Welcome Our Sweet Man!

Well, finally I am able to take a few minutes (or hours) to write another blog entry! A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. We found out we were pregnant in June! Things went really smoothly for quite a while, hardly sick at all, just tired. We even took a trip to Colorado Springs in September and did some sight-seeing and hiking. However, in October I was told to limit my activity due to an "irritable" uterus - I had 15-30 painless but really annoying contractions an hour! This continued for the entirety of the pregnancy. I was placed on bedrest for 12 weeks beginning in Nov. At 36 weeks I was able to resume more activity thinking the little guy would come super fast but not so. He was so comfy cozy that he had to be induced at 39 weeks and I labored for 18 hours, almost two of which were me trying to push the little booger out!

Just born!

So David Elliot Taylor arrived at 6:39am, Wednesday, February 8, 2012. He weighed 6 lbs. 11 oz and was 19 1/4 inches long. Now he is about 10 lbs and 23 inches and he coos and smiles. He has the happiest little smile and the sweetest, quietest coos. He has the sweetest cry, though he rarely cries except when he's hungry (but not frantically unless you wait too long) or if he's really tired. When he starts getting hungry or tired he just gives out a few quiet, sounds like happy coos that eventually progress to an all out cry if you don't respond to him after a while. And usually when you pick him up he gets quiet and waits patiently. However, again, if you wait too long he just gets mad at that point. Enough is enough!

Grandma got to come for a long visit! Hurray!

Wesley came for a visit too!

Look at those grasshopper legs! :)

It was quite a rough road the first month! We came home from the hospital on a Friday. Eric turned right around and took Wesley to the doctor that day because he had been running a high fever for a few days. He had the flu! On Saturday we had to take David to Children's Mercy Urgent Care because he was a bit too yellow for my liking. They quickly wanted him in the hospital because of his bilirubin level in combination with a rapid loss of weight. Yikes! So he laid under the lights and received fluid through an IV for about 20 hours. At the hospital it was confirmed that he had a tied tongue that needed to be clipped because he was not breastfeeding well at all. On Sunday we brought him home. On Monday, we had to take David back to the doctor for a recheck and I started feeling terrible and had a fever. Then Eric had to take my mom to the doctor because she was sick. Though she wasn't tested for it, we suspect she also had the flu. My breast pump, which was vital to increasing my milk supply because David was such a poor feeder, also broke that day as well. That was a bad day! On Tuesday, I went to the doctor and tested positive for the flu! So Eric was taking care of all of us and was thoroughly exhausted. I was in a complete flu and postpartum fog for the rest of the week. I had to take David back to the doctor again on Thursday for a recheck. Wesley and I had a terrible cough that took weeks to go away!

Under the lights

He got a little crazy with his feet!

Eric called this his batman mask.

Thankfully they had a bed for the adults and meals for MOM. :)

The next Monday was my first day without help. David had his tongue clipped that day. On Tuesday, he had another recheck. On Wednesday, Wesley had his two year doctor's appt! The next Monday I had to take David again for a recheck of his tongue. That weekend, David developed a cough that sounded similar to Wesley and I. So on Monday I took him to the doctor AGAIN. The doctor said he sounded fine and had no fever. Well, that night he was roasting hot. He had a fever of 103 and not even 4 weeks old! We called the doctor and they said go to the emergency room! They took us back very quickly and started an IV and tested him for everything in the book. Poor guy has been poked and prodded quite a few times in his young little life. He tested positive for RSV and had to stay in the hospital for two nights. The little man had 3 leads that posed quite a challenge to this mommy who already had trouble trying to breastfeed him. Needless to say, after staying up all night with the little guy, I was completely exhausted and emotionally strung out! However, the RSV never really got worse. He started eating better the next day and was allowed to go home earlier than anyone expected. Hurray!

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Look at those long legs!

In the ER waiting for a room.

Finally in a room, the same room as before, just a different bed. Poor guy. It was so sad to see him hooked up to so much.

It didn't seem to bother him too much though

Since then things have been easier. It has certainly been a huge adjustment to having another little one around. Wesley was and is still not too keen on having this little thing vying for his attention. Occasionally, he finds it necessary to vent his feelings on David by conking him on the head with wooden trains, scratching his head and poking at his eyeballs. He's also conked me on the head and screeched very loudly in my ear when trying to feed David a bottle (I had to give up the breastfeeding). I've been informed though that this is perfectly normal. I've also just been trying to figure out how to get anything done. Now that David sleeps through the night, most nights, I feel so much better! I can think so much clearer and get so much more done. I am actually enjoying this new phase of life.

David seems really laid back and just goes with the flow. I was very on-schedule with Wes, feeding him every three hours on the dot, give or take 5 minutes. But if I went much past that I started to get frantic. Well, try as I may, the schedule for David is much more lax. For one thing, he just doesn't demand to be fed. I often still have to wake him to feed him and he's fairly happy for a while without being fed. Even in the hospital he was like this. So he isn't really on a three hour schedule and whereas we fed Wes at the same times each day, it changes from day to day with David. However, he is generally in the bed at night around 9 or so.

One of the unique things about David is his gift of burping! He has some really loud, deep burps that sound like an adult male's burp. However, there are a few times that he has let out these scary burpy things that could be heard across the street! The last time he did it, it was so loud that I started to tear up because it scared me so much! He did too! Then I just started laughing. How could something so, so tiny make this enormous sound that I've never even heard an adult make! So with Wesley it was projectile spit-up. With David it is scary belches!

Hi mamma!

Well, that's all for now. I will be writing more soon about Wesley and maybe adding some recipes and a snipit about my time on bedrest. Thanks for your patience!