Charlito turns 1 month!

We thought he'd be a Charlie, but then he looked like Carlos so we started calling him Carlito. But now you can't see much of the resemblance below all his chub - so we're back to Charlie. We went to the pediatrician this week and he now weighs in at 12 lbs 5 oz! He gained over 4 lbs in a month - that's 50% of his weight! That's twice the average and he's now in the 90% for his age. And I thought I was in for a 6 lbs baby...His favorite activities remain eating, diaper soiling, waiting for me to open his diaper so he can pee on me, and sleeping is a distant fourth. He is getting cuter by the day and he is moving his head more which again provides more endless entertainment for his mother. In fact he is doing tummy time and starting to move his head back and forth...here is a video documenting it (kindof)

The last four weeks have gone by so fast yet the nights still seem endless. I've never been so happy to see daylight. The best has been hearing from other moms and their experiences. They remind me that I'm not crazy and that babies are the wildest adjustment ever. Sam gets the prize for calling from Hong Kong, but mothers seem to come out of the woodwork to provide support. They also make me feel better given that all the books I'm reading say that I should have started on a schedule already and that he should be sleeping 5-6 hours at night! ha! if only! Instead he sleeps okay from 8pm to 3am (walking every 2.5 hours) but then from 4am onwards is a disaster - he starts making weird grunting noises and then 7am is wake up time. 1

To celebrate Carlito's existence some school friends made brunch here last weekend. It was also a chance for him to meet the thunderbird team - given that he was our (unknown) mascot in Phoenix and suffered overdoses of caffeine, sleepless nights & celebratory tequila...So here is a picture with the team in his team onesie made by Sarah. Ralles asked what words he was saying. As you can see in the picture with his dad he has started "reading," but unfortunately no words yet to report - just grunting, cooing and crying.

Carlos Nicolas turns 3 weeks

It's been an amazing three weeks - amazing adjustment, amazingly little sleep, amazingly lot of laundry...He doubled his age and nearly doubled his weight! It turns out that I have super food as breast milk as Carlito appears to be adding pounds each day. He regained his birth weight in 4 days and added 2 lbs in a 1.5 weeks. Carlos thinks he weighs 13 lbs now...We go to the doctor again in a week so we'll find out then. But he has already outgrown many of his clothes and diapers!

We thought we were so prepared with baby things - but it seems you can't really be sure what will be useful until the baby comes along. For instance the hospital baby outfit was so great that Carlos went back and asked for more; pee-pee tee-pees are proving to be key (thanks to baby Wallis for sending them - I guess she has taken control of the credit card); multiples are super important - multiple favorite swaddling blankets, multiple sheets, multiple changing table covers, multiple hooded towels...multiples are key as I am running my laundry machine into the ground. He seems to like to mark his territory - peeing on everything!

In just 3 weeks he has changed so much. We were looking at pictures of the day he was born and were surprised how much he has changed since then. He sends much more time awake now. He loves to look at the light and out windows. Sometimes he seems totally captivated by nothing! He is still a prolific poo-er so the onesie that Soogy made is still appropriate. He loves bath time too (or maybe it's just me who loves it) and most of all he likes being held with his face against your chest. But his all time favorite activity is eating (hence the picture of him on his boppy happy as can be)

Aunt Mandy came by for a visit and fixed his car seat positioning so now we are safe for car travel and thus more mobile. thank goodness! I think we were both getting sick of sticking to a 10 block radius...

Carlos Nicolas turns 1 week and Big Carlos gets a toy too!

It's the best thing ever to have little Carlos Nicolas here with us. Although I will say that he takes up a lot more space than I expected from an 8 lb, 1 cubic foot little being! He makes more laundry than Carlos and I combined, our trash pile has doubled due to diapers, his seating accessories are now spread throughout the house and his stroller is about the size of our car. It also takes five times longer to do anything: for 3 days we attempted to watch a movie we rented and when we did get around to it, it took 4 hours to get through the movie! I've also been attempting to post this blog for the last 3 days....But for all that he provides endless entertainment just by breathing. He still isn't sleeping much so the ugly doll is there to ward off any nightmare breastmilk dreams...Or maybe that's what's waking him up!

Big Carlos worried that he wasn't going to be my number one once the little guy came along and it only took until day three that he caught me telling the baby that he was my favorite guy in the whole world. "Ah-Ha! I told you!" Carlos said. With that I think he felt justified in his getting a toy too.... His toy is 40 years old and probably needs about as much TLC as young Carlos. I personally think my toy is a whole lot cuter...

Carlos Nicolas arrives on July 27th!

It's official - the baby beat House II!! Carlos Nicolas finally decided to join us! Though he seemed happy to stay put at 41 weeks we smoked him out with spicy food and threats of castor oil. He was very accommodating as Carlos didn't want him to come on Monday July 28th and I was worried about being induced on the 29th and we were both worried about driving to Sibley hospital at rush hour. So being the gentleman that he is he decided that 5am on sunday was a good time to make a trip to the hospital.



The gruesome details:
Contractions started at dinner (spicy thai!) and got regular around midnight. I tried to distract myself until 3:30am when I finally had to wake up Carlos to help me pump up the birthing ball. We timed the contractions (on excel :)) until 5am. The intense ones came every 5 minutes and then slightly shorter ones every couple of minutes. At 5am we finally picked up that hospital bag that I had packed a month before and headed out.

Of course the trip wasn't without Carlos and Genny moments...like the fact that we didn't exactly know how to get to the hospital so I had luckily packed a map and navigated between contractions. Then there was the "birthing ball" which when inflated didn't really fit into our two door car. Carlos decided it was a good idea to wedge it between my face and the windshield. "It'll keep you safe" he tried to tell me. Right...tell that to a woman having contractions 2 minutes apart! Neither of us thought to deflate the ball, but luckily it did end up wedged in the back.

Although the contractions were so regular and painful when we got to the hospital at 5:30am I was still only 3 cm dilated!! I almost fell over. No progress at all! So I put on a hospital gown and walked around the room and bounced on the ball for another hour and a half. I kept shaking all over every time I had a contraction which made relaxing and "focusing on breathing" really hard! Luckily at 7:30 I was 6 cm dilated. Of course by then I was bouncing in pain with the contractions and carlos was fast asleep on my hospital bed! I had to force him up when the nurse told me I needed to get back on the monitor. It gets kindof blurry but I know that they had to hook me back up to the fetal monitoring which constricts your movement and at that time my water broke. Unfortunately there was meconium which meant that little Carlos' bowels didn't want to wait anymore (which makes sense now as he is quite the prolific pooer!). By then I was 7.5 cm dilated and they were hurrying to get the doctor to the hospital. The nurse said that I would be pushing soon and so I focused on the big digital clock on the wall facing me, willing the minutes to pass.

The process wasn't really what I expected - there was only one nurse there and the doctor only made an appearance at the very end to set up the slip and slide plastic thing and unveil a table of instruments that I hoped she wasn't planning on using on me. The nurse stood on one side and instructed Carlos to "grab a leg!" I was shocked - as I am sure Carlos was too - I thought he was going to stay above my midsection and hold my HAND - NOT MY LEG!! I remember thinking even at the time how surreal the experience was. They told me to push for 3 sets of 10 during a contraction. It was much better when the nurse would do the counting as I would loose count and Carlos counted so slowly I thought I would die before he would get to 5! I would open my eyes between pushed and see the doctor standing back saying "oh, Sylvia (she calls me by my first name) - that was just great!" What does that mean even? I couldn't feel much happening so I thought she was being patronizing. But I guess his head was starting to come out and when the doctor told Carlos to look and see the head, Carlos responded somewhat horrified and somewhat disdainfully "That's his head?!" The doctor took time to explain that babies heads aren't fused together fully, blah,blah,blah - all while I am between contractions and wondering how we were having this conversation!

Pushing wasn't quite the relief that I anticipated as after every push I had extreme abdominal pressure and back pains. But then I could tell something was happening and pushed for dear life, despite what I could tell was maybe tearing. And then the doctor stood back and said "My, what a big baby!" and all 21.5 inches and 8lbs 2 oz slithered out. Carlos said that he starting crying with his foot still in the womb! Because of the meconium the neonatalogist had to look at him before I could hold him. They took him to the other side of the room and told Carlos that he could go see his son. Carlos was sitting with tears welling in his eyes and I could tell that he wasn't sure he would be able to stand up. But he did and the nurse brought him some juice. I have to say that Carlos did great for all his talk about not wanting to see the full process...

Even though I had heard a million labor stories it was still totally surreal & unexpected & amazing & crazy that after all that that we have a young carlos. He is so adorable and I can spend hours just watching him. It's amazing that even just breathing can provide endless amounts of entertainment...Unfortunately he isn't the best sleeper so I get lots of chances to watch him at night as he wakes up every hour!!

As for the house - well the good news is that we passed the last inspection which hopefully means that drywall can go up and the house will start looking more like a house. The insulation is up which was no easy feat and the stairs are on! The stairs replace a very unstable board that was used as a ramp into the house which always elicited horrified looks when a 9 month pregnant lady climbed up it.

I'm attaching some photos of young carlos, the picture I was about to post on sunday of 41 weeks, and some house photos. Everyone says he looks like carlos (though he has my wrinkled skinny fingers!) so we'll see if he becomes a Carlito or a Charlie....