Sleep...

It's 11:30pm. Sydney is awake. And I mean wide awake. As she is every night at this time. She always stays up an hour and 45 minutes after she wakes up. But no matter what time she falls asleep, 8pm, 9pm, even 9:45pm, she wakes up at 10pm almost on the dot.
Here's what we've tried: We give her formula at night to try to help her sleep longer. We've tried feeding her in her room with the lights off and still swaddled but she's just wide awake after she eats. About three nights ago I fed her and was able to get her to go right back to sleep. I tried again tonight and as she was drifting off to sleep, Max moaned in his room and it was enough to completely wake her up.
So here I am awake (Chris has early morning meetings) with Sydney who is as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. The thing is, she's always been a night owl. When she was first born I had to wake her up all day long so she wouldn't be up all night. And a week later she would be back to sleeping all day if I let her. I've constantly had to keep her days and nights right. So now she goes to bed around midnight, eats around 4:30am and sleeps until 9am sometimes. Tomorrow I think I will wake her up at 7 or so and see if I can't change the circadian rhythm a little bit and get her to go to bed earlier. But I'm out of ideas if that doesn't work. Any suggestions??

Quiet Book

A newborn is not the only reason I have been away from the blog lately. Back in September my friend Rachel asked if anyone wanted to do a quiet book with her. We all chose a page and then made that same page enough times to give each person a copy. We ended up needing FIFTEEN copies of each page. (!)
A page was front and back and if we wanted two books, we could do a second page. I chose the abc's, getting dressed, and colors for my pages.
This is what my pages all looked like at the end:
Below is an up-close look. The page folds in half so that the abc's are one page, the "closet" with clothes is on the left side, the person to put the clothes on is on the right, and the balloons are on the back of the person page.
Max likes it already. THANK GOODNESS because it was A LOT OF WORK!!!Below are all the pages we got minus two that are still coming from Virginia. I am working on sewing them together now and putting in the eyelets. Max is still a little young for most of the pages but he has fun looking at them. It's going to be great for church, dr's offices, and airplanes!

This is the cover I made.

If anyone is interested in a closer look at some of the pages, I can post individual pages. We also used this blog a lot for ideas and suggestions. http://quietbook.blogspot.com/ We did our books on heavyweight pellon instead of muslin though. I've talked to a few people lately who have just started doing their own. All I say is - GOOD LUCK! It's worth it when it's done!

THANK YOU RACHEL!! I never would have finished this on my own!

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.