The Story on Morning Glory

5 traumatic formula changes in 5 weeks to alleviate a possible soy/dairy allergy - check!

reflux sonogram - check!

prevacid  - check!

zantac  - check!

rectal suction biopsy - check!

painful Cdiff bacteria since day 1 (which was more than likely diagnosed as a soy/diary allergy), discovered at 2.5 months - check!

antibiotics that caused constipation - check!

rice cereal in formula from 1 month to help with reflux - check!

realizing at 3 months that rice cereal gives O terrible painful gas and switching to oatmeal cereal - check!
double frenectomy to correct a tongue tie and lip tie - check!

double ear infection - check!

another round of antibiotics that caused gas and constipation - check! 

screaming as if someone was poking him with hot needles any time he was put in the car for the first 3.5 months of his life - check!

Owen's life has been full....FULL of drama.

At this point, today, for now, things are settled.  Owen's a happy and smiling 4.5 month old, who doesn't quiiiiiiiite laugh (the doctor said it's nothing to worry about.....it's just a personality thing......well, that makes me feel better) but is thinking hard about it!  He's doing a great job of learning to fall asleep on his own, and he's adorably flirty!

Owen has required so much patience (sometimes more and sometimes a lot more than I've got) and I've learned about being a parent of a difficult baby.  Jack was healthy and easy.  I knew it in theory, but now I know it in practice. 

I can't tell you how excited I am that we've made it this far!  Where I don't fear leaving the house, or decide not to go to church because I'll just be in the hallway with O the whole time anyways, or saying no to any invitation out, knowing that it would be a disaster waiting to happen.  In the past 4.5 months, our jokes have been about finding a baby boarding school to ship O off to for a few months, leaving him on the front porch until the other parent comes home, and dropping him off at the fire station.  I can look at him today and have feelings of love instead of decisions to love, and I LOVE that, and am so glad we're here. 

This season has been stretching and growing and revealing weaknesses.....and realizing how often I try to fix it on my own instead of requiring the Lord to do it.  Oy.  I'm hard headed.  

God is good, all the time.  He was good when Owen was screaming for all of his awake time.  He was good as we walked into Cook Children's for testing.  He was good when my sweet boy was so frustratingly uncomfortable due to gas pains.  He was good when it would take 1.5 hours to get him to sleep.  He was good when he lead us down the right path to find a correct diagnosis of the Cdiff.  He was good when there was very little happy time in our house.  He was good when we had to decide to love Owen instead of feel it.  He was good when the car was filled with screaming from start to finish. He was good when I was reciting the fruits of the spirit out loud as O was screaming for hours on end to keep myself from falling apart.  He was good when we were kicking trash cans, muttering how annoying O is, and wondering if we'd ever love him as much as we love Jack. And He's good now, when things are easier.  Owen's happier, and God is good.  We're all happier, and God is good.

is that there's waaaaay too much to catch up on! I'll try to be concise...

Owen's feeding problems have turned out to not be so much feeding problems but that he had C. Diff bacteria in his intestines!  Fun, right?  Who knows how long it was in there before we found it, I'm just so thankful for the string of events that lead us to our GI clinic where our nurse practicioner ordered a stool sample.  So, Owen was on an anti fungal for 10 days, which took care of the bacteria and.....tada!  Gave3 us out smiling 2 month old tha we knew was in there somewhere!  Thank the Lord.  The second month of Owen's life was quite a struggle.  We changed bottles AGAIN to Dr. Brown and ended up EleCare, which is a hospital grade formula, based on neither soy or milk, to make sure that wasn't what was making him so uncomfortable.  I'm really hoping that in the next month, we can transition off of that onto something milk based, since I'm convinced the C.Diff was the problem, not an allergy.  It's only been in the past few days where we've actually been able to enjoy our little man, and I'm just beyond thankful for that.  Don't get me wrong, he has his baby moments, but he's just not screaming constantly.  So there's that.  

Owen is a huge fan of the sling, and most of the time, so am I.  It's great to be able to tote the boys around with Owen tucked in and taken care of!  Honestly, how do you shop at Target with two kids?  Especially with one in a car seat that takes up the whole basket?  No idea.  I did it once and you see how it turned out....Jack was packed in! The times when it's hard is when he will NOT go to sleep unless he's in the sling.  And then it's only a pain because I can't do exactly what I want to do.....which is basically the whole premise of motherhood.  Right?

He's also really liking the Bumbo lately!  And so it Jack.  :)


Jack is hystarical still, and I'm loving the two's.  This month was tough on him with Owen being so high maintenance.  Still, every time I pick him up from somewhere, weather it's school, church nursery, or one of the grandma's, first thing he asks me is, "Baby Owen sad, Mama?"  But he's a trooper, and has made it through.  Again, watched WAY too much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but survivde.  In fact, about 90% of all of the adorable catch phrases he uses are from MMC!

 Saaaaad day when Jack's first guitar broke.

I think it might need to be framed.  I mean, it was a $15 guitar from World Market, but it was his first love!  Don't worry, it's already been replaced and Jack didn't skip a beat.  He loves to direct his band....which included anyone in the room.  If you're here for a visit, go ahead and assume that at some point, you will have an instrument in your hand and you will be directed to play.  One morning we got home from church and I was getting everything ready for family dinner when Jack grabbed his guitar and started singing this:

It took us a while to figure out that he was singing I Am Bound For the Promised Land, which we'd sang in church that morning!  Little sponge.

Jack also started saying "I love you, too!" whenever we say I love you, which is absolutely heart-melting.  Seriously.  I die each time.

1.  Having two kids is.....HARD.  Seriously.  It's hard.  Jack is at the wonderful (and I'm not being sarcastic here) age of 2.  I love him being 2!  He's adorable, curious, sweet, mischievous, helpful, naughty and just straight up hilarious.  Mix that up with an uber needy newborn battling reflux (which is of the devil) and you've got one heck of a chaotic household.  There are days where I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it.  And that is WITH all of the help of Jeff and our parents!  On days when Jack 's at Grammy or Nana's all I can think of, the whole time he's gone is....having one kids is easy!!!  I don't know how people do it alone.

2.  Whoever named the store Buy Buy Baby was a genius.  I have spent more money on pacifiers, bottles, bottle nipples, formula....all to just find something that works!  My pantry and closet is full of half used formula cans....formula with soy, formula with rice cereal, advanced formula....and pacifiers.....Avent pacis (the ones Jack loves and I was sure Owen would, too), Soothies, Nuks, Mam's.....and bottles....Avent bottles that Jack used, every size of bottle nipple under the sun.  We have finally settled on the Playtex Drop-Ins and using the large nipples due to needing to mixing in  rice cereal in Owen's bottles to help with reflux.  FINALLY!!

3.  Two children are never the same.  At all.  From the paci's to the bottles, to the swing, these boys have been complete opposites.  Owen's reflux has been a beast and I think it is what has made the biggest difference between the two boys as newborns.  It's made him really difficult to soothe and over all not happy.  I read in my babycenter email this week that he could be smiling by now.  Ha.  Haha.  Hahaha.  That would mean he'd have to be awake without screaming, right?  We're getting there...finally settling on a bottle/formula/cereal/nipple combo that seems to work, and after trying Prevacid (which didn't work) and starting Zantac (I keep wanting to say Xanax, which is maybe a Freudian slip of what I need these days!), I think we're on the upswing of all of this.  I can't wait to have a happy baby....

4.  Jack is all kinds of able to entertain himself...if he wants to.  His new favorite toy is...wait for it...his stool.  Now, he has several stools.  One brown stool (which is probably his favorite), my nursing stool (which weighs a ton but he totes it around anyways), a pillow that he calls his "soft stool" which gives him about a 2 inch lift but somehow makes it into the stool rotation, and his learning tower that we keep in the kitchen.  Jack's stool toting has gotten him into all kinds of "fun"!  One afternoon, we were sitting on the couch and Jack runs in and says "Tylenol fall out!  Tylenol fall out!"  One of the other ways Jack entertains himself is to put Monk to bed in Vincent's bed in Owen's room.  He puts him in bed, covers him up, says, "Sweet dreams!" and shuts the door.  Precious!!!  Anyways, he decided Monk needed Tylenol before he went to sleep.  Naturally.  So he dragged his stool into his room where we keep the Tylenol and took it into Monk.  Well, the cap wasn't on and you can guess what happened next.  A whole new bottle of liquid Tylenol everywhere!!!  I mean, all you can do is laugh!  One other stool story....I walked in the den the other day and Jack was snacking on a big bag of pretzels.  I thought it odd Jeff would give him the whole bag, but whatever.  We're still in survival mode around here.  Jeff walked in the room and come to find out, he didn't give him the bag of pretzels!  Jack got them himself, off the counter.  Obviously he's being neglected and about to die of hunger!  Not likely.  :)

5.  The best part of having 2 kids is the sweet interaction between them.  Now, I won't say that Jack's ennamored by him, but he does love him.  Already!  He loves it when Owen's laying for a brief non shreiking moment on the playmat and he rushes over to lay with him.

Today's Owen's one month birthday!  In some ways it seems like he's been here forever and I was pregnant years ago!  In other ways, it seems like we're just getting started.

I've learned a lot about Owen in the past month, just like you do every newborn.  First of all....it's possible to love two children.  I wasn't sure, but it is!  The amount of love I feel when I look at them is overwelming.  A little more insight into how God can love each one of us!  He is easier to coax into sleep that Jack was, which is a God-send.  Jack took quite a bit of maintenance to get to sleep.  Didn't like to be rocked, only liked to be seemingly violently swung in a parent's arms for minutes on end.  But Owen?  He loves to be rocked and usually (not always....ie last night between the hours of 11pm and 1am) goes right to sleep.  And I love it.  :)  He loves to be in the baby carrier!  I went to Jack's Christmas party at Mother's Day Out yesterday and Owen slept the whole time in the baby carrier!  Jack was not a fan, and I was worried, thinking how much easier it would be with Owen if I could stick him into a carrier and chase Jack around.  And I'm so glad he loves it!  It's wonderfully freeing.

The biggest thing I've learned....is that all babies are NOT the same.  Quick learning curve on that one!

Jack loved....LOVED the lamb swing.  He was in it from day1 and was falling out of it at 6 months.  Loved it.  Well, Owen hates it.  Like, loathes it with every bone in his tiny body.  He shrieks as if a thousand needles were poking into his back when laid in the swing for just a hot minute so mama can go to the bathroom.  What do I do with a baby who doesn't like the swing?????????????  

Jack loved....LOVED his paci.  And who am I kidding?  Still does.  Yes, he's 2 and he loves his paci still.  And I'm ok with that.  It soothes him, it's his comfort, it's actually quite amazing and I love it almost as much as he does.  The first paci we popped in his mouth was a big fat winner and ever since then, it's been absolute love.  Owen?  Well, he's not a fan.  I stocked up on 1-3 month paci's, same as Jack's, but different enough so that Jack wouldn't get them confused.  Even got some glow in the dark paci's so that I could find them in the middle of the night!  I was ready.  Ready, I tell you!  Well, Owen wasn't a fan of this magnificent paci.  What?  WHAT?  What do I do with a baby who doesn't love his paci??  Seriously.  What do I do.  Finally this week I accepted the fact that Owen wasn't loving this paci (he spits it out, gags like it's the grossest thing he's ever had in his mouth, and would actually cry more if the paci was in than when it was out.  Not the idea.).  So I went to Target and dropped another load of cash, picking up one of every single paci that they carry.  I mean, seriously.  What do you do with a baby who doesn't like a paci?!?!?!?!  Well, Owen latched onto the 4th package of paci's I popped open.  FINALLY!  I'm not saying he loves it, but I'm saying he'll hold it in his mouth for more than 3 seconds.  So there's progress. 

Like I said before, when Owen was born, he was so tiny, that they advised me to nurse no longer than 15 minutes at a time.  And the reason was that with any nursing done after that, he was burning more calories than he was taking in.  Poor little guy!  So from day 1, I nursed and then supplemented to prevent him from loosing any of his birth weight like most babies do.  Initially I supplemented with formula.  Then my milk came in and I was able to pump enough so that we could supplement with breast milk, which was great.  With Owen being early and small, I really wanted to be able to give him my antibodies and all the other wonderful things that goes along with breast milk.  

If you remember from before, nursing Jack was not a good experience for me.  Or for Jack!  My supply was low, my nipples are not the best for breastfeeding, and Jack didn't want to latch because it was hard and he wasn't getting much. It was terrible.  I dreaded our nursing sessions, because I knew they would end in my being angry....angry at Jack and angry at myself.  Not healthy at all.  But I knew the benefits of breast milk, I'd been to the breast feeding classes, I'd heard people say, in not so many words, if you don't breast feed, you're pretty much not a good mom and don't care about your baby.  So I stuck with it, even with our struggles, I was planning to nurse for 6 months.  I was blind to what our troubles really were and didn't know I was making this plan even to the detriment to my son.  At our 2 month appointment, Jack had lost weight and looked like a string bean.  I proudly announced that I was still exclusively breast feeding and was a little dismayed when my doctor said to nurse him and then just offer him a bottle of formula.  If he doesn't drink it, he's getting enough!  If he does, he's still hungry.  He downed 4oz the first time I did that.  That's a full feeding for a 2 month old.  My pride and determination to stick with it had been detrimental to my son and I hated it.  So we changed the way things looked, I pumped and bottle fed, supplementing with formula.  And Jack did great.  

It's been interesting to have a new baby and still really wanting Jack to be able to enjoy the Christmas season.  We put up the tree (unbreakable ornaments, duh),

and got out our nativity, and I really wanted to do some kind of Advent calendar for Jack.  Of course, I went to Pinterest and found exactly what I was looking for!  Something really cute and super easy.  And here it is!

Dollar Spot socks, a piece of ribbon, clothes pins, and voila!

Each sock has either a treat or a holiday activity, and every day Jack gets to open a sock.  Now, I know my child, so the treat or activity is put in about 2 minutes before we open it.  :)  And Jack loves it!  

So far, this has been one of the funnest activities we've done.  Decorate Christmas cookies!  Knowing my son and his attention span, we just did slice and bake (See the one with a bite out of it?  He was just taste testing!)

and I iced while he decorated...which lasted about 15 seconds.  But he loved every second of it! 

What a whirlwind, crazy, few weeks it has been.  Today is actually my due date.  And in celebration of that, I actually hung a picture on the wall in the nursery! :)

When thinking about how our life has changed in 3 weeks, it's hard to even verbalize it!  There have been super sweet times, when Jack gives Owen a kiss, or when I get a brief moment to just gaze at my new baby.  And then there have been absolutely CRAZY times when Jack is crying because he's in time out for doing whatever he shouldn't be doing for the 75th time in 10 minutes, and Owen is shrieking because he's gassy.  And then Jack, in his truly toddler way, starts soliciting help, hollering from the time out corner to everyone in the room...."MammaDaddaBabyOwen, MammaDaddaBabyOwen, MammaDaddaBabyOwen, MammaDaddaBabyOwen...and then you just have to laugh!  

I feel like life is truly hectic right now.  And I can't believe I'm saying that, honestly, because I feel like all Jack has done for the past 3 weeks is watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  But I guess I can believe I'm saying that, because as soon as an episode is done, it's back to toddler antics, which, in and of them selves, are pretty cute and funny.  But combined with a baby, is just stressful.  

Owen's a pretty good baby, we've had some gas issues, which Jack had and I was hoping to avoid it with Owen, but I think we've gotten that under control.  With Jack, the most stressful thing for me was breastfeeding.  It was just such a struggle for us, and it really affected my feelings for him.  Thankfully, we've avoided that with Owen, as he started supplements in the hospital since he was so tiny.  I nursed for 2 weeks while Jeff was home, and have now transitioned to pumping, which has been great.  We're still supplementing probably 1/4 of the feedings, but I'm so so happy with where we are in the feeding game.

What a special Thanksgiving!  We usually head to Palestine to spend Thanksgiving at Crystal Lake with family.  My cousin and his family come in town and it's such a fun holiday!

Obviously with our 1 week old son, we didn't make the trek this year which made us so glad we'd visited them this Fall.  We stayed home, my mom cooked up a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, and while Jeff's mom was in Baltimore visiting her other new grandchild, Jeff's dad came for dinner, too.  

We are so thankful this year.  Thankful for our health, thankful for our new family, thankful for the Love of the Savior, thankful for amazing friends, thankful for the undeserved grace and mercy showered down on us daily.

We needed a low key holiday, and that's just what it was!  But a low key holiday, still needs a cute holiday outfit, right?  :)

 CRAZY toddler.

 ADORABLE toddler.

 First family picture of 4! I don't know why Jack looks so angry...

 My mom...

 Jeff's dad.  The boys.  :)

 Does everyone take a picture of their table settings like our family does?

Jeff's mom came to sit with Jack so my mom could go with my to my appointment on Monday, which was so nice.  I was expecting Dr. Hardt to say, "Ok, looks a little better, back home to the couch, see you in a week for a check up!" so I wasn't too worried.  I mean, if my feet tell the story, the story is easy to tell.  

First up, I got a sonogram to check on little Owen.  Which is always fun!  Fun to see him, see that he's ok, etc.  The stenographer confirmed that he was still a boy, looked good, and commented that he was measuring a few weeks behind where he should be.  Hmmm. 

The nurse took my blood pressure, said the doctor would be in to see me in a minute, and walked out.  Last week, the nurse (a different nurse) had said right away that my blood pressure was high, and since this nurse didn't say anything, I assumed it was fine!  Whew!

Then my doctor walked in.  First thing she said was, "Molly, what have you been doing!"  Um, sitting on the couch....but somehow my blood pressure was even higher than the week before.  168/108 She said with this news, she wanted to go ahead and send me to the hospital to check me in and get ready for an induction tomorrow.  Um, what?  What?  I wanted to yell, "But my feet!  My feet!  Look at my feet!"  But instead I just cried.  This was not supposed to happen.  I sat on the couch for 5 days!  This was not supposed to happen!!!!  But again, my doctor reassured me that everything was ok, Owen was going to be ok, he would be fine delivered at this point, and it would be better for him to be out with us than staying inside me because he wasn't getting what he needed.  My mom asked if we could go home and get my hospital bag, and she said that it would probably be better to go straight to the hospital and have someone else bring it to me.  I was scared.

I walked out of the office stunned and, like I said, scared.  It was 3:50pm, and Jeff was set to be on the air at 4 for the 4:00 show, so I called him and bawled as I told him I was headed to the hospital.  Talking about it later, somehow we kinda knew this was coming.  He'd felt weird all day, I'd repacked my hospital bag the night before....but it was still really shocking.  I was only 36 weeks.  We had a month left as a family of 3!  And now we find out that Owen would be here tomorrow!  He found Larry, who was still in his street clothes, told him I was heading to the hospital, and Larry said he'd cover it, and he headed out.  Jeff stopped at home to get my bag and change clothes, and pack his bag.  Thankfully, Jeff's mom was at the house with Jack so she just took him home for the night.  And thankfully my mom was with me so I wasn't doing all this alone!  

We got checked into Maternal Observation and they immediately started monitoring my blood pressure.  The job of the nurses at Maternal Observation is to see if you really need to be admitted, so they monitored my blood pressure, monitored Owen, and drew blood.  Jeff made it to the hospital before they officially admitted me and boy, was I glad to see him.  

So we got settled into our room and they put in a cervex softener so that when they started the petocin Tuesday morning, I'd be ready to go!  It was all happening so fast.  They hooked me up to a blood pressure machine that would monitor my blood pressure every hour over night and set off an alarm if it got too high.  And they gave me two Ambien.  The cervix softener sometimes makes you cramp, they said, but this would ensure I'd sleep through it.  At this point, Jeff and I were starting to get kind excited.  We would get to meet Owen tomorrow!  And, we'd get a full night's sleep!  I went to the hospital with Jack at 9pm and he was born at 3am, and I've always said that the newborn days might have been easier if we didn't start off sleep deprived...and here's our chance!  We prayed for Owen, for my body, for things to be ok, and went to bed.

Sometime around 4am I woke up and couldn't really go back to sleep because of the cramping.  Which was weird.  I mean, I just took 2 Ambien.  At 7am, the nurse came in to unhook me and help me to the bathroom.  And that's when my water broke.   Um, what?  I went ahead and took a shower, and when I got out, I asked the nurse if it was possible that my water broke.  She said, "Well, it's possible.....let me check you."

She checked and sure enough, it did!  And I was dilated to a 6!  Epidural, stat, people.  The contractions were coming fast and hard at that point.  We made phone calls to let everyone know that Owen would be here sooner than expected and by the time the epidural was in, she checked me again, and this is what I hear: "Oh, that's the baby's head.  Someone call Dr. Hardt!  Get Dr. Hardt on the phone, she's ready to push!"  

Oh my Lord.

Everyone's running around like crazy, my epidural doesn't feel like it's working because I've had to lay on my side to keep my blood pressure down, there are doctors from Cooks Children's Hospital in my room, just in case Owen isn't doing well.  It was crazy.  Five minutes later, Dr. Hardt literally runs into the room, puts on gloves, no time for the doctors gown, I push 4 times, and Owen Patrick Jamison is born at 9:21am.  4lbs 9oz, 18 inches long.  AND healthy.  Praise the Lord.  Yes, he's a tiny thing, but he's healthy.  God is good, all the time.

Everything happened so fast.  My blood pressure was still sky high after delivery, so I laid on my side and watched while Owen was assessed....and all at once, all of the pediatric doctors left the room.  And my baby got to stay.  Praise the Lord!  

The hardest thing was to be laying in that bed, strapped to monitors, bound my my anti seizure IV meds (in case the blood pressure caused a seizure), watching while everyone cooed to my baby. I couldn't get out of bed to see him.  I didn't get to see Jack meet his brother for the first time.  I watched from afar, but that's not how I pictured it.  

I didn't get to be the first one to hold him.  I didn't get to be the first face he sees.  But, I did get to nurse him, and that was precious precious time.

We stayed in Labor and Delivery over night so they could continue to monitor my blood pressure and administer my IV meds, and finally made it to the postpartum floor the following morning. Although the monitoring continued and the blood continued to be drawn every few hours, I wasn't hooked up to an IV any more and I got to hold my sweet little boy as much as I wanted! 

My blood pressure hadn't dropped to normal, but they felt comfortable releasing me the next afternoon and we got to go home to be a family of 4. 

I'd like to say that Jack is this sweet to him all the time, that he always kisses him and is gentle, but really...

this is more like it.  :)

I'd had an idea of how I wanted put together Owen's room....but today, I went and found the base fabric and, not only is a freakin' adorable, it's the perfect material for my plans!!!  Yay!!!!

This is Mayfly Alphabet by Tony Fernandes and it's so cute.  The pic does it no justice, but you can still kinda tell it's pretty darn adorable.  This will be the top of the bed skirt.

Below this will be a row of adorable pompoms, and then the bottom of the crib skirt will be this.

I love the lime green and the wonkey-ness of the dots!

And then there's this beauty...

 

which will be the outside of the bumper pad....LOVE!  I want to make the inside of the bumper pad a minkey kind of fabric, so I still need to get that.  Otherwise, it's time to get sewing!

I'm really excited now.  We'll paint a cabinet that's already in his room and that's all the painting we'll need to do!  Praise the Lord.  The color I painted the changing table in Jack's room will work with the fabric, and I'm pretty excited about that.  And the wall colors work great!  Woohoo to very little painting!!!

I'll order the same black out curtians that are in Jack's room, and the last few things are a carpet (which I'm planning to snag off of Craig's list) and a glider (which I'm planning to find at the JBF sale in Sept or off of Craig's list).

Let the decorating begin!!