Week 12

Wow, these past 12 weeks have gone by so fast. This is my last week home with Austin before I have to return to work and I am sad. I feel that I am going to miss everything while I am at work. We are so lucky to have my Mom watching Austin though. She came over on Monday to babysit while I went and registered with Ragen for her baby shower. The first bottle she gave Austin did not go over too well. She maybe took an ounce and fought it the entire time. The second bottle went over much better and Austin sucked down 4 ounces. I really think she was probably starving and once she figured out that the same stuff that Mom gives her is the same stuff in the bottle she has no problem eating it. I pray that next week goes smoothly.

We are still trying to figure out the whole logistics of Luke and I both getting to work in the morning on time. Austin's sleeping is getting better, but she does not wake up at the same time every morning even though we put her to bed at the same time every night. This concerns me because I really want the chance to breastfeed her before I leave for work in the morning. This week we plan on practicing our morning routine to make sure we have it down.

Luke found out this week that temporary (until June) he will be only working 4 days a week and has to take a 20% pay cut. The town had decided to do this so they do not have to lay anymore people off. 20% is a lot, but getting paid 80% of your salary is better then not having a job at all. He has decided that Friday will be his day off. This will be great for everyone. My Mom will get a day off and Luke will get to spend an entire day with Austin. I am very jealous of this. I was going to ask my job if I could go down to part time hours, but my boss called me this week to inform me they are creating a position on my team for a "Senior Supply Chain Analyst" and if I am interested I should apply. Well, I am definitely interested so I went ahead and applied. If I get this promotion it will help out a lot financially.

Austin's First Christmas

Here are some photos from Austin 's first Christmas. What a wonderful day for all of us.

Week 11

This week my Grandma and Aunt for Chicago came for a visit and got to meet Austin for the first time. It was so nice to visit with them both. On the two days they came to visit, Austin was marathon napping. I know they say never to wake a sleeping baby but her naps were almost 3 hours long. I was a little concerned that she may be napping too long during the days so I finally decided to e-mail the sleep doula. Before I could even get a response, Austin has now changed her sleeping habits again. She will only nap for 30 minutes at a time. You can almost set your watch to it. On the more positive side she has been only waking ONCE during the night. As I type this I have now jinxed myself. The last two nights she had only gotten up in the 3 o'clock hour going an 8-9 hour stretch. Now a smart person would go to bed when she goes to bed and catch up on some sleep. But not me...I have gone to bed latter the last two night (11pm-12am) then I normally do. She is so close to sleeping through the night I can just feel it.

Austin and I made a couple solo outings this week. We went to the lactation consultant on Tuesday and Austin screamed the entire 25 minute drive to her office. She use to love the car, but not on Tuesday. It is so hard to drive when you have a baby crying, plus it was raining outside. The lactation consultant told me "Stay off the Internet and stop trying to self diagnosis." On Thursday I decided to go to Target. Austin did better in the car and was pretty good in Target. She likes to have the cart moving at all time, which makes it difficult to stop and shop. I think I actually spent more money because I was just throwing things in my cart while we were moving. I felt like I was on "Supermarket Sweep."

Austin's Christmas stocking came this week. I ordered one with her named stitched on it. When I was growing up I had a big stocking and I wanted Austin to have the same. The stocking is 36" long and Austin could definitely fit into it. I will have to take some pictures of it to post. Even though Austin does not understand, I am so excited to be celebrating her first Christmas.

Last night we went out to a Christmas party at our friends Steve & Dara's house. We left once Austin was asleep and my Mom came over to babysit. It was nice to have some adult interactions and a glass of wine.

Well Austin's 30 minutes are going to be up soon...

"Twins"

Austin's New Trick

Well I guess its not really a trick, but Austin rolled from her belly to her back today. She did it for Luke during her "tummy time" while I was in the other room. When I came in the room he told me and I was sad that I had missed it and told him to put her on her belly and see if she would do it again. Sure enough, she did. I was so excited I had tears in my eyes.

Not wanting anyone to miss out on this, we tried for a third time while I had the camera ready and here you go...

Week 10

This week was quite a stressful week for us. On Monday Austin had her 2 month appointment. She is now weighing in at 13lbs 7ozs and 23 1/2 inches long. This puts her in the 95th percentile for her age group. She also received 4 shots (two in each thigh) during the appointment. My heart broke while watching the nurse give her the shots, but I did not cry...until we got out to the car. We gave Austin some baby Tylenol before we left and she fell right asleep. Over the next 24 hours we gave her a couple more doses to keep her fever down, but other that I think it went quite well. Although I am not looking forward to it again at her 4 month appointment.

On Thursday we made our first trip to the emergency room with Austin. About an hour after we put Austin to bed she woke up crying. This was not a normal cry, this was an inconsolable cry. We checked her diaper, tried to feed her, took all her clothes off looking to see if something was poking her, gave her some gas drops and nothing worked. Her cries just got louder and louder. I felt that something was wrong. She had never acted like this before. I told Luke to call the pediatrician because I was at a lost. While we were waiting for the pediatrician to call us back, Luke noticed that Austin's foot look really red and swollen. We decided to go straight to the ER and not wait for the pediatrician to call back. We got the ER about 8pm and Austin had been crying hysterically for about 45 minutes straight. We checked in and they told us to wait and the triage nurse would call us. I was a mess and trying to keep it together. I really wanted to scream why won't you help us now! Finally the triage nurse called us back and by that time Austin would be calm for a minute or two and then start crying again. She checked her foot and the redness and swelling was gone. She asked me "Have you feed her?" I wanted to say listen lady I would not of driven all the way to the ER if my child just needed to eat. She told us to go to the waiting room and they would call us back when they had a room.

By this time is was 8:45pm and I thought maybe she is hungry from crying so much. Sure enough, I offered and she accepted. I started to feel stupid, but I told Luke something was wrong and I still wanted to see a doctor. Sure enough, as soon as I stopped feeding Austin started wailing again. Finally they came and told us they had a room for us. When the doctor came in to check Austin out we told her that originally her foot was red and swollen. She thought maybe Austin had gotten bit by something. I told her that Austin was in footie pajamas and a swaddle blanket so I do not know how. She agree something was just not right and she said she wanted to do a urine test and also a x-ray to rule a couple of things out, but they first were going to give her some baby Tylenol.

To get urine from a baby they have to use a really small catheter. While the nurse was performing the procedure I had to hold Austin arms done. Again, I lost it. I can only imagine what she was going through. I mean I have had catheters put in before, but always after the anesthesia. After they were done, either from the baby Tylenol or from shear exhaustion Austin fell asleep. Sure enough soon after they came to do the x-ray. After the x-ray the doctor came in and told us that Austin's urine test came back fine and the x-ray did not show any blockages. However it did show a huge gas bubble in her belly. The doctor said that sometimes even for gas a baby will cry inconsolably. She asked if I had been eating any broccoli lately and I told her no, but I had been eating a lot of cucumbers and my Mom had just warned me that they were a gassy producing vegetable also. She said I should cut out cucumbers from my diet. They released us to go and said to watch Austin for the next 24 hours to see how she is doing. All this and it was GAS?

We got home about Midnight and all three of us crashed almost immediately. When Austin got up the next day she was perfectly fine. So I guess the moral of the story is that I need to reevaluate my diet and cut out cucumbers, chocolate, coffee, peppers, onions and coffee. Some babies are not bothered at all by what their mother's eat. I just happen to have a baby who is.

On a more positive note, Austin has been sleeping in her crib exclusively and I am probably jinxing myself by saying this but she is going to bed around 6:30pm each night with no fuss at all. She also is getting up only 2 times a night, which I hope to have down to once a night by the time I go back to work in three weeks. I am really glad that I had the chance to speak with the sleep doula. I do not think we would be doing this well with sleeping without her advice.

Week 9

This past week we went to visit Santa and have Austin's picture taken. She did really well and did not cry at all, completely the opposite then our 1 month old picture fiasco at JCPenney's. Santa did not scare her at all. Hopefully it will stay this way. Santa on the other hand did not know how to hold a baby and we had to keep repositioning her. Also the mall we went to has sky lights and Austin loves looking at the light, so in all of the pictures she is looking up. We could not get her to look at the camera or smile. Oh well, she is only 2 months old.

This week we also started trying to get Austin on a feeding, napping and sleeping schedule. It's not going perfect, but we are slowly getting there. I also talked to a sleep doula that was recommended to me. I really got some great information from her and we plan on using most of her suggestions. Her number one thing is making sure you are consistent. Kids love consistency. I also learned to look for Austin's sleeping ques. For example if she yawns that means we need to start her routine for naptime even if its only been 30-45 minutes since she woke up. If she is yawning, she is tired and the quality of naptime sleeping effects the quality of her nighttime sleeping. In a perfect world Austin would eat and play for about 1 1/2-2 hours and then go down for a nap for 1 1/2- 2 hours. She said at this age you cannot expect Austin to be awake more than 2 hours at a time. After the 2 hour mark most likely she will be overtired and get fussy. I am pretty sure this is exactly what is/was happening. She would be awake for 4 hours and no wonder she would not go to bed. So yesterday we started with Austin taking all of her naps in her crib and it went extremely well. Almost too well. I had a "feeling" that something was just not quite right so we took Austin's temperature and it was 99.8. We decided to call the doctor. The doctor said in babies this young you do not become concerned until their temperature has hit 100.5. She said to keep checking her temperature and let her know if it gets higher. She also said most likely she is coming down with something. I continued checking her temperature and the highest it got was 99.9. I was so distraught about this. I do not want my baby to be sick. We had planned on starting our new bedtime routine, which now includes a bath every night to signal to Austin its bedtime, but Austin started yawing way before we planned on starting so we decided to put her to bed in her crib. She was a little fussy, but we had her asleep within 30 minutes. She woke up right before I was going to bed so I feed her and put her back to sleep in her crib. However, when she woke up at 1:30am I brought her into our room to sleep for the rest of the night. We are making progress and she slept 1/2 the night in her own room. I am so proud of her. This morning her temp is down to 99.4 so we are going to continue to keep an eye on her. Fortunately we already have a doctor's appointment scheduled on Monday for her 2 month well baby visit. She is suppose to get her first set of shots. We will see what the doctor says.

GO DEVILS!

Austin's Santa Pictures