Hudson Month 9

This month, Hudson is...

• He's pulling himself to a standing position in his crib and wherever he can.  Sometimes his shenanigans end up in tears because he loses his grip and balance and falls down. Luckily we have carpet and the fall isn't as devastating, unless he happens to meet the TV stand or the edge of the bookcase.
• He started cruising after pulling himself to a standing position from the couch. 
• His top front left tooth broke through 12/16!! Four teeth, here we come!! 
• Top front right tooth popping out 12/21!! This kid is ready to eat stuff other than purees!! 
• He gets on all fours as if he is going to crawl but then slumps back in his belly and army crawls everywhere but finally mastered crawling 12/21!!

Some stats to note...

Hudson weighs 25 lbs 9oz and is 30 inches long.

Lily at this age weighed 20 lbs 12 oz and was 28.5 inches long. 

Hudson Month 8

• Sat up on his own from a laying down position 11/13!
• He's beginning to show signs of understanding the signs for milk, food, and more in sign language
• Bottom left tooth #2 emerged 11/23!
• Loves the puff snacks!
• Says mama and dada but it's his babbling instead of really calling us that. 
• Still army crawling but has gotten substantially better at it. He moves with a quickness!!
• Loves being around lily!
• Because he has gotten really good at army crawling, he enjoys following us around if we go to another room and he is in the hallway.
• He is doing very well with sleeping. Goes down between 6 and 7 and wakes up no more than twice during a night, however, he is an early bird and wakes up around 6ish.
• Booby milk is officially over. I got one really bad engorgement day and after that I couldn't get my supply back up. I don't know if the engorgement is to blame or the fact that he is having more solids that is making the supply go down. Oh well, we had a good run. Way better than with lily (that lasted about three weeks lol).

Hudson Month 7

• First tooth broke through!! Bottom right on 9/28!!
• Second tooth broke through 10/27! Bottom left. 
• Finally a sitter! Mastered that 10/20!
• Eating solids now but have him on purees. Still worried about his choking issue. 
• Started him on puff snacks. He's a happy clam when he's putting the snacks in his mouth. 
• Introduced sippy cup this month. 

Hudson Month 6

• He finally rolled on 9/11! And he's rolling all over the living room like a tumbleweed. 
• He's now saying syllables like bah bah bah instead of the cooing.
• He broke the swing. It doesn't swing anymore. 😔
• He's putting his feet in his mouth. 
• He's getting better at balancing himself while sitting. 
• We started solids this month. He's liking sweet potatoes. 
• He had his six month wellness appointment and got his shots. Poor guy!

A few stats to note:

Weighs in at 22lbs 6oz .  Lily was 17lbs 12oz at this age.

He is  28.54  inches.  Lily was  26.25 inches.

Hudson Month 5

This month...

• He is a drooling machine. 
• He's an assisted sitter. Well, he's gotten better at it. 
• Got him a walker and he sits in it but wobbles a lot. 
• When he's doing floor time he's beginning to arch his back in preparation for rolling. 
• He found his feet and he's putting them in his mouth!
• He has outgrown the swing as well as the rock n play. 
• He is wearing 9-12 month clothes and size 4 diapers!! Que gordito!
• He likes to gnaw on our hands when we sit him on our lap. 
• Enjoys watching Lily do everything. 
• He's still loving his boob milk. 

Nice thing about him is that he rarely cries, but rather loudly babbles, as if he were saying, "Mom! Meatloaf!"

Hudson Month 4

This month...

• He found his feet but is not playing with them yet. 
• Is more stable at holding up his neck. 
• Has become an assisted sitter.
• Is beginning to put stuff in his mouth and is beginning to drool. I'm gonna have to bust out the bibs. He prefers his fingers or my knuckles.
• Lots of babbling.
• Is super ticklish. 
• Giggles at my funny faces and sounds. 

I'm happy to say that breastfeeding is going well. He's still on a pretty good schedule and there are many nights he's slept through the night, making for an uncomfortable time for my boobs as they become beyond engorged. Definitely feel better rested than with Lily at this age. 

A few stats to note:

Weighs in at 19.5lbs. Lily was 15lbs at this age. 

He is 26 inches. Lily was 26.25 inches.

Hudson Month 3

There is not much to say about the boy this month other than he found his hands and began stabilizing his neck. He's still pretty wobbly but he's trying to keep his head up, somewhat. He has a voracious appetite and he occasionally still chokes during feedings. This month I have been exclusively breastfeeding him with the sporadic formula bottles here and there.  I started him on a schedule this month as well because I wasn't getting much sleep (yes, selfish me). So I'm trying to get up and start the day at 8am and follow the eat-play-nap model so he goes down roughly at 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and night-night at 7pm. At first this was rough and he did his share of crying but it didn't pain me as much as Lily's cry when she was a newborn. Chalk it up to experience and knowing that he's not dying lol. I wanted to do things differently from how we did things with Lily. With her we fed her to go to sleep every time and to this day she needs her milk sippy to go to sleep. I want Hudson to not be dependent on a bottle or sippy for sleep.  I want him to learn how to soothe himself to sleep so everyone can get good rest.

Stats to note:

Weighs in at 14lbs 14 oz.  Lily weighed 11lbs 8 oz.

He is 24 inches. Lily was 23 inches.

Lily Turns Three: The Interview

Now that Lily can reason a bit more, I thought it would be cool to give this interview business a shot and see what her responses are to the questions below. I'm going to try to do it every year and see how her answers change and add more questions.

Nicknames: Beans, Beanie, Beanie Pie, Jeanie Pie

What is your favorite...

color? Blue

animal? Elephant 

book? Ten little fingers and ten little toes

TV show? Magic school bus

song? Abc song

fruit? Grapes

vegetable? Tomatoes 

food? Peanut butter and jelly sandwich 

drink? Water

breakfast food? Breakfast papitas (tater tots)

snack? Fruit snacks

game? Soccer

toy? Balloons

sport? Baseball

holiday? Fireworks

number? 1

store? Supermarket 

Where do you like to go? To the park

What do you like to do with your family? Play

What do you like to take with you at night? Stories 

What do you love to learn about? Planets 

What makes you happy? Following directions 

What makes you sad? Going to my room

Who is your best friend? Ensley
What do you want to be when you grow up? Mom

The 2 Year Rundown

Items worth sharing:

• Potty training (unsuccessful may I add) beginning 6/27 due to a skin yeast infection in her no no area after several blowouts. Got meds Monday 6/23 and saw no improvement. Hopefully keeping her out of diapers during awake time will make it better. I tried to get her potty trained before I went to work but it was a no go. As soon as I started work (8/14), Ed handled business and she finally got it. It was rough at the beginning (by that I mean that she needed to go pee like every ten minutes) but as the year progressed she has gotten better.
• Her vocabulary has flourished and we are able to have conversations with her. Her sentence structure has gotten progressively better as well. She knows her alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, days of the week, months of the year, and planets. She understands a lot of the Spanish I throw at her but she cannot "converse" back with me. She mimics my Spanish but into gibberish, which is funny to hear.
• She can READ! Like actually get a book and read it! She started doing this at approximately two and a half.  We really haven't "pushed" her to learn to read but there is print while she's watching her shows (we leave the subtitles on ALL the time) and she navigates through many YouTube educational videos that have lots of print too. And she watches a lot of SuperWhy and LeapFrog. I read to her almost every night, mostly the same books over and over to the point where now she has taken over and reads them to me. It's pretty awesome.
• She has been good at sharing time with her little brother, Hudson. It was a rough couple weeks with me not being able to do the night routines we had in place prior to D-day, but once I got back on the band wagon, she has been great. (she was making herself throw up nightly! yikes!)
• She plays better with others (by that I mean with Ensley and Aubrey). She still thinks all kids are "friends."
• We're still pretty pleased with the food choices she makes.  She still enjoys broccoli, peas, edamame, tomatoes and corn. She'll eat a bowl of cherry tomatoes almost everyday! She loves her some tomatoes! As a toddler she obviously eats the "bad" stuff like pizza, fries, nuggets, cookies and ice cream but knowing that she will devour a bowl of those vegetables puts our minds at ease.

Hudson Month 2

This month, Hudson began tracking us slowly and started "talking" to us. Lily likes to put her face real close to her face and giggle. When she is around, he tracks her quite well. The choking issue is still there.  At his two month appointment I mentioned it to the doctor and he said that he is just an "aggressive" eater. Well, that explains why he's almost a whopping fifteen pounds!! What a chunker!

Hudson Month 1

     Well. Hudson made it through month one. The reason I say this is because we had a couple scares this month. While I was at the hospital Lily caught a bug and we all got sick, including Hudson. For our ailments, we were able to take some form of medicine to alleviate the symptoms. But for poor Huddy Buddy, since he was just a couple weeks old, we could not give him any type of medication for his symptoms. 

     He got very congested which made it more difficult to feed. I did not know this but newborns only breathe through their noses even though they have their mouths wide open most of the time while they are sleeping. With that said, during a feeding he choked but couldn't catch his breath for a brief second. Gave me a scare that I called nurse triage and based on his symptoms (flared nostrils, super rapid and erratic breathing) they suggested I take him to the emergency room (it was 3 in the morning).  So I did and they took a chest x-ray and thankfully they looked fine. The only thing they said I could do is put a few saline solution drops in each nostril, one at a time, and suction the snot he had in there before every feeding. So back at home that is what I did. 

     A few days went by and things appeared to be better and Ed and I were watching a movie (I think it was Paycheck) in the evening after Lily went to bed and I was feeding Hudson while watching it. Well, he then goes and chokes while drinking his bottle but this time he couldn't catch his breath because the congestion had gotten a bit worse. I say a bit worse because the only time you heard the congestion was during feedings and he appeared fine when he was not feeding. Anywho, so he couldn't catch his breath and both Ed and I begin to slowly panic. I'm patting Hudson's back, raising his arms and he still couldn't breathe--his lips began turning blue. Ed calls 911 and as he is talking to the operator, I lay Hudson down and use the booger sucker and suction each nostril as fast as I could and finally he was able to breathe again. 

   Going through this was rough. Watching your newborn turn blue and not breathe is very stressful to say the least. I'm glad we got him to breathe again and am glad that Ed acted quickly on calling 911 in the event he didn't catch his breath. Hudson still has the occasional choke and it still makes my stomach sink every time. I hope this gets better with time.

   You're probably thinking, "Wait, didn't you go through that with Lily?" Well, surprisingly, no, we didn't. Maybe the occasional choke but nothing like this. 

   Other than the choking issue, it's been pretty cool seeing Lily interact with him. I mean, he's just a lump at this point so there's really no "real" interaction but you know what I mean. She is very sweet with him and when he cries she'll tell him it's okay and will sing him a song. He seems to be receptive to her, which is cool. 

   I'm glad I went the c-section route this time. I was up and about (with pain, of course) within a week from D-day and surprisingly, even though I feel tired, it is not as bad as it was with Lily that first month. I guess it's because I'm expecting to be beyond exhausted and I had that severe incontinence problem with her. Well, let's see what the future months hold for us. 

Labor Day # 2: Hudson! 3/21/15

Fortunately, I don't have to preface this blog entry with a disclaimer that it is going to be very graphic like I did for labor day #1. If you want to know more about that experience you can read about it here.What was neat about this labor day was that for one, it was scheduled, so we didn't have to play the guessing game on whether I was going into labor or not. Secondly, because it was a C-section, I was guaranteed that I was not going to have the terrible incontinence that was brought about by a vaginal delivery. So there's that. 

Thankfully, at my 36 week and 38 week appointments there was no cervical dilation so there was no worry that I would go into labor before the c-section appointment on week 39 so everything went as planned. Madeline gladly took care of Lily on Saturday 3/21 while we went to the hospital and got ready for delivery. 

I was nervous being in the operating room and the anesthesia made me feel all kinds of funny but the anesthesiologist was awesome and was very receptive to my needs. Ed was called in after I was lying on the operating table and before you know it it was all done. I felt lots of tugging and I smelled a lot of burning skin throughout the entire process. 

So our new member of the DeLaO clan, Hudson Damian DeLaO, arrived at 11:46 am. He weighed 8 lbs 6 oz and was 21 inches long. Before delivery during check-in, we had asked the nurse if she could find out what Lily's APGAR score was (For those who don't know what this is, it is a method to quickly summarize the health of newborn children. You can find more info here). So her scores were 9 and 9. We had mentioned our search for the APGAR score to the anesthesiologist so he was kind enough to get his scores for us.  His scores were 7 and 9.

This was definitely a different experience from Lily's delivery. I think the only negative was that every time a nurse came in for a new shift and read in my chart that I had an elected c-section, I felt the eyes of judgement and had to explain myself every time telling them that with the first delivery I had severe incontinence. It kinda sucked. 

As far as how I felt recovering, I felt a horrible pain in my chest due to the CO2 they pump in to get the baby out as well as a burning sensation where then opened me up to get him out. I stayed on top of my pain meds so I didn't feel too uncomfortable and was walking by the end of that day. I was not even able to start walking after Lily's delivery so right away I saw a vast improvement.  

Two additional procedures that we did not experience with Lily were a circumcision and a frenulectomy (tongue-tie surgery) for Hudson. Poor buddy!

Just one thing that makes me sad about this is that Karla is not here to see her fourth grandkid. Kinda bummed thinking about it.

2nd and 3rd Trimester EDD 3/27/15

Well second trimester seemed to be a breeze and I felt great. No nausea, no heartburn, no indigestion, great appetite. It was great, that is, until third trimester rolled around. I was really hoping that I could be as active as I was while pregnant with Lily but that wasn't the case. I felt so tired and had no energy. As I got bigger it got harder to walk, my sciatic nerve was giving me a tough time, my back was in constant pain and I was mega waddling. I didn't get puffy ankles or feet with this pregnancy like I did with Lily. Needless to say, I did not work until the end. The doctor was kind enough to give me the choice of leaving work at week 36 but my dumb ass requested week 37 (3/6) because I wanted to finish up the unit we were on to give the class to the sub on a clean slate, so to speak. Thankfully I was able to relax (as much as a pregnant woman could), and nest, for a couple weeks before the boy came along.

I was blessed with great friends both at work and outside of work by receiving two baby showers. One a few days before I stopped working and the other the weekend after my last day of work. The DeLaOs felt the love of so many wonderful people loving our son even before he was here. I thank all of you for such great gestures and amazing hearts!