It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's...Henry!

Here is Henry enjoying his new favorite pastime: zooming around as an airplane!

Look at me!

What?!  You've never heard of a flying baby?

Hi, Mom!  Watch me go!

Three Months

Our big boy is three months old as of September 26, 2012!

Henry and his penguin friend are both listing to the left!

You have no idea how hard I had to work for this smile.

Here's what Henry is up to these days:

•  Henry has transitioned into 3-6 month clothes.  He can still fit into some 0-3 month things, but because most of them are summery and it's getting cooler, I don't often put him in them.  I also want him to wear all of his 3-6 month things before he outgrows them.
• Henry weighs 13 lbs, 12 oz at 13 weeks old.  He was wearing a diaper and an outfit when he was weighed, so he probably weighs more like 13 lbs, 6 oz or so.  That puts him in the 37th percentile.  He has dropped from the 50th percentile at his 2 month checkup, but the nurse didn't seem concerned, so I guess I won't be, either.  He has plenty of dirty and wet diapers a day, which I have read is the indicator that he gets enough to eat.
• He's now completed his two month shots.  I split them into three rounds, so he wouldn't have so much entering into his system at once.  The number of vaccinations required these days is ridiculous, but my thoughts on vaccines are a story for another day.  Henry tolerated the second and third sets of shots so well!  He cried for just a minute and then calmed down on his own, although I did feed him shortly after each set to give him more pain relief and emotional comfort.
• Henry has discovered, and is fascinated by, his hands, and his new thing is to lift his arms in the air with his hands in fists as if he were grasping the hanging toys on his playmat.  It looks like he's proclaiming victory, and it's adorable.
• Speaking of the playmat, Henry loves to hang out on his back and play with the toys.  He will hold onto a toy for minutes on end, and he also enjoys kicking one toy while gripping another.
• He hasn't rolled over from belly to back since the day we caught it on video, but he is nearly rolling from his back to his front.  He will get himself onto his side, but one of his arms always prevents him from making the final completion of the turn.  We think it won't be long, though!
• Henry has hung out in his bumbo chair a couple of times.  His head bobbles around like a little drunk man a bit, but it's good for his neck muscles.  He looks at us like it's no big deal to be sitting in his own mini chair.
• Henry is becoming increasingly chatty and vocal.  He "talks" to us, and to himself, all of the time.  I'm hoping this means he will be an early talker.  I would love for his first word to appear by 10-11 months.  We talk to him and read to him often in hopes that it will help his speech.
• I'm still keeping Henry on a 3 hour feeding schedule during the day.  He is typically awake for about 1.5-2 of those hours (including feeding), and then he will sleep for an hour or an hour and a half.
• We are still suckers for allowing Henry to nap in his swing.  He sleeps much better in it during the day than he does in his crib, so I'm going with it.  We will become more strict one of these days, but today is not that day!
• Henry does sleep in his crib at night.  He still wakes up at least once a night to eat, but he is pretty good about going right back down after he eats, so we're not losing too much sleep.
• Week 12 was Henry's fussiest period since his newborn days.  It seemed that nothing made him happy except for eating, and he was even fussy in the middle of the night after feedings.  I think it must have been a growth spurt.  Luckily, he has been much happier literally since he turned 13 weeks, which means that Mommy and Daddy are much happier and well-rested!
• Henry has a new habit of tucking in and sucking on his lips.  It is pretty cute.
• He loves playing "airplane" with Daddy.  Mark holds him horizontally and zooms him from room to room.  Sometimes he puts one of Henry's arms out like Superman.  I'll upload some photos soon.

Here are lots of other recent photos of our favorite little guy.

Wearing the onesie I made him at his shower.

My shirt is covered in spit up, but I don't care!

You expect me to sleep all night?  You've got to be kidding me. 

Hanging out in the Bumbo.

Hanging in my Puma jacket from Uncle Michael and Aunt Laura!

Evidence of the lip-sucking.

Visiting Michael and Laura in West Virginia.

 

Down By the Sea

Henry made his first trip to the ocean during our recent stay with my parents in North Carolina!  We decided to drive to Wrightsville Beach for the afternoon and evening.  Wrightsville is just outside of Wilmington, N.C., and is less than a two hour drive from Raleigh.

Here we are at Johnnie Mercer's boardwalk, watching the fishers, the surfers and the seagulls.  We bought Henry a Johnnie Mercer's t-shirt to commemorate the occasion.

One of my all-time favorite photos of me and my boy.

Hanging out with Grandma!

Henry wore a romper with a sailboat motif for the trip.

Mark bet me that I wouldn't sit on the ledge.  I'm surprised he thought he had a chance of winning.  I would have stood, but it made him too nervous ;-)

Next, we ventured to the ocean.  Henry had fallen asleep by this point and was not overly thrilled with being woken up to dip his toes in the water.  So, he returned to the stroller to hang out with Grandma, and Mark and I had fun on the surf.

Mark wanted to spoof the trendy "jumping" pose.  I'm embarrassed to say that his jump was better than mine.  See below.

We ended the day with a dinner al fresco at the Oceanic, our favorite Wrightsville restaurant.  It was a great day and a mini-vacation for all of us. 

Two Months!

Henry is two months old, as of August 26, 2012!

Smiling and busting out of his shirt.  This shirt was retired after the photo shoot.

Here are some updates about Henry's second month of life:

•  At his 2 month appointment, he weighed 11 pounds, 11 ounces, was 23.5 inches long, and his head circumference was 15 1/2 inches, I think.  It was 15-something.  These stats put him in approximately the 50th percentile for weight, 67th for height, and 29th for head circumference.
• Henry is smiling all the time now!  His first truly social smile (where there was no doubt what he was doing, and it lasted for more than a second) was on August 5, while sitting his Rock 'n Play next to the dining room table as I ate dinner.  He did it off and on after that day, but he began smiling on a regular basis, at least once a day, at about 8 weeks.  He is especially smiley after eating (who wouldn't be?!), and we can count on lots of open-mouthed grins for whomever is holding him at the time.  He does cut his eyes to the side and look down while smiling sometimes, which makes him look both shy and flirty. 
• He is a very social baby and hasn't met a stranger.  He stares intently at the person holding him, and if you're lucky, he'll smile bashfully. 
• He "talks" to us frequently.  He loves to coo and babble when he's happy, and he's begun responding with coos when you talk back to him.  I'm hoping he'll be an early talker!
• Henry has begun whining when he's unhappy.  He has the lip pout down and everything.  He also makes whiny cries to go along with the pout.
• Henry rolled over, from tummy to back, for the first time on August 14 during tummy time!  It was unintentional, and it shocked him so much he began crying.  He didn't do it again until August 30th.
• He holds his head upright if you hold him over your shoulder.  He also can lift his head up, pushing up with his arms, during tummy time.
• He now sleeps in his mini crib off of our bedroom at night.  He typically gives us stretches of 5-6 hours at night, although the past couple of days he has been making things interesting by sleeping only about 4 hours at a time.  We're hoping it's just because he is hot, so we are turning down the temperature and retiring his fleece swaddle for awhile to see if that helps him stay asleep for longer.
• Henry still absolutely loves his swing.  He loves it so much that both Mark's and my parents have bought one for their homes for him to use when we visit.  It's our secret weapon whenever he's fussy, and he prefers it for napping.
• He still loves car rides and stroller rides and falls asleep each time.
• Henry made his first long-distance trip, to New York, at 8 weeks old.  He did great on the car ride there.  He did have a blowout in his car seat that required me to change him in the Wendy's parking lot somewhere near the Maryland-Delaware border.  He did very well while in New York and did not seem phased by the change of routine in the least.
• Henry had his first set of shots on August 31.  I am splitting his 2 month shots into 3 sessions to minimize the number of things his immune system has to fight at one time.  He screamed after the first set of shots, of course, but I fed him right afterward because I read breastfeeding is a natural pain reliever.  He ate eagerly and calmed right down.  He wasn't fussy at all that night, although he did seem a little more sleepy than usual.  We're proud of our big boy!
• Because Henry is now two months old, we've become braver in taking him out.  He has eaten at an indoor restaurant for the first time while in New York and has also been to Target twice.  So far, so good!

For good measure, a few more adorable photos:

Smiling!

He looks like he's in the middle of a conversation.

Henry's Birth Story

Well, now that Henry is over two months old, it's about time that I get around to posting his birth story.  Don't worry, though, the details are still plenty fresh in my mind, as it was a 27 hour saga with lots of twists and turns.  FYI, it will be extremely detailed, so I can look back on it in the years to come, but feel free to "fast forward" if you get bored.

At 2am on Monday, June 25, I woke to use the restroom, as had been my routine in the prior month or so, and felt as if I had wet myself.  I knew instantly that my water had broken.  My pajama bottoms and underwear were completely soaked.  Let the games begin!!  I yelled out to Mark that my water had broken.  He shot out of bed surprisingly quickly, given that we had only gone to bed a couple of hours earlier, and that he usually sleeps the sleep of the dead.  I felt very calm about the fact that this meant labor had begun, and we would meet the baby in the next 24 hours or so.  Hospitals impose a 24 hour deadline when your water breaks to begin labor, rather than contractions beginning labor, in order to reduce the risk of infection.  My mom, who was staying with us, heard the ruckus and asked what was going on.  We excitedly told her that my water had broken and that we would be heading to the hospital.

Because Henry came a bit early, and I had just started my maternity leave the prior Friday, we didn't have our bags completely packed.  As a result, we spent some time hurriedly throwing last-minute items into the bags and hoping that we had everything we would need.  Then, I called my OB's on-call line to let the doctor on call know that we would be coming in to the hospital.  The doctor (who just so happened to be my least favorite in the practice, of course) told me I could wait 6 hours unless I didn't feel the baby move in 30 minutes.  At this point, I decided to have a popsicle and see whether the sugar would encourage some movements.  Because my water was still leaking constantly (gross, I know), I ate the popsicle in the bathtub!  Mark ran out to the 24-hour grocery store to pick up food for the labor, since I was planning a natural delivery.  As had happened the previous afternoon, the sugar did nothing, and I was getting worried, so we decided just to head to the hospital.

Just before we headed out the door.  I look much more comfortable than I feel.

 The hours after we arrived at the hospital, at about 3:30 am, were a blur.  We checked in and I got set up in a room and hooked up to the fetal heartrate monitor and contraction monitor.  A nurse came by to ask a myriad of questions.  What I remember most is Mark telling her, "We're trying for a natural delivery," and she responded by saying something to the effect of, "We're not trying for anything.  It doesn't matter what you want.  What your wife wants is what matters."  Well, ok, then, Labor Nazi.  At this point, I wasn't having noticeable contractions at all.

Waiting to get the show on the road.

At about 8:00 in the morning, my doctor came in and announced that I'd have to start Pitocin to speed up labor since I wasn't having any contractions.  Because we wanted (and I do mean we, despite what the nurse said) a natural delivery, I didn't want to be put on Pitocin, because not only would I be hooked up to an IV and unable to move around, it makes the contractions more intense and painful, so I was more likely to request an epidural.  So, I asked if we could walk around for an hour to see whether we could get labor moving on its own.  The doctor reluctantly agreed to 45 minutes (how generous of her), so off we went.

At the end of the 45 minutes, I was feeling a little crampy, but I knew that I wouldn't be dilated enough to make the doctor happy.  Sure enough, she checked and I was only 1 cm dilated.  At this point, I agreed to a low dose of Pitocin, hoping that it would speed things along but be enough for me to tolerate on my own.  We started the Pitocin, along with an antibiotic to decrease the risk of infection, around 9:30, and I started feeling some contractions, but they weren't painful.  I was able to watch tv and breathe through them without much trouble.  Even though I was on an IV, I could still walk around some and bounce on my exercise ball.  I wasn't able to go in the shower, though, which was a bummer because I had been looking forward to using it as a pain reliever.

Still feeling pretty good.

Able to use the exercise ball to let gravity do its thing.

Now that I was on an IV, all of the foods Mark bought at 2am were off limits.  It was a liquid-only diet for me.

A visit from my mom!

After a few hours, the contractions began to intensify and I could no longer concentrate on anything else.  We moved locations several times to help me find the most comfortable positions.  We spent about an hour in the bathroom with me sitting on the toilet, and then we moved to the bed where I leaned over the exercise ball.  The contractions were coming about 1-3 minutes apart and lasted about 45 seconds to a minute each.  They were getting very painful, and I was finding myself tense just waiting for the next one to begin, so I wasn't resting.  After about 5 hours, I told Mark that if I wasn't 4-5 cm dilated, I would just cave and get the epidural, to help me relax and hopefully speed the labor process.  There had been a shift change, and now my favorite doctor, Dr. Crowther, was on call and checked my progress.  Unfortunately, after over 5 hours of painful contractions, I was still only 2cm dilated!  I was so disappointed.  I decided that I had tried hard to make my goal of a natural birth a reality, but with the time constrictions of my water breaking and the fact that I had to be on Pitocin and couldn't move around much, I could get an epidural without feeling like I had failed.  At around 3:30, I think, the anesthesiologist came in to give me the epidural.  With all of the pain I was experiencing from the contractions, I didn't even feel the needle going in.  The relief was fairly immediate, and our nurse, Jamie, who was absolutely fabulous and kept me calm throughout the whole labor, could now increase the Pitocin level.

Pretty quickly after the increase in Pitocin, several nurses and the newest on-call doctor, who is not part of my OB practice, rushed in.  It turned out that Henry was not tolerating the increase well and his heart rate was dropping.  At this point, I got pretty scared and began shaking almost uncontrollably; even my teeth were chattering.  The doctor gave me oxygen to help calm me down and get Henry's heart rate up.  It worked, but it meant that they had to stop the Pitocin altogether for an hour or so to allow Henry time to recover.  The good news was that because of the increase in Pitocin, which allowed for stronger contractions, I had dilated from 2cm to 5cm in an hour!  The doctor said that is uncommon to go that quickly.

The families came in for a few minutes after the epidural.  I was pretty tired and out of it at this point.

Meanwhile, the epidural had worked, but it worked too well on my left side, to the point where I couldn't feel or move my left leg.  You're supposed to have some feeling in your legs in order to bend them to help push the baby out.  The anesthesiologist tried just pulling the epidural line in my back out a bit to decrease the amount of the drug that was entering my system, but it didn't work.  This was not helping my stress level, because one of the main reasons I didn't want an epidural to begin with was a fear that the numbness wouldn't subside after the delivery.  After an hour, the decision was made just to take out the first epidural and try again.  Right after the epidural was administered (you get an epidural by sitting on the side of the bed hunched over, with your stomach facing the bed and your back away from the bed), I lost my balance and nearly fell backwards off of the bed!  I began yelling that I was falling and Mark and Jamie caught me just in time.  That would have been a disaster.  The second epidural worked like a charm, thank goodness, and I began to regain some feeling in my left leg. 

Not long after the second epidural, the Pitocin was restarted at a bit higher level.  As had happened earlier, Henry didn't tolerate the increase and his heart rate began to drop.  The doctor and nurses tried to insert internal heart rate and contraction monitors, to more accurately track Henry's progress, but, as I had found so far, nothing went easily in this labor.  The internal contraction monitor worked just fine, but the heart rate monitor was broken.  They tried to replace it, but they never got it to work.  Eventually, they gave up and just kept the external heart rate monitor and used the internal contraction monitor.  I received more oxygen, and I remember the nurses turning me over to my hands and knees in an attempt to find a position that Henry liked better.  This did not work at all, though, and I began bleeding and his heart rate dropped more.  They moved me back to my back and had me lie on my left side a bit, with the oxygen mask on, which stabilized Henry.  This second increase in Pitocin had helped me dilate from 5cm to about 9cm, though, and Henry had moved down to a zero station (about halfway), so it looked like delivery was near!  One nurse even entered the room and asked if it was time to "call it," meaning to bring in the delivery team.  They did set up the tools needed for delivery on a table, so they would be ready.

At this point, it was about11pm, and everyone began making bets about when the baby would arrive.  Mark thought he would come that evening, and my guess was 2am.  The doctor told me that I could begin pushing when I felt pressure, and that I would know it when I felt it.  In the meantime, Mark and I tried to rest as much as we could.  I was freezing, and I had wrapped myself with several heated blankets, so the only part exposed was my face.  At one point, the anesthesiologist came in and was annoyed that I was so uncomfortable, and called the nurses' station to complain that the room was too cold.  I thought it was nice that he would bother to do that.

I asked Jamie intermittently throughout the night whether I could begin pushing.  She kept saying that I wasn't quite ready.  The hours passed, and Mark and I got a bit of sleep.  At 5am on Tuesday, June 26, the doctor entered the room and said that it was time to consider a cesarean section, because I had not fully dilated even though it had been six hours since I progressed to 9 cm.  I honestly was shocked by this, because although I knew we had a time limit because my water broke, I thought I was progressing so nicely.  I was upset and asked the doctor to check, in case they couldn't tell that I had dilated fully through the monitors.  She checked, and not only was I not dilated to 10cm, I had regressed to between 8-9 cm, and Henry hadn't moved any farther down in my pelvis.  This was extremely disheartening to hear, since I had been so close a few hours earlier, and the doctors estimated that Henry was only a 7lb baby.  I started crying as the doctor explained that she felt that my pelvis was too small for Henry to fit through and that his heart rate had started to drop in the overnight hours.  I did not want to have a c-section (I viewed it as the final nail in the coffin of my natural birth plan), but I felt that I had run out of options, since 6 hours had passed and not only did I not make progress, but I regressed, and Henry wasn't handling labor well.  Honestly, had my water not broken, I probably would have pushed for a few additional hours, but I didn't want to risk an infection just to avoid a c-section.  Mark and I agreed that a c-section was the safest option for both Henry and me, so we said we would do the surgery.

They wheeled me to the operating room.  Mark put on the scrubs, and I was transferred to an operating room bed.  The surgery took about an hour as a whole, but it only took about 10-15 minutes to get Henry out.  He came out screaming, and it was the best sound I've ever heard.  I immediately began to cry.  He was bright red and had a cone head from trying to maneuver his way down the birth canal.  After he was cleaned off, they handed him to Mark and I got to touch his beautiful face.  Although labor did not go as I had hoped, Henry and I were both healthy, and that's all that matters.