snuggles

We've been doing LOTS of this around here lately.

Just can't get enough.

our new life at home

The last few weeks have been a big adjustment, but I'm finally starting to feel like my normal self again. We seem to be forming some semblance of a regular routine. I feel like our high/low emotions are leveling out, and we're figuring out how to maintain an active/social/normal lifestyle. When I say "we" I mean both Halle and me. We've both had a lot of high and low days. But thankfully we're both adjusting now. :)

I feel good (physically/mentally/emotionally),  Jackson has been a dream child (good at eating/sleeping/living), and Halle is herself again (happy/curious/busy/adventurous). I just had to figure out that she desperately needs outings & activities throughout the day to maintain her sanity. And I need her to maintain sanity for ME to maintain sanity... so as a result we are staying very active!

So here's what we've been up to.

lots of cuddles on the bed

several neighborhood walks

(love my double jogger!)

movies at home / cuddles on the couch

crafts / painting

adventure walks / flower collecting / getting eaten by fire ants

playing at the park with friends

We are also working on:

POTTY TRAINING and 

keeping the HOUSE CLEAN and

keeping our FLOWERS watered.

Jackson | 12 days old

First of all, let me say that taking pictures of your own newborn without another adult present is REALLY difficult. Next time I will make sure to have someone else around to help. The shoot didn't last long (mostly because I couldn't get him to fall asleep and Halle was demanding my attention, but also because of a major orange poop blowout that got all over my nice white blanket) so I didn't get much variety with these images, but I do like these few. Maybe I'll try again next week during a deeper sleep.

First Week at Home

First of all, I need to express how very grateful I feel at this moment. We have felt so loved and have received so much support over the past couple of weeks! I have been able to enjoy each moment with my new baby and let my mind/body rest and recuperate because we have received such amazing service from our friends and family.

Thank you all!

(You know who you are!)

We came home from the hospital on Friday afternoon after Jackson was born. I spent that weekend with family here at my house, and tried to just sit and rest. I had a lot of emotional moments (AKA crying my eyes out) when my mom had to leave town. She was such a huge help to me (taking care of dishes, laundry, meals, etc) that I wasn't sure I could function without her. Luckily, I still had the support of my dad, brother, and husband, so I was able to make it through the weekend without any meltdowns. :)

I started to get some energy back the day after my mom left. I still have to take it easy, but my mind isn't as worn down as it was. I can at least prioritize and get the most important things done when I find the energy. We've spent a lot of quiet days at home. Halle is adjusting really well. She loves to snuggle Jack and is always asking where he is. She insists that he's a "fweety pie" and loves to compare the size of their hands. I think she likes being the big kid. And she is very protective of him. If ever a stranger (meaning someone she doesn't know well) is holding her brother, she makes sure they never walk off with him. Once a friend stood up to leave the room while he was holding Jack, and Halle broke down. She said, "Give back a Momma! It's Momma's turn! That my baby brother!"

Jackson and I have stayed home from church 2 weeks in a row. I probably would have kept Halle home too, but she loves church and her friends too much to stay behind with us. She always talks about her friends "Apton, Annie, Emmy, and Nallie (Aunt Natalie) who will be at church. She finds a dress, sandals, and a bow, and then we prepare her church bag with snacks, a drink, and coloring books. 

Jacob had the Mardi Gras holiday off from school, so we had some great family time for a few days before he had to get back to the grind. Then, on Wednesday the 22nd, my mother-in-law came to town to help me out for a few days. It was so wonderful to have her calming influence. She convinced me to stop cleaning so much and to just rest. She took care of the laundry and dishes, she spent quality time with Halle, she rocked Baby Brother to sleep every afternoon, and she taught me (again) how to bathe a newborn. She is a wonderful lady with a very calm and easy-going personality. I got really lucky with my parents-in-law.

Now I'm officially on my own! 

So far so good. 

No meltdowns. No blowouts. No stress.

Just resting, feeding, snuggling, and blogging!

Jackson's Birth Story

 Wow. 

We're home! We did it. I gave birth and now Jackson is officially part of our family.

We have been home since Friday (4 days) and things are finally falling into place.

Here is Jackson's story:

On Monday, February 13th, I was approaching 40 weeks of pregnancy. I was feeling ready to go into labor, so I went to see the midwife at the Ochsner clinic here in Baton Rouge. She stripped my membrane and told me that I had progressed to 3cm. She also said that she wouldn’t be surprised if I started laboring that night or the next day.

Well my contractions started that very day. They became more and more regular with every passing hour. They were also very uncomfortable, so I assumed that I was really in labor. We put Halle down to bed around 8:30 that night, and by then I was too wired to sleep so I cleaned the house for several hours. By the time I went to bed at midnight, the contractions were very uncomfortable, but fortunately I could still sleep.

I woke up at 4:00 in the morning on Valentine’s Day with painful contractions. They were 3-4 minutes apart but only lasted 30-40 seconds. The hospital said they weren’t intense enough for me to be admitted for delivery, so I had to stay home and work through the pain until my contractions became more regular. I labored in the bathtub for a while, slept some more, and then WAITED all day through the pain for the frequency & intensity of the contractions to increase. It drove me CRAZY to wait because I was so uncomfortable. Halle and I went for a walk around the neighborhood, hoping to get things moving, but it didn’t work.

Finally, at 5:30pm, I couldn’t take it anymore. We called our neighbors and asked them to watch Halle so that we could go to the hospital. Halle spent the night at their house and she had the time of her life! She got to eat Pizza & Popsicles, take a bubble bath, and sleep in a special bed made out of a pile of blankets. They always take such good care of her. 

Meanwhile, we drove to the Ochsner Medical Center off of O’Neal lane (20 minutes away) and got stuck in rush hour traffic. Luckily, I could still breathe through the pain, but I was in tears over some of the more painful contractions. They admitted me right away, but lots of people were in the hospital on Valentine’s Day to deliver their babies, so I didn’t get a delivery room until almost midnight. Until then, I had to labor in a Triage Room down the hall. I was dilated to 5 cm when I arrived, received the first round of GBS anti-biotics, and had the epidural inserted while in that triage room.

I was hoping to deliver by midnight, but that didn’t happen.

At least I had the epidural, so I was able to relax and sleep that night while my body continued to work. Let me say that epidurals are AMAZING and I will probably ALWAYS use them. I like being able to relax my mind while my body does all the hard work.

When I woke up the next morning, I was dilated to about 8cm. I thought that I would get to push and deliver my baby boy within hours, but that didn’t happen. My body takes a LONG time to progress. It was the same situation with Halle’s birth. After 12 hours of laboring this time around, my body was still not ready to push.

During the shift change on Wednesday morning, my water finally broke. They hadn’t broken my water up to this point because there was SO MUCH FLUID between the sac and the baby’s head that they couldn’t feel his head. They were worried that if they broke the water, the umbilical cord might come out in front of the baby’s head. In that case they might have to do an emergency C-Section, and we didn’t want to mess with that possibility. So my water broke on its own, but part of the broken amniotic sac came through and the nurse thought that it might be the umbilical cord. Everyone was scared and all of the nurses and midwives ran into the room to make sure things were ok. After a few seconds, they figured out that it was just part of the amniotic sac sticking out, and we were all relieved.

Soon after, my epidural stopped working on the left side of my body. At first it was just discomfort, but soon I could feel the intense pain of each contraction in my pelvis and throughout the left side of my lower back. Eventually I couldn’t handle it anymore and the Nurse Anesthetist had to come in. He re-inserted the epidural tube into the catheter, and VOILA! My pain disappeared! I couldn’t believe it! I almost fell asleep in the minutes following because I could finally relax again after so long.

Around 11:00am, my nurse told me that we were close to complete dilation, but not quite there. I had to sit up straight so that each contraction would push the baby straight down on my cervix. The nurse called this “laboring down”.  It was uncomfortable and I felt very impatient by this time, but I’m glad the nurse made me do this, because it made pushing so much easier. Since the baby was well positioned, I only had to push for about 20 minutes. I used a mirror so that I could see the progress being made. Jacob stood to my left and my nurse stood to my right, and I pushed 3 times with each contraction. After about 8 contractions, Baby Jackson was born!

Jackson Palmer Huddleston

Born Wednesday, February 15, 2012

12:10pm – 8lb 8oz – 21 inches long

with Strawberry Blond hair

The nurses put him down on my stomach while they cleaned him off. Jacob got to cut the cord. I held my hand on Jack’s tummy and stared at his face while they went through the cleaning process. He definitely had some familiar facial features that I remembered from Halle’s birth, but there were differences too. For one, he’s HUGE! 8.5 pounds! Quite a bit larger than my 7lb 3oz Halle Girl. And he also had very light-colored hair. Definitely reddish, but his eyebrows are blond. He reminded me quite a bit of Halle, but he definitely looked like a boy. A very large and healthy boy.

It was a huge relief to finally have him in my arms. I remember feeling so proud and relieved that he came out without any real complications, that he was healthy and functioning like a baby should, and that he looked like he belonged to our family. I remember feeling so excited to get the news out, and we started texting and calling our friends and family right away.

We spent the next 2 days at the hospital. We had lots of visitors and spent many hours snuggling with our new son. He figured out nursing very quickly (although he wouldn’t latch onto the right side until day 2), and he is a very good eater. He also slept very well both nights. We were surrounded by great people, friends, and family. I felt very well taken care of by all of the staff at Ochsner. Our 48 hours in the hospital after Jackson was born were very restful and rejuvenating for me. I got a little weepy on Friday when I realized that my mom had to drive home the next day, but overall things were great. I have no complaints.

Valentines Day flowers for our "almost" Valentines Baby

Just a shot to capture how incredibly PUFFY and swollen my skin was. Darn IV drip.

The view from my bed

BIG SISTER HALLE!

 

Jackson and Katie - betrothed to each other - born 3 weeks apart

Halle - enjoying the leftovers from my lunch on the day of our departure

Comparison of Halle & Jackson

Finally, 48 hours after Jackson was born, we were allowed to go home. We loaded everything up after lunch and made our way down to the car. Halle desperately wanted to ride in the wheelchair with me, but the nurses wouldn't let her. This made for a weepy 2-year-old. The ride home was a little dramatic with Halle having a breakdown in the backseat, but it just made us laugh. She is adjusting. She is nothing but sweet and loving to her baby brother, but other random things have significantly affected her this week. She is doing well though now. Even better than I expected. She brings her brother toys and diapers and wipes, and doesn't complain that he's always on my lap drinking "mommy's milk". In fact, yesterday she complained when she saw Jackson in someone else's arms and told them to "Give back a Mommy! That my Jackson!" So I guess she feels some ownership over him. That's better than jealousy and bitterness any day!

When we got home, the first thing we did was lay down (all 4 of us) on our king size bed for a family snuggle. Halle kept saying, "He a fweety pie!" (sweety pie) over and over. 

She giggled. We relaxed. Jackson slept. It was Heaven. 

Life is good in the Huddleston Home.