Sydney's Baby Blessing

We blessed Sydney on November 14.

The only good picture of us has her screaming, of course.

Mike Bain from the church, Corey, Travis, Grandpa Gappmayer, Chris, Grandpa Harbertson, and Greg all participated. It was so nice to have family in town and very sweet of them to come down to us. We had a great time.
Max had a fun time with his cousins. Here he is giving Lyla a kiss. Lyla wasn't as thrilled about it.

Grant is about 4 months older than. What a difference a few months makes right now! And Sydney looks so dark here compared to him.

When Your Baby Spits Up Blood

When Sydney was four days old she spit up blood (on a Sunday of course!! Why do these things always happen on a weekend?). I had just fed her and laid her in her swing. When I went back a few minutes later, I found her onesie looking like this:

When I had changed her after feeding her she had spit up a little and it was a pinkish color. I asked Chris about it and then called my mom and told her I thought it looked a little like blood. But I didn't really believe it was because Why would she be spitting up blood??

When I found the blood all over her shirt I said "It was blood!" and went for the phone. Chris picked her up and we discussed going to the ER right away. But Max was sitting right there and I didn't want to leave him with a sitter and I knew we would both want to go to the hospital. So I called them first. The nurse in the Mom & Baby unit told me to call my doctor and leave a message unless she kept spitting it up continuously. I called the doctor and he got back to me within an hour or so. He said that in 99% of cases, the blood comes from the mother. I wasn't bleeding that I could see but he said it could come through a milk duct and I would never see it. That's exactly what happened. Next time I went to feed on that same side, blood came out first. GROSS!!! I felt better knowing that it was my blood but felt so bad for Sydney having to taste that twice. Blood tastes so nasty. Anyway, she spit up just a little more blood after that feeding and then never since.

I'm so glad we didn't go to the ER. We both agreed that we probably would not have made it out of there without her getting at least one poke and we both can't stand to see our babies get poked and prodded. Not to mention the medical bill that would have been needless.

I debated posting about this for awhile since it's kind of disgusting and involves bodily fluids (which I hate) but I've told some people about this and no one had ever heard of it happening before. So for all the moms and dads out there, if your baby ever spits up blood at less than a week old, at least you will have heard of it happening to someone else and hopefully your panic will be lessened by it (you can still panic though since that's what parents do with little tiny babies - or maybe that's just us...).

Sydney's Second Week of Life

Anyone see a theme in these pictures?

Chris says she has my tongue. :)

New Pictures of Sydney

We came home from the hospital Thursday night. By Thursday morning at 10am I was bored and wanted to leave. Sydney was barely 7 hours old at that point though and they have to wait 12 hours to give her the jaundice test. We left at 6pm and it was great to be in the hospital a total of 20 hours from start to finish. With Max, I had just barely had him at that hour. Sydney didn't have any problems except a little fluid in the lungs, which they said would go away in a day, and a very low risk of jaundice, which they just said to watch.
When I asked my doctor if it was okay if we left that night, he said he would leave as soon as possible if it were him because of the swine flu. Multiple people have said to just go home and stay there. It's going to be hard to not just stay home but I'd rather do that than risk her getting sick.
Here she is in the hospital:

At home in her swing:

Her eyelids are pretty swollen from the eye stuff they put on.

Asleep on dad:

She slept the 8 hours Thursday night which didn't surprise me since she was still so new. Last night she woke up every four hours and tonight I have a feeling it's going to be a very different story. Chris's parents were here for Thursday until early this morning (Saturday) and that was a huge help with Max and housework. It was such a relief to be in the hospital and not worry about burdening someone with Max (who has a TERRIBLE cold right now and I didn't want going to a neighbor's house). Since they left Max has had more of a chance to notice that something else is taking his parents' attention and he's really not sure what to think. He's doing okay though and will hopefully have no problem.
It looks like he loves her in this picture but I think he just likes the swing...

Sydney Ann Gappmayer

I'll let Erin post more pictures later.

Details on the Birth

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT A BIRTH (giving birth is a little disgusting and a little (or a LOT) messy) and sorry it's so long. It's more for my sake so that I don't have to write it out in my personal journal but can read it next time I have a kid. It's amazing how quickly you forget some stuff.

I went to the doctor yesterday for my 38 week appointment. At my 36 week appt I was dilated to a 3 and 50% effaced. At my 37 week appt I was to a 4 and the head was engaged (meaning it had dropped and was at the cervix). Yesterday I was at a 4+, practically a five he said, 70-80% effaced, and the bag of water was bulging. My doctor said he was going out of town Friday morning to Sunday and asked if I wanted my water broken on Thursday (Oct. 15). He said he was worried I wouldn't make it through the weekend. This was a hard decision for me to make because the whole pregnancy the only thing I really wanted to do was let this baby come on its own without ANY kind of help. No stripping membranes or anything. The doctor said he thought I would be fine with just getting the water broken but that pitocin might be used if things didn't progress.

I wanted to deliver with this doctor, I was in pain almost constantly now, and my in-laws were coming into town anyway on Thursday. It was just too convenient and perfect to pass up so I had him put me on the schedule to be induced at the hospital. They have to call you in for inductions if they have room so it wasn't a guarantee I would get induced that day.

It's almost comical to me to think about all this because my doctor (Dr. Lunt) got called into a delivery about 3 minutes after I was put in the exam room. They said it would be 10-15 minutes before he was back. It ended up being closer to 30 minutes after he saw the patients ahead of me and I almost left with the intention of just seeing him the next week because I wanted Chris to be able to get back to work that day and he was watching Max for me.

Anyway, about 6:30 I was contracting off and on. Not unusual after a checkup but Chris asked me to call a friend to make sure they were available the next day for the induction and that night, just in case. I took a bath around 8pm and the contractions slowed way down. But afterwards, around 8:45pm they had picked back up and so I started timing them. They were already 3-5 minutes apart but not terribly painful yet and I wanted to make sure they would last. I called my sister Kristen because she goes natural and I was interested in some tips to get through the next hour as easily as possible and to make sure I was in labor. She suggested going for a walk and gave me some different ways to sit and things to do during the contractions. While on the phone with her for 12 minutes I had 3 contractions so I knew it was probably full-blown labor. I went for a walk with Chris around our little cul-de-sac and we stopped and asked our friends if they could come sleep at our house in 45 minutes when we went to the hospital. We then went home and got as many things as we could done to try to prepare for the baby and someone else to be in our home (cleaned a little, brought the dog kennels in, packed the hospital bag completely). Then we headed to the hospital.

The nurse recognized my name as an induction for the next day and I was admitted around 10:30. I was dilated to a 5+ or 6 and all the way effaced. They started the IV with fluid so that I could get the epidural. I was wavering on getting it since the contractions weren't awful yet and there is a part of me that would like to experience labor both naturally and with medication. I decided to go ahead with the epidural because I wasn't prepared with techniques to ease the pain at all and they really wanted me strapped to the monitors as much as possible. I got the epidural and the nurse couldn't find the baby's heartbeat so she broke my water to put a thing on the baby's head to monitor it from there. I was so happy she broke my water. In my mind it helps labor a lot and I was already progressing, but I really liked that they didn't wait for the doctor to do it right before I delivered. The baby was doing great. I ended up getting the shakes pretty bad at this point. It was a combination of the medicine from the epidural and going into transition so who really knows what the major cause was. I got nauseous at this point too and was feeling pretty miserable so they gave me some Zofran and I was able to fall asleep for about an hour or so. I was 7-8 cm at this point and not progressing super fast but doing fine.

Around 2am the nurse checked me and I was at 9 cm. She said I was doing great but I could have some pitocin if I wanted. I was numb enough that had no problem with that idea. Around 2:45pm or so the pressure had increased and when she checked me she said the baby's head was right there. They got the room ready (which takes a little while!) and then called Dr. Lunt. The nurse had me try pushing one time to see what happened and immediately told me to stop and that the contractions were doing enough. Dr. Lunt arrived, waited for a contraction, told me to push, to stop while he cleaned the head and got ready for the body, told me to push again, and the baby was out. One contraction. AWESOME. He held up the body, the umbilical cord hiding the gender perfectly, moved the cord, and we all saw and said at the same time - It's a girl!! It was very cool. I don't think I could believe it. They let me hold her for a minute and then cleaned her up. She weighed 7 lbs. 12 oz. and was 20 inches long. A full pound heavier than Max and one week earlier to boot!

I tried to hold and nurse her after that but the shakes came back and I was shivering so bad I felt like I would drop her. So Chris just held her for a little while. My trembling went away after about 30 minutes and she nursed great. This was such a different experience from Max that I can't even begin to compare the two. She's very cute and sweet already. We didn't sleep until about 5:30 this morning and then only for an hour and a half before Chris went home to take care of Max. I've been up since then and not sure when I'll really feel like I can sleep. Hopefully soon!

The craziest thing about this? They had three nurses, of the seven who were supposed to be working today's shift in labor and delivery, call in sick last night and they said there was no way I would have been called in to be induced as I was last on the list. I am so thankful I was still on that list though because it made me go home and mentally prepare to have this baby now instead of two weeks from now. It really helped and I got to go into labor on my own anyway.

¿¿¿¿Boy or Girl????

I've been wanting to do this post for awhile now. I'm curious to see what your guesses will be. I don't know if at the beginning of this pregnancy I felt some kind of intuition that this baby was a girl, or I just wanted it to be so badly that I made myself feel like I felt it was a girl. I really want to have one of each. Too many people I know had to go to #5 to get a different gender and I really don't think we're going to make it that far.

Now that we are just 3 weeks away, I've come to accept that there is a strong possibility that this one is a boy. And that's okay! Max and he may be complete terrors for the next 10 years, but hopefully after that they will be a little calmer.

Here is what has happened in the last 37 weeks to make me wonder if it's a boy:

I asked my doctor if some of the things (old wives' tales) that people were telling me actually held a grain of truth whether it was a boy or a girl. Things like how you carry the baby, how you feel, what you crave, and how your body reacts like being sick and hair growth. I truly expected him to say that none of it meant anything. But instead he said that there are certain tendencies, nothing foolproof of course, but certain tendencies that go with it being a boy or a girl. Everything that people have told me points to it being a boy. Hmmm.

Then a lady I've just met asks me if she can guess what I'm having. Since I couldn't tell her if she was wrong or right, she says she'll just tell me and that she's 100% accurate all of the time. She looks at me, spins me around, and announces I'm having a boy. I asked her what her foolproof method is and she says "if you still have a waist and look like you have a basketball under your shirt, it's a boy." With girls apparently you get pregnant "all over" as she put it. Anyone have a basketball under their shirt and have a girl?

Here is what I've felt so far in this pregnancy compared to the one with Max.

First, "cravings" - never late night runs to the grocery store with either. Just little things that sounded really good in the moment, though the food was different between the two pregnancies.

I can't compare how sick I felt with each except for the first few weeks. The first 4 weeks before going to the doctor, I felt the same as with Max. Then I went on medicine and I felt almost 100% (besides being exhausted). Since I didn't have the medicine with Max, that's really not apples to apples.

I don't know if I feel more emotional or physically different. A friend of mine said she gets really emotional when she's pregnant with a girl and more physically ill when pregnant with a boy. I should probably ask Chris for a comparison here but he would be afraid to answer. (I don't know why...)

You can decide for yourself if my belly looks the same (besides the fact that it's bigger this time around - don't point that out :).


I really don't know what else to compare. So what do you think?????

Other random bits of information - everyone on both sides of our family that is pregnant or just had a kid had the opposite gender of their last baby. That's five babies born too!
Before I was pregnant (back in December), Chris had a dream that we had a baby girl.

I should have grabbed the camera...

Max is so funny lately. The other day he was pulling water bottles out of the package and trying to stack them on top of a narrow box. When one of them tipped over and made the other ones fall, he yelled in frustration.

Then today he was trying to stuff a big stuffed animal into the seat of his little play car and once again yelled in frustration when the lid wouldn't shut. He gets so angry when things don't work the way he thinks they should. I gave him a smaller stuffed animal and he figured out that it fit and was much happier.

I probably shouldn't, but I get a good laugh out of his frustration.

Max Update

I bought Max a little suit at a yard sale today. It came with pants and the coat. It's a 2T so too big right now but we had to try on the coat. He really thought he looked good.
He loves to make a mess when eating. Below he had just finished an oreo.

I know I'm supposed to be letting him learn to eat with utensils but it's kind of hard to get up the motivation to clean up this mess every time! He's getting a little better but the most he has ever eaten is half a yogurt before digging in with fingers. This time was especially bad.

If I'm working on something on the computer, Max will come over and I will let him watch Elmo on YouTube while I finish what I'm doing. He's fascinated and you can't pull him away from it. At least they sing the ABC's or count in some of the videos.

Below is our new foster dog Cassie. She's looking for a home if someone is interested. Max loves her and thankfully, she's really good with him.
Thatch is getting a little jealous though and tries to get extra attention any way he can. (They are not usually allowed on the couch by the way.)

No Explanation Necessary

What do you do on your birthday?

I bake, especially when it's on Sunday and we don't go out anyway. We had plans to go out Saturday night but something came up and we didn't make it. We'll try to go out before this baby comes but I really hate paying a babysitter and would rather just take Max with us.
We had some friends over and I tried some recipes I've been eyeing for awhile. I made a lemon meringue pie and a raspberry pie and a "chocolate velvet dessert". The lemon meringue didn't have time to set up and I accidentally added one more egg yolk so it wasn't very good. It was very pretty though! The chocolate velvet dessert had every sugar I had in the pantry in it and a pint of heavy whipping cream. It was rich. I didn't like it but other people seemed to and Chris did. The raspberry pie was deluxe though. Even if two of them didn't turn into favorite desserts, they definitely looked delicious.

Teeth

Max has started grinding his teeth. Any suggestions? (It's like nails on a chalkboard!)

The no-pacifier is going well. He still cries when you put him down but usually not for more than 60 seconds. He cried for a few minutes (up to 10 or 15 minutes) the first few days we took it away. Day 4 was harder than any other day. I've tried to give it to him during the day when he's just being loud and he throws it back at me so I think we're done with it. I'm glad we did it now when he wasn't very attached. He had one nightmare since taking it away and it took me 20 minutes to get him back down instead of the usual 5 seconds to give him the binky, but that was okay too.

Pictures of Max

Chris's sister Erin took some pictures of Max for me last weekend while we were in town. They turned out so CUTE!!!

Max and Lyla had fun playing on the piano afterwards.

Max was even willing to try to give Lyla a kiss!

And these below are my absolute favorites.

Max is usually so smiley that you can hardly get a shot without a big, cheesy, wrinkled-nose grin. I had woken him up to do this shoot though and he was pretty mellow and wouldn't smile as much as usual. You wouldn't know it from these pictures though. Erin still got some GREAT shots and I think my kid is even more absolutely adorable.

Family Reunion Weekend

We went to Utah County this last weekend. Chris took work off on Friday so that he could go car shopping all day. He didn't have any luck though so we're still a one-car family. Oh well - hopefully soon. It was also nice to have the extra time to visit and make the trip extend a little longer. My sister-in-law took pictures of Max Friday morning (which are on Facebook and I will post some on here soon), we got to see my sisters on Friday night, Chris went horseback riding Saturday morning, we went to the family reunion Saturday night, and went to a double baby blessing Sunday night. It was a very full (but FUN!) weekend and I'm still tired.
My sister is due about 3 weeks after me. Chris took Max around on Magic. Max seemed to like it and smiled and giggled a few times. He wouldn't look at the camera for a picture though as he was too fascinated by the animal beneath him.

I got on and rode twice around the arena. I was surprised at how little I felt the weight of the pregnancy at first. The horses are Tennessee Walkers and have a very smooth gait. However, I started to feel it by the end of twice around the arena and was glad I hadn't gone on the ride. I remember trying with Max and it hurting too much to go far.

By the way - it would be cool if the horse was trained to raise its foot like that but it is actually stomping it in nervousness to go and Chris just happened to catch the foot raised in the shot above.

We pet Dancer afterwards. He was one of the horses we had with us in St. George for awhile and I really love that horse.

We took the dogs to the family reunion and the kids had a blast playing with them. They wore the dogs out too which was GREAT. My niece, Madeline, seemed to like Thatch especially.

Every kid had to have a turn walking the dogs too. Murphy will go with any child anywhere but Thatch had to be dragged away from Chris and me. He's kind of attached...

It was a beautiful park with a pond. Max loved feeding the ducks but we didn't get any pictures. Here I am below 30 weeks pregnant :) 75% of the way there!

Madeline and Max playing with Thatch and the dirt.

Max doesn't really like grass so he stayed mostly in the mulch and got very dirty. It was surprisingly chilly but Emily brought this sweater for Max and I think it's so CUTE. I now have one pair of pants for him and one sweater. It's hard for me to go shopping for long sleeves and pants when it's still 100 degrees outside! and will be for awhile.

During the second baby blessing Max launched himself at his cousin Tanner who was sitting next to him on the grass. Max isn't very shy and LOVED playing with his cousins. He especially liked his 21-year-old cousin Cody. He laughed at anything Cody did, played with him, sat on his lap, and "talked" to him. I wish I had gotten a picture.

Max also loved his cousins that were born just months before him. He's finally old enough to sit with them and was fascinated by these little people his age. I really need to find him some playmates down here. I wish Max could see his cousins more often. It's so neat to have so many cousins close to his age.