Wait? It's New Years Eve!?

I was going to slowly write this and actually post it on New Years Eve but I finished it early so I'm posting it on the 30th instead..

So this year has flown by and it's been majorly crazy but I definitely wouldn't trade it. Let's recap..
Jeff moved from Tulsa.
I moved from Fayetteville.
We got our first apartment together in Rogers.
We put down the payment for our wedding--
1 week later found out we were going to have a baby.
Got married in June and went to the Bahamas for a week.
Moved back in with my Mom in September for a year.
Jeff gets deployed to Egypt in October.
Oliver is born December 4th.
Jeff comes home December 10th-26th.
Now he is back in Egypt until at least September.

Good news is starting Saturday I can say "Jeff will be home this year."
Bad news is it's still another 250+ days (8 months just sounds better though.) 

So on to the New Years Resolutions..
Normally I don't really set any that are serious. I know most people set ridiculous expectations and then don't achieve them so I tend to make funny resolutions. This year I'm setting realistic resolutions with high hopes. With my pregnancy with Oliver I managed to only gain 19 lbs and now at 4 weeks postpartum I have lost all but 2lbs. Sadly I don't look anything like what I did before Oliver. I know that the skin on my stomach still has to shrink back up and that will take 6 months to a year but I would really like to lose the extra weight I have gained over the last 3 or 4 years and get back to my comfortable weight. I'm not going to post the actual but I'm planning on keeping track of the weight loss along the side of the blog. So anyway..

My New Years Resolutions are:
lose weight (goal: 45 lbs by September 1st)
remember to take meds every day to help with the anemia
get a good job before Jeff gets home (40 hr/week entry level desk job.. do you know of anything for me??)

Well.. that's that! An update on Oliver. He's still eating a ton and plumping up a little more so I'm sure he's gained weight again. We don't have another appointment for 2 more weeks but there's no doubt that he has. He's sleeping pretty good once he gets to sleep but the last couple of days he has been fighting it and getting cranky. Hopefully this isn't something that sticks.. I know you don't want to read anymore so here's the fun stuff. 

Oliver has this terrible rash right now. The doctor thinks its just a combination of newborn rash/acne and a reaction to detergent, soap or lotion. I have tried everything and he still has it though.. Hopefully it's just newborn rash and it goes away asap.

He got a bath, a fresh diaper and then ooh'd and ahh'd in his lamb seat while I got a shower. He's just too dang cute!

My mom and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings with Oliver to watch OSU play in the Alamo Bowl. Oliver was even dressed up. (picture below)

The shirt is huge on him (it's a 6-9 month and he's barely in 0-3 month), the paci is too big and he spits it out quickly, and the sunglasses probably wont fit until this summer at the earliest BUT he was a trooper and let me take a picture of him in his OSU gear.

My mom with Oliver in front of his crib with the new dots I put up that match his bedding exactly! :)

Back up to birthweight!

Oliver has been taking his sweet little time gaining weight lately so my doctor has asked us to come back every week since he was born to get weighed. Today he was weighed and gained quite a bit! Here's how his weight has gone so far:
Birth weight: 8lb 8oz
3 days old: 7lb 15oz (lost 9oz)
1 week old: 8lb 1oz (gained 2oz)
2 weeks old: 8lb 3oz (gained 2oz)
3 weeks old: 8lb 11oz (gained 8oz!!)
Since he has finally gained a significant amount my doctor said as long as he is eating, peeing and pooping regularly that we don't have to come back until our 6 week appointment in mid-January- woohoo!!! He has a pretty gnarly rash right now that my doctor thinks is just a reaction to something he wore or he just has sensitive skin but we are watching it pretty closely just to be on the safe side and I'm checking his temperature at least every 2 bottles just to make sure he didn't get something.

So I haven't posted much lately because Jeff and I were so busy while he was here and over Christmas. Sadly, Jeff had to go back to his deployment yesterday (my birthday) but he will be back in 8 1/2 months or so and then he will be done with deployments for good!! We had a good time while he was here though. We were able to take Oliver to get his picture with Santa. He was out the whole time but the picture is precious either way. We also took him to see my sister at work at Twin Peaks so she could show him off and I could get a picture with him and all of the Santa's helpers. Jeff's stepmom, Vanessa, and 2 of his siblings were able to come up from Texas for the weekend to see Oliver and my mom made a big Christmasy dinner for them. And of course, we did all of the usual Christmas stuff with my side of the family- Christmas eve with my Dad's side and Christmas morning with my mom's side. I think Oliver is still tired from being passed around so much. He has been slightly cranky but sleeps pretty good still! Ok, well.. enough of me blabing, here are a few of the pictures..

My sister is slightly obsessed with Oliver.

All dressed up to go see Santa!

Oliver with the Twin Peaks girls and his Aunt Malibu/Sarah.

His outfit for going to Twin Peaks. I thought it was only appropriate that he was with 8 girls that were dressed up as Santa so he must be Santa's little helper.

Meme and Oliver were all festively dressed.

Our cute little family including Big Brother Oscar :) (No, I did not cut my hair. It just looks short here)

Oliver had a little accident in his first outfit so changed into this one and matched my sister so they "had" to get a picture together.. I'm telling you, she's obsessed!

Oliver was pooped when we got home from Oklahoma so we snuggled while Jeff and Jason went to see a movie on his last night in the states. 

Jeff holding Oliver at the airport before we said goodbye one last time. :(

Just in case you haven't seen his birth announcement, here is a picture of it. Picture by Kelsey Gaithe.

Yesterday, after seeing Jeff off at the airport, Oliver and I went shopping. I got a new digital camera and a few little goodies at Baby Gap and exchanged a few things. Jeff gave me strict instructions to get a nice camera with a decent lens so I did. :) Yay for decent pictures of Oliver (once I figure out how to use it..) I tried to test it out earlier on Oliver.. my skills are not so great yet.

Yes, he is sleeping in his Lamb Seat that is in his crib. He fell asleep in the seat and she didn't want to wake him up but put it up in the crib so the dogs couldn't get to him.

Oliver has plenty of clothes!!! the top rack is up to size 3 months and the bottom rack is 3-9 months his pants are in piles on the shelf and then he has all the bigger sizes in buckets/boxes. Spoiled. Rotten.

Looks like Oliver and I start back to work sometime this week or at the latest a week from today so I'm sure we will have plenty to post about next week if not before then. Have a good one!

2 weeks old!!

HOLY COW!! Time is really flying! In this time I have learned and discovered...
1. I hate Huggies diapers. Oliver's legs are much too skinny for their newborn diapers and so everything leaks no matter what. I'm officially a Pampers Momma now. I love the swaddlers- they are perfect for my skinny little man!
2. Oliver is the gassiest baby I have ever met-- and I have taken care of well over 50 newborns and infants in the last 3 years in the nursery at the church that I work at. Luckily, he is still very happy 95% of the time when he's gassy.
3. Going by what the books recommend is not recommended. You have to do what works for your baby, not what the books say. As long as he is happy and healthy I'm perfectly content. i.e.) breastfeeding v. bottle feeding, giving him a pacifier too early, letting him sleep in his baby seat for the first week instead of his crib, etc.
4. I'm not sure how other mothers do it.. I'm blessed to have a baby that is so calm (knock on wood!!) and sleeps so well. I'm having to wake him up through the night to feed him (to be fed every 3 hours due to his initial weight loss) and as long as he has a full belly, clean diaper and he's warm he will just sit there in his baby seat and let me take a shower, dry & straighten my hair, and do my makeup!!! He's such a good baby. I couldn't imagine how I would get anything done with a normal baby...

So here are a few pictures for those that haven't seen them on Facebook already..

Oliver in his baby seat

Oliver and Oscar's first meeting-- brotherly love!!

Oliver at the doctor for his check up-- all healthy!

Sweet cuddly baby at the doctor again to get weighed

Jeff's friend, Jason, bought Oliver another Cowboys shirt since his is too big still. They didn't win but oh well..

He has super chunky cheeks but he's super long and skinny. These newborn size "skinny" jeans are too big on him. hahaha

I'm so glad Jeff was able to come home on leave to meet Oliver and spend Christmas at home. How sweet is this??

Baby Oliver is here!

So I'm sitting in the hospital room waiting for them to bring Oliver back to me. He's getting his vitals checked, getting some blood drawn and then getting his circumcision and going crazy so I figured I would go ahead and answer all of the questions I've been getting and post a few pictures for your entertainment.

First.. what everyone wants to know.. THE STATS!!!
He was born 12/4/2010 at 2:44am, weighed 8lb 8oz, and was 21 3/4"

Now, the whole story.. I'll try to keep it PG and not super descriptive ;)

I woke up Friday morning when my mom was getting ready to go to work and thought I had just peed on myself just a little bit but dismissed it as just discharge and went back to sleep for an hour. Then I woke up about an hour later and felt pretty good so I decided to go ahead and go to Target to get one last thing for Jeff for Christmas and breast shields for breastfeeding. While I was in the baby area I bent over to get something off the bottom shelf and I accidentally peed myself a little bit.. just a little bit like the commercials for old people! Ok, well I just finished going about my business and then it happened again a few minutes later-- so annoying but I just dealt with it and figured it was a fun part of pregnancy that nobody mentions when they say how much they loved being pregnant! So I finished getting a few things and then went and checked out and then I had to go to the restroom so I went to the bathroom and realized it wasn't pee so I figured it was just watery discharge but it was happening a lot so I decided to call the doctor anyway.

So I called the doctor, and the desk lady said that she was in labor and delivery with another OB patient but to go ahead and head on up to Rogers and they would check me and see what was going on. I called my mom to let her know what was going on and told her how I was in denial and thought it was just watery discharge but who knows! I get to the doctor at just about noon and get checked in, go get weighed, give them a urine sample and then went back in my patient room and waited forever! Turns out she was still over in the hospital with the OB patient that was in delivery.. but oh well! So then she comes to check on me about 45 minutes later- she did the chemical test on the discharge-ish stuff and turns out that my water did break but I still was only dilated to 2cm and my cervix was high. The nurse wheeled me across to the hospital and got me checked into my room. Because my water had broke he had to be born within the next 18-24 hours because of the risk of infection after that.

So my nurse came in and got my info, and got me ID'ed and banded with my patient bracelets and I had a few forms to sign off on. Then she came in to get my IV started. Let me first say if you're in training or you're new, people can tell. There is no need to tell a woman who is in labor that you're new. Well, she starts by saying she's new and then attempts to find a vein to put the IV in.. I have a couple of really good veins and then I have a couple that are ok but not great-- she tried to put it in a vein that I couldn't even see unless I looked really close.. and then she moved the needle around all over the place. She ended up getting one of the veterans and the veteran got it in and set in 2 minutes. She even laughed at how easy my vein was to find. Then the new nurse checked to see if I was anymore dilated and "couldn't find my cervix" ---uh WTF??? so the veteran nurse came back in and checked me, with no problem and even said she felt hair!

Anyway.. I was just not happy with that nurse. They started me on pitocin right after I got the IV (this was at 1pm) to get my contractions started and to get me more dilated. I was contracting a lot but not in a whole lot of pain. My mom, Kelsey and Jason all came and just sat there with me and tried to keep from being bored.. it didnt work too well.. Anyway, so at 6pm my doctor came over and was going to put the internal monitors in me so they could monitor his heartbeat and my contractions much better and more accurately. She went to put it in and discovered that I had a "forebag" which is just an extra bag of water that had not broke yet. Apparently it was acting as a cushion keeping me from feeling many contractions.. once she did and got the monitors on I not only increased my dilation but I felt every bit of it. I got the epidural and then I was much better!!! :) At this point I went magically from a 4.5 or maybe a 5 cm dilated to an 8 in just under an hour!

Then it was all a matter of just getting a little more dilated and getting him to come down lower and then by 1:30am they were kicking everyone out and setting up things for delivery. I started pushing at 2:10ish and at 2:44am little Oliver Jackson Massey was born! I was so lucky to have such a great nurse and doctor that got me to move and push a certain way (different ways and times) so that I wouldn't tear. Of course I'm still really sore but I'm not torn and no stitches or anything so woohoo!! :) I'm just taking super strength Motrin for the swelling and then I'm going to have to the doctor to get checked up tomorrow, Tuesday.

So I started this post at the hospital Sunday morning while they were checking his vitals and doing his circumcision and it is now Monday morning and I'm finally finishing up while eating some oatmeal and Oliver is sleeping like a rock. So far he is by far the easiest baby. He's really calm unless he's hungry or needs his diaper changed and he's sleeping on a pretty regular 3 hour schedule. Yesterday was rough because of the circumcision and then my lack of sleep but I got in a shower, nap and some dinner and it was a little better. Luckily my husband was there to reassure me that he's going to love me no matter what I feed him and that I don't have to be super woman to be his mommy-- definitely what I needed to hear at that point. ***brownie points to Jeff!***

I have only been home 18-20 hours and I'm already planning on trying to do something today to get out of the house because I'm getting stir crazy. I don't know how people can have their entire family in the house and stay there for the first 2 months.. definitely not for me! I need to run to the bank (that will let my mom show him off too, I'm sure she will be ecstatic!!!) and possibly back to Target since the bottles I bought for Oliver aren't going to work. I guess it all depends on how much energy I have in a little bit. OK! Time for Mommy to try to nap a little more while Oliver is snoozin! Goodnight (Yes, I know its already almost 8am!)

I just realized I forgot to post pictures.. MY BAD!!!

Daddy getting to see Oliver via Skype just after he was born and cleaned up. Jeff's face gets me everytime

Little guy in his car seat about to head home from the hospital. He was too tall for the newborn setting on the car seat so we had to put it on the tightest 6 month setting!

Sleepy little boy cuddling with Mommy-- all snuggly in his thermal shirt and sweat pants

My enormous foot. I didn't swell too much until the very last bit of the pregnancy but my normally very thin ankles, feet and toes turned into one big "cankle" The right side isn't as bad but it's not cute either.