Saturday, August 28, 2010

Quick Update

Things are finally starting to look up in this pregnancy! I'm finally getting a little bit of energy back and I don't feel as sick at night anymore. It also helps that I'm really watching my diet and not eating as much at meals. I did, however, made Jordan go out last night and get me a snickers icecream bar. I've been craving it all week and it was driving me insane. And oh boy, did it taste good (sorry Jen, I couldn't resist). LOL! I never did that with Autumn's pregnancy. I had a few cravings, but I didn't make Jordan go out and get anything. So weird :-P

It's starting to get harder to sit down and imagine that I'm going to have a 1 year old, very soon! I cannot believe how fast this year has flown by. She's growing up so fast, right in front of my eyes. She's on the super fast track to walking now. She took her first steps towards daddy last week, followed by a few steps to me and then everyone else in the family. Now she's letting go of whatever she's holding to walk by herself! She's able to get a good 6 steps in before falling down. Sometimes she'll just stop, stand there for a little bit and then sit herself down. Such a big girl! She's so proud of herself too. Claps everytime she walks somewhere and has the biggest smile on her face when she's walking towards sometime.

I've also been teaching Autumn sign language. She already knows several signs... Dog, more and eat. She absolutely loves Jade! Every morning, after I nurse her, she immediately signs "dog" and looks for Jade. Autumn even knows how to say dog as well :-)

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Routines

I absolutely love having Autumn on a routine now. I wasn't really strick about it before, I just went by her cues. However, she might be telling me that she's tired while I'm out doing hair. Nice timing. So after a few weeks of really watching her and writing down times, I finally got Autumn down on a really great schedule! I'm able to schedule hair appointments or babysitters around it now. It's great! Autumn's much happier too. She's been a little crabbier lately, but that's beside the point (I blame it on the fact that she's a girl, hehe).

Nursing has been a little sensitive now. It comes and goes, depending on how I feel. It's not enough to make me quit though. I just tip my head back, close my eyes and relax. The feeling goes away because I focus on the fact that I'm nourishing Autumn, instead of my ever so sensitive... yup :-) I notice that my milk is starting to go down again. The biggest change I've noticed is at night. Autumn usually wakes up from her afternoon nap around 3pm. We then eat dinner around 5:30 - 6pm and then Autumn goes down for bed anywhere from 7 - 8pm. In between waking up and dinner, Autumn usually likes to nurse. But now that my milk supply is going down, I find it difficult to get the supply back up for Autumn to have a full tummy when she goes to bed. I really did not want to give her a bottle at night. That is our alone time, she nurses the longest and cuddles more with me. So I thought, why not give her a bottle after her nap? I've got plenty of breast milk stored from several months ago. Might as well use it! So I tried that today. It was a little sad, watching Autumn take a bottle. She's never been able to do that when I'm in the same room. She took it like a champ though. Sucked the whole thing down! So here comes night time. I'm full and ready to nurse. Autumn ate extremely well! She even fell asleep while nursing!!! I cannot remember the last time she did that! Every other night she was getting fussy because my let-down wasn't coming fast enough for her. And then she would wake up a couple of hours later because she wasn't full enough to last her through the night. We'll see how tonight goes.

I'm starting to feel a little worse now. There were several days that went by where I felt fine, but now it's a daily thing. I keep my lemon drops handy, try to eat less at meals and more often. I'm eating healthier this pregnancy too. I am not gaining 49 lbs again!!! Less carbs, more veggies. Less sugar, more water. Less salt too. That'll be hard, I was obsessed with pickles while I was pregnant with Autumn. Ate a lot of them at every meal. Haha. We'll see what my cravings are now. One more month until my ultra sound! I can't wait. However, that means that much closer to Autumn turning 1... Sigh... I'm not ready.

I'm sorry I haven't been posting pictures. My labtop is out of comission right now, so I've been using my dad's laptop (help me convince him to give me this laptop, hehe). And I've been so exhausted that I've hardly taken any pictures at all... I'm hoping to start feeling better in the next month. However, feel free to come over and take pictures for me anytime ;-)

Thursday, August 5, 2010

In the beginning...

So by now you've probably heard the exciting news! If not... Where have you been? ;-) We're both very excited, however, I'm a little nervous. I can't believe we're going to have another baby!!! I just have to keep reminding myself that the baby isn't coming right away. It takes time for the little one to grow. So this means the car and house hunt are in full force now! As much as we love living at my parent's (me so more than Jordan, lol). We definitely need our own space now. This house is getting smaller by the day!

Let me update you on the pregnancy so far. I'm not 100% sure how far along I am because I haven't had a period since before Autumn was born (nice, I know). I'm still breastfeeding Autumn about 6/7 times a day, but let me be the one to tell you, don't rely on that as your birth control (hehe). I started noticing that things were a little bit different about myself. It first started when I was getting super exhausted, even though Autumn was starting to sleep through the night. I would find myself falling asleep while chatting on facebook. I just had no energy what-so-ever. Next came waxing my eyebrows. I do that on a regular basis. But right before I found out, IT HURT!!!! I've been doing my eyebrows for over 6 years now. It never hurts! Then I noticed that some of Autumn's things started smelling funny. Like her night time lavender lotion, smelled horrible! Also, the butt wipe solution I use with her cloth wipes, smell disgusting. The last thing that tipped me off was the night before Jordan's birthday. I felt SOOO sick to my stomach! I first blamed it on the (homemade) pizza I had for dinner, but this felt different. I didn't feel like I was over stuffed or sick, I felt pregnant!!!!

So the next afternoon I took a pregnancy test. Sure enough, it was positive!!! My heart dropped to the floor. I absolutely could not believe it. So I brought Jordan inside (he took the day off for his birthday) and showed him the test. Just like last time, he was (and is) super excited!!! So then the next morning I took another test, just to be sure. Sure enough, it was positive again. So then I called my doctor and explained to them that I'm nursing and don't have a period, blah blah blah :-) Next comes the bloodwork (my least favorite part). My hCG levels were around 101.3 and then 2 days later were around 303.9. Confirmed again! Definitely pregnant. A friend of mine and I did some research and figured that I was around 4/5 weeks at that time. So that puts me around the 7/8 week mark right now. However, on Sept 8th I will have an ultra sound and my first doctor's appointment to confirm the due date. I'm thinking sometime in March (which sounds wonderful to me).

The next part was fun. We decided to surprise our parents. We have 3 birthdays within a week of each other in my family (Jordan's, my brother's and my dad's). So we had Jordan's parents over and one side of my grandparents over for a party. At the end of the gifts, we gave the parents and grandparents a box. In the box was a picture frame. In the picture frame was a picture of Autumn in her Big Sister t-shirt that I made for her (you can't find them in her size, hehe). My grandma figured it out first, then Jordans' mom and my mom last. She's a little slow, hehe (love you mom!). They were definitely surprised and we had fun doing it! Although, keeping a pregnancy from my mother (if you know her) is a VERY hard thing to do!!!

Jordan and I are definitely looking forward to adding another chapter into our life. We were planning on having our kids somewhat close, just not this close. But you know? God has other plans for us and we never doubted Him with Autumn! He truely blessed us with a beautiful, healthy daughter who means the world to us! We cannot imagine life without her and we're looking foward to another beautiful baby to bring into this world. I look foward to sharing my story, again, through this blog and hope that you will enjoy it as well!

PS ~ I think it's a boy ;-)

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Monday, August 2, 2010

Father's Love

Many of you know that Jordan had to go to Tennessee for over a week and a half for work. It was hard, having him gone! Even though I don't think Autumn really understood, I could tell that she knew something wasn't right. We tried to talk online through video chat as much as we could with Autumn. She loved it! The first time she didn't understand (it didn't help that she was tired) but then she figured out that daddy was on there and would get happy to see him! Well, Jordan finally came home really early last Friday morning. After sleeping in for a while, I had Autumn wake him up. This is one of her favorite things to do! She'll sit next to him and slap him with both of her hands. Hehe. This time was really different. She'll squealed with excitement! Not to mention that Jordan was SOOO excited to finally hold her again. Now if you've been reading my my blog for a while, you know that Autumn doesn't giggle (much). This time, however, Jordan got her to FULL FORCE giggled, really loud! Oh, my, goodness. It made me smile and laugh so much that it brought tears to my eyes!!! I love the bond that those two have been creating between themselves. Autumn is so blessed to have such a wonderful daddy like Jordan. She's so happy now that he's home. They play together every evening and he's been getting her to giggle more often now. Jordan definitely has the magic touch!

Thank you Jordan, for being such a wonderful daddy!