I tried to get comfy in the bed, but it kept moving back and forth, pressurized to avoid bedsores for someone who couldn't move. When I finally figured it out at about 2, I had the nurse fix it when she came to check on us, but at 4:30 in came the phlebotomist to draw blood from Owen, so back awake (just prepping me for the next year of my life:))

The next morning brought our midwife to check on us, lactation, and finally discharge and out the door mid afternoon. At home were Todd's parents and a yummy dinner provided by our neighbors, the Borders. The nurse had offered to help me shower at the hospital, but I wanted my own shower at home and I stayed in until I'm sure we were on the verge of running out of hot water!

Over the next few weeks, we had a crash course in parenting with poor latch, jaundice, more blood draws, lactation appointments, reflux, circumcision... poor Owen had quite the bumpy first few months! Lots of sleeping upright in mom's arms in a chair at night and being held in the Moby wrap because of reflux. We spent 24 hours holding him upright on our shoulder, chest, or tummy to manage the reflux - he was a pro at tummy time because of it!